I remember drives through Pennsylvania in August. Farmstand in NJ in the summertime. Visits to my Aunt and Uncle in Arkansas, sticky hot, but giant platters or stockpots filled to overflowing with the glorious richness of the season, and me glad to have full use of my teeth to chomp down on thoroughly buttered, heavily salted and peppered, tender, sweet, crunchy like nothing else corn on the cob. How many times, sitting outside with family, grownups visiting, all of us shucking. Piles of sticky silken threads, scratchy dark green leaves.
When it was not just normal but expected that everyone would eat at least 2 or 3 or more cobs, all by themselves.
I eat mine typewriter style. I find it hard to set the cob down between bites. In fact, I rather like to devour the whole thing, and then get around to eating whatever is left on the plate.
There have been occasions we have purchased corn from the grocery store. Those are times I can somehow manage to stop at one ear.
But, oh, when the corn goes straight from the garden, less than an hour before supper, and directly into the pot, or microwave, or wherever. Well. That is the time that merits a poem.
Instead of a poem, while I wait for the six minutes to pass before I pull the corn out of the pot and call the kids to table, I will chronicle the outcome of our experiment. We had plenty for Sunday dinner yesterday. And enough more for everyone to eat to their heart's content tonight. And that is all.
A tiny plot and a tiny outcome. But the ears are well formed and the taste is just what one wishes to enjoy on a hot July evening.
With all the hard stuff, the stressful stuff, the worrisome stuff, I give thanks for corn on the cob. Harvested from our tiny little scrap of a garden. I'm going to take it as a sign and an omen.
