Rubbing "means rubbing two palms repeatedly, or rubbing them back and forth on something else." "Rubbing corn" means holding the corncob with both hands, rubbing it back and forth and pulling the corn kernels off the corncob. In rural areas, corn stalks are manually transported home from the fields to remove the skins. Some families don't have threshers, so they rub corn by hand. The kneaded corn kernels are bagged and stored.