Every Kid Should Detassle Corn
Jul 31 '00
Even though it might sound a lot like "When I was a kid, I walked 12 miles to school in a snowstorm with worn-out shoes..." I love to tell my teenage daughter about my first job that paid more than 50 cents an hour usually given for babysitting 30 years ago.
I was a "detassler," which was one of the best-paying jobs a person under age 16 could get in Hooterville. For those of you who don't live near corn and need an explanation, detassling is the process of trudging down muddy corn rows in "pollenated" fields and pulling the tassels at the top out of the "male" corn to keep it from fertilizing the "female" corn, generally planted in alternating rows in most cornfields.
We were paid the princely sum of $1.60 an hour. In order to be hired, I had to lie about my height by two inches (the requirement was 5'2"). If you haven't been in a corn field before, you might be surprised at how deep the ruts are and how tall the corn is. Some of the rows are very long, up to a mile.
Detasslers need to wear clothes that cover their arms and legs, because corn leaves cut flesh and can leave welts. If you are in the field early in the morning, you might be in freezing cold water up to your calves if it has been irrigated. There are bugs that bite, too.
It's hard, sweaty work that requires you to keep your head looking up for hours at a time. It's lonely work if you're ahead of or behind your co-workers. All you hear is chirping and screeching of bugs and creatures, and all you see are rows of corn above your head, and you begin to wonder if you're all alone on the planet, which has suddenly been taken over by corn.
We had to get up at 5 a.m. each work morning, ride our bikes to a designated point where a big truck would pick us up. Then we stood in the back, like cattle, and were driven to a mysterious agricultural location miles from home. We had sack lunches, pop, Cornhusker's Hand Lotion, sunscreen and hats.
By the time we got home at 4 or 5 p.m. after eight hours of work, most of us were so exhausted we'd fall into bed. When my room got dark and I was lying in bed, almost too tired to sleep, I would see a blue sky and green corn leaves above me on both sides -- all night long. Both my neck and my brain seemed to be frozen in the "corn and sky" frame.
To this day, it's the hardest job I ever had. Housework and scrubbing toilets seems like a promotion by comparison. There's almost no dirty job I won't do in place of detassling corn.
So each time my daughter complains about doing household jobs, I tell her I think we should drive to the nearest seed company and get her on a detassling crew -- after all, the money is really good for a kid! I like to add what a "defining" experience it was for me, a very character-building and important lesson for such a tender age.
Most of the time, this works. Keeping kids who are old enough to work productive -- and appreciative -- is the name of the parenting game.
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Member: Ms Hooterville
Location: Hooterville Green Acres USA
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News and feature writer, graphic designer and artist, wife and mother, small business owner.
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