It’s late August. New York school boards are scrambling to define re-opening plans for this Fall. Parents’ nails are bitten to the quick. But it’s the weekend, after all, and I hope to spend it nibbling fresh CORN instead.
Below you have a picture of a corn cutting machine from 1913. This may have allowed my great-grandfather to harvest corn without having to cut the stalks by hand. One foot planted in a position of ownership, he seems pleased with the purchase, at any rate.
I tried to find out more by looking up “corn cutting machine” or “corn cutter” in old newspapers. I didn’t come up with many mechanical details but – wow! I found a plethora of gruesome headlines with arms and fingers “mutilated by” or “torn in”.
One part of this picture that I appreciate are the children sitting patiently in the background. Clara and Ferris sit, looking bored, with baby Marjorie – a vision in white – perched high on her carriage. Working from home necessarily means children around. My ancestors understood this!
I hope you have a lovely weekend. Do yourself a good turn and pick up some corn if you can – this is prime corn season in New York. I’ll leave you with the opening stanzas of a poem that always comes to mind when I think of eating corn.
How pleasant the yellow butter
melting on white kernels, the meniscus
of red wine that coats the inside of our gobletswhere we sit with sturdy friends as old as we are
from the poem “Jack” by Maxine Kumin
after shucking the garden’s last Silver Queen
and setting husks and stalks aside for the horses…
We bought corn for this weekend before we read your blog! Maybe we csn add a second verse to the poem. Short, but very enjoyable.
Aw Shucks. I’ll drink to that.