Jimmy Crack(-ed?/-s?) Corn

[Baker, John]

        Taken literally and out of context, the remark that Jimmy is cracking corn is unexceptional.  To crack corn is to split it into, well, cracked corn, an important milling activity in the nineteenth century and one that is still in use.  Among other uses, cracked corn was used to manufacture whiskey.  (Today it seems to be used mostly to feed poultry and other birds.)

        The Century Dictionary defines corn-cracker as "1. A nickname for a Kentuckian. [U. S.]--2. A name given
to a low class of whites in the southern United States, especially in North Carolina and Georgia. See cracker, 7."  (There are also a couple of animals, presumably irrelevant here, known as corn-crackers.)  Although I am a Kentucky native, I have never heard the term used to refer to Kentuckians; it seems to have passed out of use.  The association of "corn-cracker" with Kentucky, a state known for its distilleries, certainly supports a possible connection with manufacturing whiskey.

        My take is that Jimmy, aggrieved like the singer at the loss of their master, is distilling whiskey and drinking it to excess.

John Baker