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Scott Olesen's avatar

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.)

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DC's avatar

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.

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