A news story reminded me of a story from my childhood.h.

The news story:

Corn Bin Collapses, Burying Iowa Family
Iowa Grain Bin Collapse Floods Home With Tons of Corn and Traps Family of 4

The Associated Press
By MELANIE S. WELTE Associated Press Writer
DES MOINES, Iowa Nov 20, 2007 (AP)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3894991

A grain bin collapsed and sent a tidal wave of corn into a home, sweeping it off its
foundation, trapping a family of four and shaking the ground for miles.

One man was taken to a hospital after being buried for hours in grain and debris in
Hillsboro in southeast Iowa.

The bin about 100 feet in diameter, 90 feet high and containing more than
500,000 bushels of corn collapsed Monday evening. The force of the grain broke
the walls of Jesse and Jennifer Kellett's home and sent the roof crashing down.

"The force actually took the house with the corn and shoved it and crushed it,"
Dan Wesely, Henry County chief sheriff's deputy, said Tuesday.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The story:

The Huckabuck Family and How They Raised
Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back
A Rootabaga Story

by Carl Sandburg

http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/sandburg/root/huck.html



Then she ran with it to her mother and said, "Look what I found when I cut open the yellow
squash spotted with spots of gold--it is a Chinese silver slipper buckle."

"It means our luck is going to change, and we don't know whether it will be good luck or bad luck,"
said Mama Mama Huckabuck. And that night a fire started in the barns, cribs, sheds, shacks, cracks,
and corners where the popcorn harvest was kept. All night long the popcorn popped. In the morning
the ground, all the farmhouse and the barn were covered with white popcorn, so it looked like a
heavy fall of snow.

All the next day the fire kept on and the popcorn popped till it was up to the shoulders of Pony Pony
when she tried to walk from the house to the barn. And that night in all the barns, cribs, sheds,
shacks, cracks, and corners of the farm, the popcorn went on popping.

In the morning when Jonas Jonas Huckabuck looked out of the upstairs window he saw the popcorn popping
and coming higher and higher. It was nearly up to the window. Before evening and dark of that day,
Jonas Jonas Huckabuck, and his wife Mama Mama Huckabuck, and their daughter Pony Pony Huckabuck,
all went away from the farm saying, "We came to Nebraska to raise popcorn but this is too much.
We will not come back till the wind blows away the popcorn.
We will not come back till we get a sign and a signal."

I read it over and over. The drawing of the yard filling with popcorn "snow drifts" is one that has stayed with me. I've bought copies of the book for youngins in recent years hoping that it would have the same effect.

It was many years later that I connected that book to the poet.

The things to learn.

I remember him reading at Kennedy's inauguration.

:hi:

Frost too. I'm too young to remember the JFK inaugural but I've seen the film of it often enough to pretend that I remember.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

I lived near the ocean and we had pet cats, so this was the first poem that I understood on some level.

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could

to where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;

though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference

"The Mending Wall" is so Yankee.


Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Thank you too.

:hug:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."