Corn

 Corn
There are so many thoughts about corn trying to escape my brain. It seems that the corn crop is doing quite well this year with tall stalks filling many of the farmer’s fields. Towering green stalks with arching leaves and heavy thick ears wearing dark brown wigs. Some years the fields have been planted with wheat, oats, or soy beans, but this year field after field is filled with stalks of corn.
My Grandfather Ray Miner always had one field of corn planted especiaally to feed his cows and horses. My Mom Sybil Miner Beck told me that she liked to get the “field corn” when it was young. She said she liked the taste better than the sweet corn.
I can remember some of my friends gathering the dried corn silk, rolling the silk in tissue paper, and smoking it. I was never brave enough to try it.
As a teenager my neighbor kids and I would shell corn at Halloween. Then we would climb up on a high bank above Route 711 waiting for cars to drive by. We would hurrl handsful of the corn kernals at the passing vehicles. The noise of the splattering corn would startle the driver and we’d be rewarded by the glow of taillights and frequeltly the angry blowing of the car’s horn. On a rare occasion someone might stop and actually fire a gun in our direction, but because we were high on a ledge, the angle was too great and we were never afraid of getting shot.
A local farm has a corn maze every year. I’ve written about their farm before. When they plant corn in fields side by side on both sides of the road, it’s like driving through a jungle. Quite a few years ago when those fields were planted with corn, a huge doe ran from the one field and hit the side of my son Andrew’s SUV driving the doorpost to rest against the back of the driver’s seat totaling the car.
Because it is only me, I have been cooking the corn in tmy microwave. Most of the time I am only doing one ear at a time. With the weather so warm, why would I want to heat water on the stove and boil water to cook only one ear of corn? The microwave and my air-fryer have been a God send for people like me.
One last parting thought of corn, in whose demented mind was candy corn imagined?