Mountains of corn cobs waiting for being transformed into pipes. The cobs are stored for two years. Aging makes the cobs harder and dryer. The Missouri Meerschaum Pipe Co
The Old Cob Pipe
Why do I stick to the old cob pipe?
Why boy, that pipe is sweet.
Of the olden days and the olden dreams
That have vanished on silent feet.
I smoke that pipe when the days were long
And life was a breath of May,
And its every whiff is a fragrant draught
From the hopes of Yesterday.
I’ve smoked that pipe so long, my lad,
That it is a part of me.
In joy and sorrow it’s been my mate,
Till now I can almost see.
In its battered bowl and its broken stem
The image of my own face,
Browned and scared with the smoke of time
Like an ancient dwelling place.
So I sit and smoke the old cob pipe
As the twilight hours come on.
And the smoke curls up to a castle-dome
That shone in the hours of dawn.
And the old time joys come back to me
With the songs that are never sung.
And I pat my pipe and take a puff
And the both of us turn young.
The day book, May 18, 1912
The Cherries of Wrath: July 1940. Berrien County, Michigan. “Migrant fruit workers from Arkansas.”