All through the Texas Panhandle and the south plains, the combines lumbered south along the country roads. Like engines of war massing for an offensive, they clustered in town squares, ballparks and filling-station driveways. Their crews sat in tents and trailers, cursing the thunderstorms that turned the wheatfields into quagmires. In the few fields that dried out, the first combines scythed their way north across the waving grain. This week, the second biggest winter wheat harvest (an estimated 1,021,000,000 bushels v. 1947's alltime record of 1,068,000,000) in U.S. history would get underway.
Fear the Devil. The bumper harvest brought a...
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