the show is locally written, costumed and produced, and provides one of the finest entertainments of the year. The term Corncapades was coined by Mildred G. Burster, a moving spirit in this project since the beginning and whose pen has produced nearly all its lines through the years. She has varied the title from "Kernels of Korn" and "Gone with the Big Blow" to the "Gay Nineties Review" and "Home on the Range." With Curt Mahaffey and Wayne West providing the musical push, this year the production bears the centennial title "The Campbell House Blues," a sure hit.

Corn husking contests may not be entertainment for the contestants but they were for the spectators until the machine eliminated this physical labor. It was many a young man's ambition to be the best corn husker in the area, the state or the nation, and these later contests became an annual sporting event in the 1920's and 1930's, with regular rules and judges. The first corn husking contest of which we can find a record was one held in the fall of 1900 when Percy Kingdon defeated Charles Sharpe in a torrid eight-hour Panola Township contest, 154 bushels to 152. An official Woodford County contest lasting

The 1935 corn husking contest, held on the Shuman farm near El Paso.
 
 

an hour and twenty minutes was held each year after 1929, Simon Oltman of El Paso winning four of the first six matches. He then won the Illinois State contest at Earlville in 1934, and competed in the 1935 contest on the George Shuman farm southwest of El Paso, and in a national contest in Minnesota. Since 1940 mechanical pickers and lately mechanical contests have replaced the hand experts.

STORMS. Though wind, rain, sleet, hail, and snow storms have struck

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