Corn Blogging

August 19, 2008 | 1 Comment

I’m the corn-fed king. I grow corn. I eat corn. I am corny – through and through.

Deal with it.

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Dinner? Corn.

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Lunch? Corn.

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Breakfast? Corn.

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I like corn. I’m from Iowa. I have to like corn. I worked in cornfields as a kid doing things that I have never understood – “detasseling,” to be precise. I was told that it was about “sex” and I was hooked. Sucker. Well, not really, because the act of detasseling is kind of like the act of de-sexing the corn. Yeah, got you there, didn’t I? Because you didn’t even know that there were male and female rows of corn. Well, there were in the olden days, back before Monsanto made corn the way they wanted corn to be made (read: ready and able to accept bountiful loads of its pesticides and herbicides and largely incapable of reproduction).

Every morning at pre-dawn we would be delivered to a parking lot in the area where we would be loaded onto one of many school busses awaiting our cheap labor and clueless ways. From there, we would drive to one of the endless number of corn fields, unload, and be sent down one mile-long corn row after another to literally pull the tassels off each and every corn plant.

It was hell. Summers in Iowa, in case you didn’t know, are like living in furnace. It’s hot. It’s humid. And the air feels thick enough to be eaten, not breathed.

But there we were, suffocating in a jungle of corn and who knows what kind of toxic mix of the latest and greatest of corn toxins. Up and down the hellishly long rows we would go – all for the minimum wage of the day.

I remember my first day on the job and being sent into the suffocating maze of it all. I quickly fell behind. And then further and further behind. Soon, I didn’t hear the noise of my fellow de-tasselers anywhere near me. I panicked. And then I made a bad decision according to the boss-man: I started skipping large sections of my cornrow so as to catch up. I mean, come on, who the hell was going to notice in a 200-acre field that a few tassels were missed?

And then I heard a loud and angry voice: “Who is working in this row?”

Oh shit. I ignored it at first and then got more diligent with my work, making sure to get every-fucking-tassel of every-fucking-cornstalk for the eternity that every row seemed to be.

But the voice got closer. “Stop! Whoever’s on this row must stop!”

I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. I was guilty as charged: detasseling neglect.

“What the hell were you thinking?” the master corn detasseler barked in my face as he finally caught up to me, knowing, of course, that there was nothing I could offer in my defense. And he filled the silence with more barking: “Go back, get them all. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.”

It was miserable work. In addition to the unbearable heat and the seemingly endless rows of corn, there was also what was known as “corn rash.” That, my friends, is a most insidious rash that begins to form on your forearms as they scrape against the corn plants, the pollen and who knows what kind of toxic soup as you move yourself for ten hours a day through nothing but one, big corn jungle.

And corn rash itches. In fact, the hotter and sweatier you get, the more it itches. Soon, you’re pouring the coveted water in your jug upon your forearms to soothe the rash – even for just a little while. It’s the stuff that insanity is born from. You see, I’ve got excuses. Lots and lots of excuses.

There was no peace in the cornfield of Iowa. It was either the rash, the heat, or the miserable bastards – and bitches – who thought the lunch breaks should be filled with fistfights. Yep, even the girls fought in the Iowa cornfields. Remember, this is detasseling, and the civilized kids weren’t invited. It was more like survival of the fittest. Trust me, I stayed clear of this, other than expending the energy required to fend off my fellow corn servants so that I, too, wouldn’t be forced to fight on my ten minutes of rest time. Isn’t that what big brothers are for? Thanks, Todd. Besides, I had a rash and all.

Eventually, I got smart. Or rather, I got a better offer. Yep, I got an offer from a friend to join his crew of “soybean walkers” and I jumped on it. We were freelancers, which meant we contracted with area farmers to “walk” their soybean fields. “Walking” a soybean field means going up and down every-single-long-row of soybeans and cutting out the stray corn plants or weeds that may have survived the toxic bathing that had been applied earlier in the season. But it was better than corn because you weren’t drowning in the corn jungle and you could see the world and your peers – as opposed to only the corn – as you worked. And, better yet, there was no rash.

And so it was, my youth.

But today I grow corn in a large garden. It doesn’t need to be de-tasseled and it has no toxins. That, however, doesn’t mean that I don’t have detasseling flashbacks as I make my way through the 40-foot rows of corn that I now grow for my family and for some pocket cash. I need to keep looking up to the sky and to the end of the rows to make sure I’m not trapped – once again – in the corn nightmares of my youth.

And my corn is in. Loads and loads of glorious corn. Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Corn.

It’s in my genes. Rash and all.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, essays & columns