I can vouch, at a minimum, for the historicity of corncobs. The WC at the 1890s farm I used to work at was well-stocked with corncobs, with the enticing promise that if you were lucky you might find a white corncob (instead of a red one) so you could better appreciate the streaks you left behind. (But both guests and we interpreters actually used the modern toilets with TP.)
Our subsequent corncob discussion went on for surprisingly long, so for the benefit (?) of the public, here's a re-cob-itulation:
Said Scott: "I’m still confused. Did it have kernels or not? If yes, that seems like a waste of food. If not, it seems… pointy?
[...S]o you mean both shucked (husk removed) and de-kerneled? I take your point, that if the cob was not super dry, it would be OK. But then you're going to have corn juice on your butt, right?"
Said I: "Yes, sorry, both shucked and shelled (de-kerneled). This corn is dried before processing. The kernels feel like beads and pop off cleanly. The cob left behind is completely dry and the membranes/fibers around the kernel 'socket' feel like tissue paper, crinkly and a bit silky. It helps to remember that Europeans/white Americans mainly used corn as animal feed, so when they handled corn, it would almost always have been dried."
Scott: "Wow, not what I would have expected. That actually sounds like a pretty decent experience. And if you remove all the kernels, I see how you have tons of this kind of waste product laying around."
And then somehow we (I) ended with the observation that cats lick their own butts.
A friend of mine wrote in:
I can vouch, at a minimum, for the historicity of corncobs. The WC at the 1890s farm I used to work at was well-stocked with corncobs, with the enticing promise that if you were lucky you might find a white corncob (instead of a red one) so you could better appreciate the streaks you left behind. (But both guests and we interpreters actually used the modern toilets with TP.)
Our subsequent corncob discussion went on for surprisingly long, so for the benefit (?) of the public, here's a re-cob-itulation:
Said Scott: "I’m still confused. Did it have kernels or not? If yes, that seems like a waste of food. If not, it seems… pointy?
[...S]o you mean both shucked (husk removed) and de-kerneled? I take your point, that if the cob was not super dry, it would be OK. But then you're going to have corn juice on your butt, right?"
Said I: "Yes, sorry, both shucked and shelled (de-kerneled). This corn is dried before processing. The kernels feel like beads and pop off cleanly. The cob left behind is completely dry and the membranes/fibers around the kernel 'socket' feel like tissue paper, crinkly and a bit silky. It helps to remember that Europeans/white Americans mainly used corn as animal feed, so when they handled corn, it would almost always have been dried."
Scott: "Wow, not what I would have expected. That actually sounds like a pretty decent experience. And if you remove all the kernels, I see how you have tons of this kind of waste product laying around."
And then somehow we (I) ended with the observation that cats lick their own butts.