What's a combine?

As in the farm machinery. I'm from small town South Georgia, so I should know. I mean, if you leave my hometown from any direction, it's pretty much farm land. When I was growing up, it was pine trees to the north (pine trees are a crop, really), peaches to the east, sod to the south (grass is also a crop; again, really) and peanuts to the east (these grow in the ground like potatos, by the way, not on trees). Now, it's pretty much pine trees and sod, which is sad. If you've never seen peach trees bloom in spring, you probably wouldn't understand, but there was a time when I was in high school that I cried seeing the peach trees along my favorite country road uprooted, their roots like spiders' legs curled toward the sky. But that's another story.

Anyway, you would think I could pretty accurately tell you what a combine is, right? Actually, you might wonder why in the hell you would even care. You probably wouldn't, but it came up during our kick ball game last night (I play recreational kickball ... yet another story) when I told a teammate that we should call him "The Combine." He's a farm boy from Iowa and I was noting that the opposing team seemed a little intimidated by 300 pounds of said farm boy barreling at them at top speed (which can get scary if you think about how much forward momentum that kind of girth can create). So, somebody said, "What's a combine?" And, since I like to act like I know everything ... and since I was the one throwing around the term like I did know what I was talking about ... I answered: "It's a big piece of farm machinery ... it's called a combine because it turns the soil ... you know, combining it to make it ready for planting."

Okay, so that's not it.

Iowa Farm Boy clarified that it actually is something that harvests, not something that prepares soil. According to Wikipedia (which, since it's updated by 17-year-old geeks who don't have social lives, is obviously the indisputable, accurate source for all things) that's correct. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester. I was close ... it is named after what it does ... it's just that it combines several tasks rather than combining something.

So, I learned something and now you (my non-existent readers) have too. Use the information wisely.