Human Forklift?

In 1966, our family planted 10 acres of Sweet Corn.  We used a John-Deere MT tractor, that my Dad had purchased for $200.  The implements were all re purposed horse drawn equipment.  An old drag type disk, and a 2 row corn planter. 

Dad later purchased two 2 row corn pickers.  He took the two old corn pickers, and built one pretty good one.  Before that bargain basement equipment deal, Mom and Aunt Hazel picked the corn by hand.  They first checked the silk, and only picked the ears on which the silk had turned brown.  They would also pull down the corn shuck a little to examine the kernels.  After picking each of the individually selected ears, they would snap the ears off and hand it to one of us kids.  The combined workforce available included Aunt Hazel and Uncle Elmer's kids, Ruby, Betty, Delbert, Joe, Roy and Sharon.  Mom's contributed my older brother JR, myself, my younger siblings Tommy and Glenda. 

We would walk down the seemingly endless rows, with our arms outstretched like little forklifts.  They would place the ears of corn across our arms until they deemed us fully loaded.  Each of the forklift kids would then make the trek to the edge of the corn field, and unload in the pickup.  This process went on all day, for nearly a week, every Fall. 

In the evening, the corn was shucked, and the corn shucks were fed to the pigs.  While the corn was being shucked, some of the kids were assigned to ice cream freezer duty.  When the shucking was complete, corn pickers, human forklifts, and corn shuckers, shared in the ice cream and watermelon party.

I would love to see the face of one of today's kids if they were told they would be used as a human forklift.  I don't believe ice cream and watermelon would be sufficient payment.