As crop producers keep farming more and more acres, sometimes their management gets stretched a bit too thin.

That’s what happened to ol’ L. Austin deBinn, several decades ago. Austin wuz farming several thousand acres spread over most of the county.

He had several hired men. He had farm machinery scattered from hill to yonder. He had grain storage facilities in several strategic places.

It wuz getting close to the fall harvest and Austin instructed one hired man to make sure all the grain storage facilities were cleaned out and ready to receive grain when harvest started.

He instructed another hired man to make sure there were tractors at every storage bin and metal Quonset building to operate the grain augers.

That’s how it happened that the first hired man cleaned out a Quonset building and, after he wuz done, the second hired man parked a John Deere 4020 in the same building so it would be handy to get when needed.

Well, Austin’s crew wuz well into harvest when it came time to store corn in the Quonset. The day corn harvest started in the nearby fields the first hired man drove a different tractor to the Quonset and hooked it up to the grain auger.

With nary a glance inside by anyone, the corn started pouring into the Quonset through the roof opening. Within hours, the poor JD 4020 wuz buried deep in corn — and no one knew about it.

Eventually, when harvest wuz over, Austin discovered he wuz missing a John Deere tractor. Some of the hired men had been sent home after harvest and the remaining hired guys had seen hide nor hair of the 4020.

So, Austin figgered that the tractor had been stolen while parked in a field somewhere. Naturally, he reported the theft to the sheriff and to his insurance agent.

The tractor didn’t turn up in the subsequent legal and insurance investigation and Austin received insurance compensation for his loss.

Well, imagine Austin’s chagrin when he began to sell corn from the Quonset and, lo and behold, there sat the grain-encrusted John Deere on the floor of the Quonset.

There wuz nuthin’ left to do but go to his insurance agent and confess about the “oops” that had happened with the tractor.

Eventually, things were made right. But, this story proves the point that stretched-thin management can cause costly and embarrassing situations.

***

The Kansas State Fair is rapidly approaching at the state fairgrounds in Hutchinson. The promotions for the State Fair brought back to my mind a supposedly true story I heard long ago.

The story goes that an “enterprising” gentleman who lived in a small rural community developed quite a state fair reputation as a prize-winning grain exhibitor.

Year after year the gentleman, ol’ Copp Sears, had many winning entries at the Kansas State Fair in the open class ears of corn and heads of grain sorghum contests. It happened enuf that ol’ Copp gained quite a reputation as a top-notch corn and sorghum producer among state fair officials.

However, the folks back in Copp’s home county knew better. They knew that every year just prior to the state fair ol’ Copp would spend hours roaming the countryside scanning corn and sorghum fields. Every once in a while his old rickety pickup truck would stop and he would disappear into the maze of stalks and emerge later with a burlap bag bulging with corn ears or sorghum heads.

When he got home, Copp meticulously sorted his “haul” for the best ears and heads and entered them in the fair.

The locals never tipped off Copp’s state fair scam, but merely chuckled about him as an amusing eccentric character. Some local farmers even claimed, “Well, my corn won at the state fair, but I didn’t get the ribbon or the premium.”

However, eventually, Copp’s scamming reached the ears of the open exhibit officials at the state fair and they put an end to his antics.

But, it still makes for an amusing state fair story.

***

One of the geezers at the morning geezer gab session recently claimed he had a checkered life as a child growing up on a farm with lots of brothers and sisters.

When someone asked him if “checkered” meant he’s got in trouble with the law, he laughed and said, “Nope. It means I got in trouble with my mother. She had a piece of paper pinned to the wall right next to the pencil markings on the wall she made to check my growth occasionally. Every time I got in trouble with her, mom would put a check mark on the piece of paper and when I got three check marks, then I got disciplined in some way.
That’s what I mean by a ‘checkered’ childhood.”

***

I absolutely abhor pesky, irritating, time-wasting, robo calls about health insurance, car warranties, or any other subject. I wish all phone scammers could spend a few years in prison for disrupting the lives of decent folks.

Which leads to my weekly words of wisdom: “Phone scammers are scum of the Earth.” Have a good ‘un.