Baling wire always reminds me of back in the days before they combined corn, when it was picked in the ear and cribbed to dry down. Every local area had its itinerant corn sheller. The one around where I grew up carried a rat terrier on the passenger seat and his tool box consisted of a ball pein hammer, an oversized pair of pliers and baling wire. When he could no longer get baling wire to hold together his shelling truck, he quit shelling and got a job as a local town marshall. That forced him to sober up a bit, too, since his shelling office was a local tavern. That enabled him to get to the volunteer fire station first when the siren went off. He always claimed one needed to be half in the tank to drive the tanker truck. Nobody else agreed with him, but that assured that the volunteers got to the station real fast. They trained pretty hard and were a real good crew for all that the town only ever had less than 250 people.