Ace Hardware Pitchfork Tool for Sale

Comedian Amy Schumer tweeted a photograph Tuesday that shows her continuing backstage adjacent to Oscar-winning role player J.K. Simmons.

The famous pair strikes the most parodied pose on the planet.

Simmons holds a dinner fork in his right manus. Their faces are bereft of expression. Schumer's gaze is askance.

They're flashing their best "American Gothic."

I'm now convinced that there'due south no more timeless an Iowa topic than Grant Woods'south 1930 portrait whose crucial prop is a pitchfork — a pitchfork with but three tines.

Yet the fork in Simmons' manus has iv points. Satirists have taken all sorts of liberties with Wood'southward painting.

In a contempo column I focused on a long-forgotten letter written by Wood in 1930 to a young man Iowan that revealed but how fascinated the artist was with viewers' immediate reaction to his selection of pitchfork. He wrote to a woman who had suggested that a three-tined fork was more common in New England.

"In my boyhood days on the subcontract a three tined fork was used for handling hay," Woods wrote. "This seems to still hold in this locality. The hardware shop told me that they sell nearly as many three tined as four tined forks."

Taking a nod from Wood'due south letter, I phoned O'Donnell Ace Hardware store in Cedar Rapids. The clerk told me that they sell only forks with four tines. So I ended my column with a two-word quip: "Sad, Grant."

James Brammeier, a retired Lutheran pastor in Johnston, rightly took effect with my ambiguous "snappy ending."

Was I chastising Woods?

No, I meant only to convey sympathy for the artist who gets caught upwards in such quibbling and to mourn the loss of 3-tined forks in the urban center where he lived. Simply I didn't exercise a very practiced job.

I received such a pile of feedback that I could've used a pitchfork to sort through information technology. Here'due south some of the skewering:

Margery Graves, Newton: "I couldn't believe all the uproar about the number of tines on a pitchfork! Really, either three or four would accept been correct, depending on the intended use, as you likely take heard from others. The somewhat lighter three-tined forks were used for handling loose hay, and besides for pitching grain bundles (equally for loading or unloading grain wagons for threshing). The four-tined forks, with slightly thicker tines placed closer together were manure forks. Both uses would have been common in the Midwest at the fourth dimension."

Clark Jensen, Ankeny: "I doubtable the reason that O'Donnell Ace Hardware had no iii-tined forks was due to the changing landscape of Iowa agriculture — more row crops and less alfalfa, clover, and oats. Also, many fewer farms have the varieties of livestock which were common in the 1950s and '60s. I as well doubtable the reason for four-tined forks has to practise with the proliferation of politicians infiltrating our fair land."

James Brammeier, Johnston: "I have a modest star-shaped scar on my left hand, the outcome of a wound caused by a 3-tined pitch fork wielded by my cousin as he pitched a bundle of oats high up onto the 'bundle carriage' upon which I stood to stack the bundles every bit high as possible before the horses pulled that wagon into the subcontract m where stood the noisy threshing auto, blowing the straw into a huge pile and auguring the new shiny oats into the grain wagon. How is that for a run-on sentence? Anyhow, I was reaching for the bundle at the same fourth dimension that my cousin Ralph was pushing on it with the three-tined fork. Oops! A tine went right into my hand! And nonetheless to the point, my aunt Elsie and my mother Emma poured hydrogen peroxide over my manus and said they really weren't too worried about getting a tetanus shot as the three tined-fork was used ONLY for pitching hay and bundles of oats and straw, NEVER for manure. And sure enough the wound healed speedily and hands and my brothers and I continued working that day on peak of the parcel wagons."

Larry Richard, Leon: "You owe Grant Wood an apology. I grew upwards using a three-tine pitchfork for moving loose hay. Iv- and even 5-tine pitch forks were for getting manure out of stalls. Iii tines did non hold the doo-doo well, but would non stick in the hay being pitched similar a four- or 5-tine would. Silage forks came with a scoop shovel-similar handle with tines placed much closer and every bit many every bit a dozen or so, so that the silage could not fall between them. Blunted ends were on the tines of like instruments which I think were used to move potatoes in bins."

Kim Yoder, Boone: "I grew upwardly on a northern Indiana farm in the 1960s and '70s and, while nosotros didn't accept a iii-prong hay/manure fork, they were non uncommon at farm or house auctions. I besides know I saw them adequately frequently at antique stores in Minnesota in my 25 years in that location. Now, x years into my Iowa experience, I can show yous several of the hay forks which came with our Boone County farmstead, one of which is, yes, a simple and useful three-pronger."

Dolores Horton, Des Moines: "My grandpa C. C. Beardsley was a farmer in Iowa in the days when you had haymows or hayloft (no hay bales). He had 3-tined pitchforks for pitching hay or straw. They are lighter. He had four-tined pitch forks for manure. Tines closer and very heavy. Y'all would not concur a manure fork up in the air."

Earl Gingerich, Iowa City: "Probably if you visited an Amish farm yous would notice (three-tined pitchforks) in use still today. Since the age of mechanization and automation has immune combines and hay balers to supersede reapers, binders and threshing machines, the three-tined fork has gone the mode of horse and carriages. … The manure fork in my listen to this day is the despised cousin to the more appreciated 3-tined grain packet fork used in the harvest of the anticipated season's bounty. Not lamentable to no longer demand the maure fork whatever more."

Phyllis Kesler, West Freedom: "Let me gauge: You've never been a farm boy. Scholars contend the symbol over a pitchfork; farmers will quickly tell you it is a 'tool for hard work.' Every farmer in the 1930s and ' 40s owned and used a three-tine fork. … I'grand willing to wager that yous very likely will find three-tine forks for sale in the stores at Kalona and other Amish and Mennonite communities throughout Iowa and the country. Mitt tools and hard labor are still used daily in their methods of farming. Grant Wood knew more well-nigh pitchforks and apprehensive living than a whole saucepan load of his critics."

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. Come across more than of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/KyleMunson. Connect with him on Facebook (/KyleMunson) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).

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