My View from the Pilot house By Mike Boys Pilot News Consultant
The old, wooden country grain elevator buildings are now silent and empty – or torn down and replaced with some other type of facility.
    The Plymouth Elevator which was situated on West Garro Street, for instance, was torn down and is now a vacant lot – but you can see where the buildings were.
    The local grain elevators were icons of a vanishing way of life. But there was a day when they were the hub of activity in a small rural county like Marshall.

    “I need to pick up something at the elevator” or “I heard at the elevator that . . .” was part of a farmer’s conversation. Elevators —  the place to be, get supplies and advice, or just visit.
    They always had a huge barrel of peanuts in the shell to munch on. 
Grain elevators were unique buildings or complexes of buildings that were designed and built for a specific purpose — to handle and store grain.  They also sold coal, seeds, feeds, fertilizer, hardware, insecticides, poultry supplies, fencing and fence posts.
The oldest grain elevator on record in Marshall County was the LaPaz Grain Company, in LaPaz. It started business in 1860 by the Johnson brothers. They placed their elevator beside the B&O Railroad tracks.
The Marshall County Farm Bureau Co-op was incorporated in 1929 with around 200 members. In 1940 the Co-op built a separate building facing Jefferson Street (old U.S. 30) in Plymouth, which housed a hatchery that had an 82,000-egg incubator capacity.  I remember walking into the building and hearing the “peep, peep, peeping” of the newly hatched chicks.  The sound was loud and constant. I think I would have to wear ear plugs if I had worked there!
One thing you would see at a grain elevator was a “house cat” that was always present and everyone knew its name. The cat was always in the office or running around the building somewhere. However, every elevator had at least half-dozen cats running around whose job it was to keep the rodent population in check.
I have many fond memories of elevators and the people who ran them. When I was, ahem, much younger, one of my jobs at the Pilot was selling advertising – and I would call on them at least once a week. Most of the time I was successful getting the ad but, sometimes we would just talk. Those guys became my friends as well as my clients.
Elevators were invented in 1842 in Buffalo, N.Y., by Joseph Dart, who first developed a steam-powered mechanism for scooping grain out of the hulls of ships directly into storage silos. Bucket elevators are used to lift grain to a distributor or consignor where it flows by gravity through spouts or conveyors and into one of the number of bins, silos or tanks in that facility.  When desired, the bins, silos or tanks were emptied by gravity flow, sweep augers and conveyors, where it is blended and weighted into trucks, railroad cars or barges and shipped to the end users of grain such as mills, ethanol plants, etc. 
In Marshall County, the grain elevators were situated along railroad tracks for easy distribution of the grain.
I was able to find photos of some of the old grain elevators from the Marshall County Museum, which I  share with you on this page.
Elevators that I was able to find record of and doing business in Marshall County were: PLYMOUTH ELEVATOR & COAL; FARM BUR-EAU CO-OP ELEVATOR; LA PAZ ELEVATOR; INWOOD ELEVATOR; TYNER ELEVATOR; BREMEN ELEVATOR; CULVER ELEVATOR; and ARGOS ELEVATOR.
Well, I hope I have “ingrained” some history for you to ponder!
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POP QUIZ:  During WWII what famous fighter plane was manufactured in Evansville?
ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S MAJOR POP QUIZ: The questions were:
1. How long did the Hundred Years’ War last? A: 116 years. The war took place from 1337 to 1453.
2. Which country makes Panama hats? A: Ecuador
3. From which animal do we get cat gut? A: Sheep or Horses
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? A: November. The Russian calendar was 13 days behind our calendar.
5. What is a camel’s hair brush made of? A: Squirrel fur. Just think of all those great paintings were made with squirrel’s fur. Pretty nutty, isn’t it?
6. The Canary Islands in the Atlantic were named after what animal? A: Dogs. The Latin name was “Insularia canaria” which means “island of dogs.”
7. What was King George VI’s first name? A: Albert. When he came to the throne in 1936, he respected Queen Victoria’s wish that no future king would ever be called Albert in memory of her late husband.
8. Where are Chinese Gooseberries from? A: New Zealand. Also known as Kiwi fruit.
9. What color is a Purple Finch? A: Crimson. It looks like it has been dipped in raspberry juice.
10. What is the color of the “black box” in a commercial airplane? A:  Orange
11. In which city is the Indianapolis 500 held? A: Speedway, Ind.
12. What color was Napoleon’s white horse? A: Grey. He owned many grey Arabian horses. From a distance they looked white.
13. To what type of animal is the Koala Bear most closely related? A: Wombat and Kangaroo. Koalas are not bears.
14. How much dirt is in a hole measuring two feet by two feet? A: None. It’s a hole!
15. Some months have 30 days and some have 31 days — How many months have 28 days?  A: All of them.
BONUS QUESTION:
How long did the 30 year’s war last? A: 30 years. From 1618 to 1648.
 Well, that’s it for now . . . so until next time . . . this is my view from the Pilot house.
 Mike Boys is a lifelong Marshall County resident, former newspaper owner and former public officeholder. The dictionary defines a Pilot House as “an enclosed area on the bridge of a ship, from which the vessel is guided.” His views, opinions and news appear occasionally on the Pilot News Opinion page.