Summer’s Corn on the Cob

Ahh, the Memories of Corn!

I love fresh corn on the cob especially Silver Queen (oh,
man I’m salivating just thinking of the ears of lightly-salted corn dripping
with melted butter/margarine). I could eat it for every meal for who knows how
many days in a row. On our way home from town Wednesday, Carter, Ammon, and I
stopped and bought some just-picked Silver Queen corn. The smell and later the
process of shucking it, brought back a plethora of memories of me and fresh
corn.

Shucked corn July 13, 2011

It was May 8, 1982, and it was also the day after my 16^th
birthday. My father, my mother, and I had planted a good-sized garden, and we
had approximately 6 rows of corn that were each about 40 feet long. The corn
stalks were young and about ankle high. My father and I decided to give my
mother the day off as an early Mother’s Day gift, so he and I, alone, worked in
the garden. As I hoed the corn, we talked about Copper and Chief, the
coonhounds were we raising, but I also spent hours listening to the tales of
Daddy and the hound dogs (King, Queen & Bolivar) he grew up with.
Surprisingly, the warm, May morning flew by. Three weeks later, my father was
no longer with us. He died with an aneurism on his main aorta of the heart on
May 28.

In the middle of July, my mother and I harvested and shucked
the corn that my father had planted and taken care of. At different points
during the process, I cried and cried as I remembered my father. This week on
Wednesday, I shucked the corn and thought of my father and what a wonderful man
he was. I hope Carter and Ammon will make and nurture such memories of me even
if they are of corn on the cob.