Huck Finn and His Corn Silk in a Cob

[mso489]

Somewhere in my youth or childhood, i think i followed Huck Finn's example and tried smoking corn silk in a cob. Boy, was that a whole bowl full of nothing. Remembering that Samuel Clemons, aka Mark Twain, the author of Huckleberry Finn, was an adamant pipe and cigar smoker, was this a cruel joke? Or did small boys in days of yore actually smoke corn silk, and if so why? Was it a sort of training wheels for later tobacco smoking? I would think it would put people off smoking, since it is both hard to burn and mostly flavorless. Has anyone ever had a pleasant smoking experience with corn silk? Or was Twain just pulling our legs? He's the one who said he'd like opera if it wasn't for all that damned singing.

 

[runscott]

We smoked corn silk cigarettes when we were kids - 12 or 13. I enjoyed them. Not sure why, other than it didn't cost us anything. We were out in the country in northern Louisiana, no towns nearby. Probably did it mostly out of boredom.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Silks is a good way to teach kids to smoke pipes without inhaling them. They smoke smooth unless you do inhale, and then you'll know it as you hack a lung out.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Since it's soon de-tassling time soon, lots of corn silk available! Who's game?
I bet if dried it goes up in a second. Ugh.

 

[Searock Fan]

Silks is a good way to teach kids to smoke pipes without inhaling them. They smoke smooth unless you do inhale, and then you'll know it as you hack a lung out.

Right! When I was teaching my 6 year old son to smoke he kept gagging on the Maui-Wowie. And besides, corn silk has to be a little cheaper.

 

[runscott]

Right! When I was teaching my 6 year old son to smoke he kept gagging on the Maui-Wowie. And besides, corn silk has to be a little cheaper.

In our case they were the same price. I was staying with my Grandmother, and she grew 'stuff' for her nephews to smoke. They considered me too young at 12 or 13, so they only smoked corn silk when I was around.

 

[bullet08]

It seems kids at my college preferred dried lettuce. At least, that's what they cut the other stuff with.

 

[OldWill]

Every young Missouri boy of previous generations has smoked silk. Just as every one of us who worked in the fields has mouthed chaw. These are rites of passage.

For me, the corn silk wasn't so bad, but my first chaw of Tinsley's Twist with the big boys led to evacuation of stomach contents....they didn't tell me you had to spit....

 

[mortonbriar]

Silks is a good way to teach kids to smoke pipes without inhaling them. They smoke smooth unless you do inhale, and then you'll know it as you hack a lung out.

Come for the pipe topics, stay for the parenting advice!

 

[hawky454]

I had to Google corn silk. Looks like it’s good for your urinary tract, it’s sold as a supplement. I don’t remember Huckleberry Finn smoking corn silk but that’s not saying a lot, I hardly remember the book at all.

 

[kcghost]

I don't believe I have ever tried corn silk and from what you said I doubt that I ever will.

 

[pantsBoots]

I'll have organic corn silk for sale in a few months for $5 a gram - no price break on quantity. Meet me out behind J&C Grocery.

 

[JocoPack]

I had to Google corn silk. Looks like it’s good for your urinary tract, it’s sold as a supplement. I don’t remember Huckleberry Finn smoking corn silk but that’s not saying a lot, I hardly remember the book at all.

Maybe Huck was secretly battling a UTI?

 

[Steddy]

Never smoked corn silk.
First thing I smoked was dried oak leaves rolled up in loose leaf paper.
The Boy Scouts made a young man out of me at the time.

 

[anotherbob]

apparently farm kids did that around here. Not sure if it did anything for them or if it was just kind of a kids version of imitating adult behavior.

 

[didimauw]

Never smoked corn silk.
First thing I smoked was dried oak leaves rolled up in loose leaf paper.
The Boy Scouts made a young man out of me at the time.

Maple leaves was my first....

 

[runscott]

Never heard of smoking maple or oak leaves. The older boys rolled corn silk cigarettes - I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't seen them smoke first. This was just part of a big Summer adventure, never to be repeated - hunting for arrowheads, drinking PBR with my step-grandfather, flying down the highway at 80 with my semi-drunk Cajun grandmother, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, etc. It was a crazy two weeks, and when my parents arrived to pick me up, I didn't say a word about any of it.

 

[mso489]

The book Huckleberry Finn is well worth the read. Sometimes books assigned or recommended in school are a pretty cruel march through a lot of pages and don't register well at the time. I read Moby Dick (Herman Melville) in school, and it had its points, but was a lot of work. Later, as an adult, I read it, and it was a different book. As a student, I'd completely missed the humor -- worrying about the midterm I suppose.

HF, it turns out, is one of the strongest anti-slavery novels in English. Jim, the escaping slave, is the only adult who takes actual responsibility for the unattached white kid, sails the raft all night while the kid sleeps, and otherwise tends and cares for him, while people of Huck's own ethnicity flap their arms and try to turn him into a gentleman. This eventually dawns on Huck, who realizes the situation, and decides he'd rather go to hell for assisting his friend Jim (someone else's property) than turn him in as an escapee.

The last chapter is a bunch of nonsense, as Twain's opinion of polite society.

The dialect is a bit bumpy, but intelligible, and the "n" word is thrown around a lot, but as a kind of taut to Twain's white readership. HF is probably his masterpiece, though he set it aside for years before completing it and publishing it. Huck's voice is borrowed from a street urchin Twain knew and grew to like as an authentic truth teller.

 

[runscott]

The book Huckleberry Finn is well worth the read. Sometimes books assigned or recommended in school are a pretty cruel march through a lot of pages and don't register well at the time. I read Moby Dick (Herman Melville) in school, and it had its points, but was a lot of work. Later, as an adult, I read it, and it was a different book. As a student, I'd completely missed the humor -- worrying about the midterm I suppose.

HF, it turns out, is one of the strongest anti-slavery novels in English. Jim, the escaping slave, is the only adult who takes actual responsibility for the unattached white kid, sails the raft all night while the kid sleeps, and otherwise tends and cares for him, while people of Huck's own ethnicity flap their arms and try to turn him into a gentleman. This eventually dawns on Huck, who realizes the situation, and decides he'd rather go to hell for assisting his friend Jim (someone else's property) than turn him in as an escapee.

The last chapter is a bunch of nonsense, as Twain's opinion of polite society.

Funny, we had to read 'Tom Sawyer', but not 'Huck Finn', the latter becoming pure gold when I finally read it. I've re-read it several times, but never returned to 'Tom Sawyer'. I have;however, tried to trade a few apple cores for labor.

The first chapters of 'Moby Dick', in my opinion, are some of the best descriptive writing ever.

 

[mso489]

Tom Sawyer was a money-maker for Twain and kept him in business for years. He built a beautiful mansion in Hartford, Conn., on the proceeds of some of his most popular books, but he was never a shrewd business man and spent his later years on the speaking circuit trying to keep the family solvent. Meantime, various family tragedies took their toll. He did rescue Ulysses S. Grant by publishing his biography ( which is a masterpiece in biography entirely written by the former president and Civil War general). The book saved both Grant's family financially and to some degree Twain's personal finances.