Farmer Gary sets an annual goal for himself: Complete the harvest before Thanksgiving. Yesterday, he finished combining ‘beans and today he’s planting the last of the winter crops.

And all without a scarecrow.

I can’t help but wonder if “city folk” would even know about scarecrows were it not for The Wizard of Oz. (As an aside, it still makes me laugh to remember Harry’s high school story about sitting in a quiet classroom, taking a final exam. The silence was broken when a fellow student solemnly whistled “If I Only Had a Brain.”)

Mom loved scarecrows. She once gave me a small patchworked version to decorate my bedroom. Stuffed with straw, he was cute but not cuddly. I named him Otis and he came with me to Indiana years later.

When I came across this charming letter Mom wrote to her aunt Sister Amabilis in July 1942, it was clear she was thinking about scarecrows even as a child:

Grandpa and the Crows

I watched my Grandpa plant his corn,
When I was on his farm.
There were some crows who looked as though
They wouldn’t do much harm.
Grandpa put a scarecrow up,
To guard and watch his corn.
“Those crows’ll eat corn seeds,” he said.
“As sure as I am born.”
That scarecrow didn’t fool the crows,
They ate the corn and then
Poor Grandpa had to go and plant
His field of corn again.

After checking with Dad, and Mom’s sister, Bunny, we’ve come to the conclusion that this poem is not biographical in nature. Although Pop Regan’s property in New Haven certainly included a garden and grape arbor, there wasn’t a field of corn. Pop had passed away the previous spring.

Mom’s letter also included news of additional livestock at the Regan homestead, which was on Lombard Street (their backyards connected):

… I imagine you heard of Fanny the goat. From the looks of her horns, she’d give you the jitters. But she’s really very gentle. She doesn’t buck anybody.

Dad remembers hearing about Fanny the Goat a few years later when he and Mom met. By then, though, Fanny was but a memory.

Mom’s love of scarecrows lasted her entire life. Here she is with a couple of fancy models in 1998.

The scarecrow in Mom’s poem wasn’t much use at shooing away crows. Neither was Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Yet Dorothy knew he was the character she’d miss the most when she returned home to Kansas.

Mom taught her children that scarecrows aren’t always frightening and goats don’t always use their horns. It may take a little time to discover, but beyond that first glance may well exist a lifelong friend.

“Grandpa and the Crows”  © 1942 Joan Cassidy. All rights reserved.

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