Page 5 - Demo

ForewordTerre Haute, Vigo Co. (597.09)I CONFESS TO GETTING a large lump in my throat%u2014an emotional rush%u2014when first viewing John Bower%u2019s pictorial glimpse of an important feature of rural Indiana history. When I was growing up on my grandparents%u2019 farm in the northwest corner of Vigo County, Indiana, the local grain elevator did more than handle grain. As in most small towns, the grain elevator was the economic center and hub of male social life.Occasionally we went to Graham%u2019s in Terre Haute (above) but most of the time, we patronized the elevator in Libertyville, Indiana%u2014a pillar of rusty, corrugated steel, rising far up into the Hoosier sky. To a small boy, it was an imposing structure. Located a few hundred yards from the Illinois state line, with the railroad tracks on one side and U.S. Highway 150 on the other, it provided ready access for shipments%u2014by either mode of transportation%u2014of grain, feed supplement, and similar products. The usual practice was for farmers to haul their grain to the elevator for sale or storage. When a sufficient supply of corn, soybeans, wheat, and oats had been accumulated in the elevator%u2019s storage bins, the grain would be transferred to waiting boxcars for shipment throughout the country by train. If there was a shortage of railroad cars, there would be a string of semis lined up.Libertyville was a wide spot in the highway with a population of about 100 folks when everybody was home. There was a small grocery, a storefront room for women%u2019s social gatherings, the white-clapboard Church of Christ where we worshiped, and the grain company, with its elevator and adjoining buildings. The center of activity, located adjacent to the elevator, was the feed mill, which could grind a farmer%u2019s grain, mix in a food supplement, and provide a finished product to feed the cattle, hogs, and chickens on the farm. The mill was arranged with a dock in front that permitted the farmer to back his truck up and unload several gunnysacks filled with his own grain. This grain would be dumped into a grinder, mixed with supplement and, perhaps, other grain from one of the elevator%u2019s storage bins. The ground mixture would be blown into a waiting bin overhead where it would be funneled, by gravity, into gunnysacks below. As the sacks were filled, the farmer and mill operator would carry them back to the truck. Those sacks seemed huge to me as a lad, somewhere between 80 and 100 pounds. How proud I was, as was my granddad,