Posted on 09/30/2009 3:46:46 PM PDT by SJackson
Hartland, Minn.
(Freeborn County)
I was eating sweet corn on a cruise ship.
I knew I shouldn't have been eating it.
The food on the ship had been unbelievably good, but I'm a Minnesotan. I have been spoiled. The only food I found lacking on the ship was that sweet corn. I'm sure it was good, but I have high standards when it comes to sweet corn.
I once worked at Birds Eye.
We all worked at Birds Eye - at least, it seemed that way.
Working at Birds Eye was a rite of passage.
When I was between grass and hay and the heat of a summer day had fled, I would sit on the front steps of our old farmhouse and ponder the night sky. I would pay particular attention to the spaces between the stars and wonder if people in other parts of the world were seeing the same spaces and thinking the same thoughts.
It was while working at Birds Eye that I developed a lifelong addiction to Jubilee sweet corn and Cool Whip. Now, I've never eaten Cool Whip on the sweet corn. I stick with butter and salt on my Jubilee, but I have nothing against anyone eating Cool Whip on sweet corn. In fact, the next time I eat lutefisk, I am going to put Cool Whip, ketchup or gravy on it.
I was a compressor room operator at Birds Eye. My co-workers were fine people who taught me more than I will ever realize.
A friend and I began work at Birds Eye the same day. I went to work in the compressor room, a large area filled with giant, hulking machines that digested ammonia and breathed cold air that was used to refrigerate product. The hot air came out on the other end where we worked, but with all of the hot air I produced, no one really noticed.
I have fond memories of walking about the plant with a piece of litmus paper in my hand. I was looking for an ammonia leak. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud.
The day my friend and I began our employment at Birds Eye, the first things I noticed were these huge banners proclaiming 11,998,456 days without a loss-of-time accident. It might have been a couple of days fewer than that, but it was a lot. I went to the compressor room to do some light maintenance work because I knew one end of the screwdriver from another and could use a pair of pliers without doing myself any permanent harm.
My friend ended up doing something called "palletizing." That job consisted of grabbing boxes of Cool Whip and stacking them on a wooden pallet. He had not completed his first morning of work when, while enthusiastically doing his duties, he took a step back and was run over by a forklift. My friend ended up with a broken ankle. Birds Eye ended up with a worker's compensation claim. I ended up with the duty of helping to take down the banners proclaiming 11,998,456 days (maybe fewer) without a loss-of-time accident.
With my buddy on the disabled list, I ate alone at Murray's Cafe that day.
Birds Eye proved to be packed with friendly people. That was the only day I ever ate alone at Murray's.
I still look at those night skies and the dark spaces between the stars. They give me goose bumps, those places where the imagination goes.
I know there are others looking in the same places. They are constant reminders that I am not alone.
I don't live in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, but I love where I am.
It might be a place between the stars, but it fits.
And we have great sweet corn.
Well, I worked at a Wonder Bread bakery some 30 years ago. I’ve never any of that processed crap again.
If you’d like to be on or off this Upper Midwest/outdoors/rural list please FR mail me. And ping me is you see articles of interest.
Very nice story. Thanks.
And they grew great Golden Jubilee corn in Oregon, also. It was my favorite, also. My father-in-law swore he could hear it grow on hot, quiet summer nights. Pull it off the stalk, tear the husk back, break off the end and into the pot. Butter, salt and pepper, and just shove my face into and start the “typewriter”. That’s summer’s end.
Corn here in AZ is from Mexico and not near as good. Pale, barely sweet. Miss those days.
Ya just cant beat Jersey White Corn in the summer......
You can grow your own corn pretty nicely down in the desert. My grandma used to get a spring crop and a fall crop.
59 years ago I worked for a Blue Goose Cantaloupe Packing shed with some class mates in FResno County. We put little Blue Goose stickers on every melon in the crate before they were loaded in a boxcar and chipped ice sprayed on top of the crates, the doors were closed and the Locomotive took them to places like NY City. I never filed a comp claim in all my life, Of course I was self employed for 48 of those 58 years but those Blue Goose melon were the best damn melons ever shipped...
