4 Singing Valleys 



That day the sun shines all the day, and a warm mist rises 

 from the fields. This is not like the mists the clouds dropped; 

 it smells different. The men stand at the barn doors and sniff 

 it knowingly, then they turn and take down the plowshares 

 from where they have hung all winter. They rub the blades; 

 they work with oil cans and pots of axle grease. They lift the 

 hoods of tractors and examine cylinders and carburetors. 



May comes, and an army rides out into the fields. Every 

 country lane jingles with its passing. Bright blades rip wide 

 the patient earth . . . the harrows comb it. ... In Maine, 

 in Oregon, in Michigan, the petals of a million blossoming 

 apple trees drift across the new-plowed fields. On the crest of 

 a rounded hill a man, with a sack of corn slung across his 

 chest, moves rhythmically, with out-flung arm, along the raw 

 furrows. 



The nights grow warm. By Illinois farmhouses the lilacs 

 smolder into bloom. The wild grape and the scuppernong 

 blossom over tumbled stone walls along the Monongahela 

 and the Mississippi, filling the night with heady fragrance. 

 And in Connecticut, in Kansas, in South Dakota, in Tennes- 

 see, farmers meeting at crossroads draw up, cast weather-wise 

 eyes at the sky and greet each other, "Corn-growin' weather." 



July. The cornlands are a sea of tossing green. Green ripples 

 where the breeze strikes. Crisp green streamers crackling under 

 the noon suns . . . ' 'Seems like you can fairly hear the corn 

 a-growin'." At sunset men lean on fence rails measuring the 

 strong, upward thrust of the jointed stalks . . . fifteen, eight- 

 een, twenty feet high. Cautiously they begin to count the 

 harvest. 



Every day now the sun grows hotter and hotter. The soil 

 dries and powders. The sharp green of the corn leaves fades. 

 The leaves droop and hang listlessly against the stalks. Over in 

 the west clouds pile up. There is a roll of distant thunder, and 

 across the sultry horizon a warning yellow streak "cyclone." 

 In the hearts of men, women, children, fear is born. "If it 

 hits the corn!" 



