As I travel in Logan, Simpson and surrounding counties in early to mid June, I am reminded that once again the Wheat Harvest is fast approaching. I have not been actively involved in Wheat Harvest for the past 11 years, but for about 40 years prior to that, it was definitely a part of the early summer ritual.
We worked lots of long hot days receiving wheat at the mill in Auburn. Not as hard as the farmers harvesting it, but I think it was harder than the bank employees who complained to my grandfather once that they were so busy handling all those wheat checks!
In the early years of my experience with the Wheat Harvest, we received wheat in lots of small farm trucks, grain wagons pulled behind tractors, some pick-up trucks and some of the wheat was still delivered in burlap bags. I don’t remember when the bagged wheat stopped coming, but I think Mr. Willard Stone was one of the last people I remember bringing it to the mill.
Many memorable events occurred during those years. One gentleman pulled his truck on the scales on a hot June afternoon, rolled the windows up, opened the glove box, took out a bottle of whiskey and took a big drink. He then put the bottle away, rolled the windows down and came into the office and got his weigh ticket. I think it was in 1966 that Mr. Curry Barrow, Mr. Ray Summers and Mr. Oscar Bond had a large wheat crop on the Bond Farm at South Union. One Monday morning when we got to the mill, they had 8-10 trucks there. We were already full of wheat, so we were using space across the street at Auburn Roller Mills to store wheat. We weighed the trucks, and identified the drivers of the trucks on the weigh tickets because some of the trucks were the same color. When the empty trucks came back, they had switched drivers; so we had an awful lot of confusion getting the empty weight on the right tickets.
Another year we that had a large harvest, we started receiving on a Monday afternoon and on Saturday evening I was standing at the end of the line on Main Street in Auburn in front of the Methodist Church with instructions not to let anyone else get in the line, because the bins were about full. A man from Springfield, Tenn. pulled up, and I told him we couldn’t unload his truck. He went to the office and talked to my father and grandfather. They agreed to unload his truck. When the unloading was about half over, the bin ran over on the ground. The rest of his load went in the unloading pit, and we covered it with a tarp.
I have many, many memories of those hot busy days. All of our family was pressed into service along with extra help for the office and mill. My grandmother, Bonnie Scott, and her cook, Virginia Bailey, helped to keep us fed with country ham for sandwiches and chocolate and pecan pies. Peggy Reeder, Jim Higginbotham and John Paul Allard, teachers from Russellville High, helped in the office some of those years. Don Price, Barry Perkins, Murl Barrow, Larry Henderson, Ed Mallory and others helped with sampling the wheat and unloading during that time.
I must also mention two of our most loyal mill employees that went above and beyond the call of duty, Russell Roberts and Robert ‘Sonny’ Covington. They both worked many back-to-back 18-hour days to help get the crop in. Russell unloaded wheat trucks all day and stayed with the grain dryer until midnight many nights. Robert would relieve him at midnight and then work all day in the mill seeing that all the orders were packed and ready for shipment.
Today the farmers are still in a hurry to get the golden grain harvested and safely in storage. Most of that is now on the farm and is delivered to the elevators at a later, less-hurried time. Most of them also use large tractor trailer trucks now to move their grain.
At the time the work seemed hard and rough, but I am glad for the experiences during those years. I am also very appreciative of the many local farmers that we did business with for so many years, the mill employees that gave us so much effort and the good cooks in Kentucky and Tennessee that had to have their Auburn Leader Flour.
Ray Clark is a fourth generation miller. His great-grandfather, Dave Scott, and his grandfather, Ray Scott, bought Auburn Mills in 1922 and it was a part of the family for eight decades. A great uncle, Hansford Scott, was secretary-treasurer and served as mayor of Auburn. Ray’s late father and mother, John and Elizabeth Scott Clark, bought the mill, which was the second largest in Kentucky, in 1974, and Ray joined them in management of Scott’s Auburn Mills after obtaining a degree in milling from Kansas State University. He is now with Hopkinsville Milling Company. Ray’s wife, Paula Clark, has previously written guest articles for The LoJo.