Very nice story. Thanks.
And they grew great Golden Jubilee corn in Oregon, also. It was my favorite, also. My father-in-law swore he could hear it grow on hot, quiet summer nights. Pull it off the stalk, tear the husk back, break off the end and into the pot. Butter, salt and pepper, and just shove my face into and start the “typewriter”. That’s summer’s end.
Corn here in AZ is from Mexico and not near as good. Pale, barely sweet. Miss those days.
5 posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:15:03 PM by Dutchboy88
Back in high school I told this girl about listening to corn grow. That night we parked out in a field and got to know each other better. Afterwards, as we drove away, she started making fun of me since she had not heard the corn grow. That's when I told her that we had been parked in a field of soybeans.
Was that a story about corn or girls?
Yes, it was.
LOL.
I packed supermarket donuts once as a young teen for stores in the northeast. Since then I have never had donut tha I have not watched being cooked.
I love butter and sugar corn raised here in Central New York. I had corn on the cob tonight actually. Yum.
We had no corn this year. No rain, no corn.
I was a baker for the local Wonder Bread bakery... I no longer eat white bread.
As a child, I bundled onions and asparagus for the Japanese farmer who owned the acres of farm behind our ranch. It was real work, but it was the fruits of his labors and ours. I was proud of the baskets of produce I knew would end up in the local markets. We were paid pennies for a hard day’s work, but it was pennies in our pockets. Though he was an ornery old cuss, I’m still a sucker for fresh asparagus and scallions, God bless him.
My daddy grew up in the depression. His dad died of scarlet fever in his youth, so he was the man of the house at 12. He taught me and my siblings a work ethic that grew from need, not ego. It’s his legacy, and a grand thing it is to be passed down.
I recall being assigned to straighten old nails from a barracks that dad and we children tore down and transported 50 miles in a borrowed deuce and a half REO, then rebuilt into a fourplex as a rental property. He invested the meager extra income, and it eventually sent all his kids to college. When I was in high school, he regularly bought old cars to fix em up after his day job, and sell in the want ads. I not only learned to fix up cars, but ended up with something to drive once I paid him for them. 64 Corvair Sprint (150 HP Turbo!) ragtop was my fave.
Funny how the work ethic goes to hell between generations. I suppose our kids’ kids will, sadly, reconstitute the ethic. It’s good and bad. Tubebender, you’re a self made man. I revere you for this, and it’s my dad that made me respect this quality. You done good.
God save our republic.
You too, bro. You did it by yourself. Bravo Zulu.
Actually - I had corn from the Cooperstown area last summer and it was very good.
I like “peaches and cream” cut off the cob and munched on raw.
Amen Glock.
I hauled a lot of hay for two cents a bail, worked a lot of cows, and will still gladly sit down and have one for lunch. :)
The best corn I’ve ever had comes from a farm in Northern California(not dependent upon the delta water)outside of Sacramento. Slough house(pronounced slew house)corn is indeed the best in this area and most of it is sold at the farm itself(some stores get to sell a little and they have to bid on it to get it), they have a wide parking area off of a two lane hwy and it is dangerous to drive by there on a weekend if you don’t keep your eyes open, with people pulling into and driving out of the parking lot. They sell other produce also but they are noted for their corn above all.
I used to work in a bakery as a pilot.
Jersey peaches, too!
Thanks Glock. It ran in the family when I think about it, my 2 brothers and 3 sisters were all honorable folks and all did their best. Some of the kids are OK and some are not but I can see it coming around again in the next generation...
You're right, raw sweet corn right off the stalk is delicious and so sweet. Other delicious sweet things, turnips and butter wrapped in foil done in a fire until the outside just caramelizes, sweeter than candy, the same is true for for onions.
I’ve never had sweeter corn in my life than what I had about a week ago up here in WI. I don’t know where it came from, but I suspect it was local. It literally tasted like someone had sugared the inside of the kernals.
I went back to the store the next day upon the urging of my family to buy more — and it was actually at a decent price, too.
This was a great column, thanks for posting it...
That's per bale, wasn't quite old enough to require bail then.
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