Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1916 — Walt Mason’s Rhymes. [ARTICLE]

Walt Mason’s Rhymes.

The farmers raise so many crops the harvest season never stops. They’re always reaping oats or hay, or putting winter wheat away; alfalfa helps to pay their debts, and keeps the world in cigarettes, and they have corn and Johnson grass, and sorghum, rape and garden sass. So, be the weather dry or wet, some crop will be a good safe bet. The beans may shrivel in the heat, but there’ll be divers kinds of wheat; the oats may languish in the rain, but there’ll be lots of other grain. The cockleburs may pine away, but there’ll be stacks of luscious hay. The western farmers used to raise but little else than yellow maize, and if a crop they chanced to lose, in wintertime they ate their shoes. Crop failures meant a fa’mine then; the fields were full of hungry men. But now the corn may die the death, may wither in the hot wund’s breath, and still the farmers tool their cars, and. smoke the crimson band cigars, and take to town the shining bones, and buy a peck of precious stones.