Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist
brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from
area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do
this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
The Farmer and the Crows
Authors: Herbert R.
Simmons and Lester L. Boyice
Publisher: H&R
Publishing, Lenexa, Kansas
Date: 1982
Discovered at: Salvation Army,
Johnson Drive & Lamar
The Cover Promises:
sunburned farmer but none of the anguish within.
Representative
Quote: "The Farmer woke up early the next morning,...before the
sun came up. He loaded up his shotgun with buckshot, ... walked out
into the field." (page 11)
Initially, this
dreary, hopeless, thoroughly upsetting "story coloring book" only
looks like it might upset your child if your child is concerned with
things like aesthetics. Or perspective in drawing. The first few pages
depict a farm, a farmer, and some crows well enough that the child
who once owned this copy has dutifully cheered them up.
As the pages pass, and the crows eat the farmer's corn, our child gives up on it. The images are peculiarly static,
often looking like slightly altered photocopies of each other. Worse, they're sometimes horrifying.
Here, the farmer attempts to scare away crows by becoming Leonardo Da Vinci's
The farmer fails to scare the crows away. His wife, dog and scarecrow fail, too.
Desperate, he considers (and dismisses) the possibility of opening
farmer-crow negotiations. (Note that,
without color to distract us, he looks
like Burt Reynolds in a cauliflower toupee.)
Here, it gets bleak.
Some kids excel at coloring flowers. Others are adept at smiling
suns. Still others are best at the hard look on a man's face as he prepares to kill.
For the next four pages, the farmer lurks behind a haystack, cradling his shotgun. The crows arrive, and the farmer allows them to fatten
themselves up. Simmons writes, chillingly, "He wanted them to eat
for a while so they wouldn't be able to fly away so fast."
Then:
And:
This is he first page the child has colored since the third. Much like the
little girl's pink coat in Schindler's List, the yellow corn reminds us of life's fragile beauty even during times of
despair.
The farmer, meanwhile, still has work to do. Like any good coloring
book authors, Simmons and Boyice address the process of
decay:
Then, on the final page, as the farmer stoops down to collect the
carcasses, his spirit is crushed by the cruelty of fate.
Shocking Detail:
The back cover promises: "The Farmer and the Crows, and animated thought-provoking story-coloring book graphically illustrates just how far 'PEER PRESSURE' can go when it takes control."
Reading this, your Crap Archivist stumbles confusedly through the cornfield of his mind, waving a shotgun and beseeching the heavens: "How in the holy hell is this horror story about 'PEER PRESSURE'? Do these people think the end of Of Mice and Men is about saying no to drugs? Or that Cannibal Holocaust teaches us how to save money and calculate interest?"
Highlight:
Oh, Farmer Chekhov! Is there a Crayola called "Sadness"?
Showing 1-5 of 5
Who the f*** put crows in my dish? And since when did anyone care about collateral damage?
If I were to make a similar coloring book, the farmer would be shooting the neighborhood dogs as they run freely through his yard, crapping, marking territory against a corner of his house, and killing chickens as they go.
But that's just me.
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