{"id":605,"date":"2015-09-28T19:43:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T19:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=605"},"modified":"2015-09-28T19:43:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T19:43:00","slug":"broomcorn-johnnies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=605","title":{"rendered":"Broomcorn Johnnies"},"content":{"rendered":"

My sister visited recently from Oklahoma. Sometime during the course of her visit, the term \u201cBroomcorn Johnny\u201d came up. When I was growing up, every year Maysville had an influx of \u201cBroomcorn Johnnies.\u201d They set up camp just outside town and of course were a boon to the Maysville merchants. They bought groceries, clothing, and other stuff and went to the movies. (Yea, Maysville, at one time, had two<\/em> movie theaters.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure both my faithful readers don\u2019t even know what broomcorn is\u2026. first of all let\u2019s get some facts straight \u2014 broomcorn isn\u2019t corn at all, although if you saw it growing in a field, you\u2019d think it was corn. It very much resembles regular corn, except it doesn\u2019t have \u2014 well, ears of corn. \u201cBroomcorn\u201d is actually a type of sorghum \u2014 knowing that, it sort of looks like cane sorghum, or sugar cane, but to the un-initiated, it looks like corn. I was well into adulthood before I knew that broomcorn wasn\u2019t really corn.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, before the \u201cbroom\u201d was invented, people used bundles of twigs, corn husks and things like that to clean. There is at least one reference to some sort of a broom in the Bible\u2026.\u201dEither what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?\u201d Well, ok, maybe this doesn\u2019t actually reference a broom, but it might\u2026.<\/p>\n

Early brooms were usually made at home from whatever materials were at hand \u2014 they basically bundled together whatever they were using to sweep with to a wooden stick with rope or twine. Of course these devices didn\u2019t do a good job or last very long and had to be replaced fairly often.
\nSo \u2014 eventually someone (possibly Levi Dickinson in Hadley, Mass.) got the bright idea to make a broom from a species of tasseled grass (sorghum vulggare) that resembled sweet corn. Turns out that the plant\u2019s fibers made an excellent broom. Previously, the sorghum plant\u2019s seeds and fibers had been used as animal feed and not much else. Dickinson\u2019s broom was a round bundle of broomcorn tied to a stick with some weaving around the top and proved to be very effective and durable. As word spread, demand for the brooms increased and Dickinson and his sons went into business making and selling their brooms.<\/p>\n

But back to today \u2014 a lot of people don\u2019t remember when brooms were made of straw since most are now plastic or some other synthetic fiber. Back when I was a kid, growing broomcorn was a major business. A town about 10 miles from where I grew up christened itself \u201cthe broomcorn capital of the world.\u201d I\u2019m sure it wasn\u2019t, but try telling that to the Lindsay, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce.
\nThe downside of broomcorn production was that harvesting it was hot, dreary work. Like so many undesirable jobs, this task was mostly accomplished with migrant labor. These migrant workers that worked the broomcorn fields around Maysville were called \u201cBroomcorn Johnnies.\u201d Like probably most migrant workers, Broomcorn Johnnies got a bed rap. They often looked raggedy, not well dressed and a lot of people considered them \u201cdirty.\u201d They probably looked \u201cdirty\u201d because they worked in the fields in the hot sun all day and didn\u2019t have ready access to showers, as most lived in tents. I remember the women, most of whom worked in the broomcorn fields along side the men, were sometimes referred to as Broomcorn Sallies. Probably in most places, these people would have been referred to as Gypsies, but in Maysville, they were Broomcorn Johnnies.<\/p>\n

Today, most people use vacuum cleaners or the new-fangled \u201cswiffer\u201d thing that looks kind of like a dirty napkin attached to the end of a stick. I\u2019m not sure most households still have brooms around, but I\u2019d bet that a lot do. Of course most of these brooms came about without the help of Broomcorn Johnnies.
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sister visited recently from Oklahoma. Sometime during the course of her visit, the term \u201cBroomcorn Johnny\u201d came up. When I was growing up, every year Maysville had an influx of \u201cBroomcorn Johnnies.\u201d They set up camp just outside town … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":606,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}