Let's see if I can match Sarah's infamous storytelling ability...
After the past five days, never again do I wish to hear how much your summer job sucks. It might be bad, it might make you cry, but honey - I can top it.
I started detasseling five days ago. For those of you who don't live in Nebraska or simply never had the guts to bust your butt in a cornfield for fourteen days, here's the nutshell version. Fields throughout the Nebraska countryside are filled with seed corn, so they can make more corn next year. Unfortunately, the greedy people who buy it want to know exactly what kind of seeds they are getting, so the offspring must be carefully monitored. This is where detasseling comes in - machines go through the corn rows and remove the female tassels off the corn stalks (insert dumb "yes, female corn plants have tassels too!" joke here). The machines are only so accurate and leave between 40 and 80 percent of the tassels still on the stalks. Each summer, for two weeks, young Nebraska kids are paid to walk down the rows and remove tassels by hand.
Our day starts at 5am, when we meet and ride out to the field and it is done when we finish all of our fields for the day. When we get to the field, the corn plants are still soaking wet from dew (the other reason we can't do it at night, Steve) and by late afternoon when we finish, it's 95 degrees in the shade under clear blue skies and not a breath of breeze. Not exactly the most standard work conditions.
We are paid by the row, so the faster we haul our asses, the more money we'll make as we tromp down half-mile rows of corn reaching our shoulders or higher. Reach up, pull the tassel off with a pop and move to the next tasseled plant. Along the way, you get slapped in the face with sharp, scratchy corn leaves, which leave corn rash on any exposed skin. Your shoes slide through mud in the uneven ground and the sun burns the skin off the back of your neck. Sweat runs down your face and every hot breath into the bandanna on your face coats your safety glasses with a slight fog.
And each summer, hundreds of kids willingly sign up for this torture.
Why? The money, plain and simple. Average salary for a detasseler who showed up to work every day last season was over $1100. For two weeks.
So I get up each morning at 4:15am and pack my lunch, fill my water jug and eat breakfast. I watch the sun rise over a field of Nebraska corn and think to myself, visualize the end result. A car, freedom, transportation to pursue my plans next summer and to support myself. Independence. And I put my headphones on and march down another row.
The company is interesting, down-to-earth and truly Nebraskan. One of the supervisors, a 21-year-old fellow LSE alum, makes me wonder about my high school's ability to educate. He's a good kid and means well, but it was hard to take him seriously as a superior when he warned us against drinking "carborrated" beverages on the first day. Yeah, I'll watch for those...
But the kids are fun - we're all there for one reason and, by the day's end, we all stink to high heaven. There is no hierarchy of brains, brawn or wealth. It's refreshing to be back in an environment where no one cares about ridiculous outer things like appearance. All that matters is that you are willing to work hard and clean your row.
My hands and feet are torn up and my head hurts. The skin on the back of my neck and my nose is peeling. I found new muscles in my shoulders and my ankles kill from the muddy rows under the dripping pivot. But I'm still alive - 9 more days.
There's nothing like listening to a country station on my headphones while I walk down a corn row to make me feel like more than some snot-nosed city kid.
P.S. - Lincoln kids, anyone want to go to Grease tomorrow night with Michelle and I???? Let me know...
I started detasseling five days ago. For those of you who don't live in Nebraska or simply never had the guts to bust your butt in a cornfield for fourteen days, here's the nutshell version. Fields throughout the Nebraska countryside are filled with seed corn, so they can make more corn next year. Unfortunately, the greedy people who buy it want to know exactly what kind of seeds they are getting, so the offspring must be carefully monitored. This is where detasseling comes in - machines go through the corn rows and remove the female tassels off the corn stalks (insert dumb "yes, female corn plants have tassels too!" joke here). The machines are only so accurate and leave between 40 and 80 percent of the tassels still on the stalks. Each summer, for two weeks, young Nebraska kids are paid to walk down the rows and remove tassels by hand.
Our day starts at 5am, when we meet and ride out to the field and it is done when we finish all of our fields for the day. When we get to the field, the corn plants are still soaking wet from dew (the other reason we can't do it at night, Steve) and by late afternoon when we finish, it's 95 degrees in the shade under clear blue skies and not a breath of breeze. Not exactly the most standard work conditions.
We are paid by the row, so the faster we haul our asses, the more money we'll make as we tromp down half-mile rows of corn reaching our shoulders or higher. Reach up, pull the tassel off with a pop and move to the next tasseled plant. Along the way, you get slapped in the face with sharp, scratchy corn leaves, which leave corn rash on any exposed skin. Your shoes slide through mud in the uneven ground and the sun burns the skin off the back of your neck. Sweat runs down your face and every hot breath into the bandanna on your face coats your safety glasses with a slight fog.
And each summer, hundreds of kids willingly sign up for this torture.
Why? The money, plain and simple. Average salary for a detasseler who showed up to work every day last season was over $1100. For two weeks.
So I get up each morning at 4:15am and pack my lunch, fill my water jug and eat breakfast. I watch the sun rise over a field of Nebraska corn and think to myself, visualize the end result. A car, freedom, transportation to pursue my plans next summer and to support myself. Independence. And I put my headphones on and march down another row.
The company is interesting, down-to-earth and truly Nebraskan. One of the supervisors, a 21-year-old fellow LSE alum, makes me wonder about my high school's ability to educate. He's a good kid and means well, but it was hard to take him seriously as a superior when he warned us against drinking "carborrated" beverages on the first day. Yeah, I'll watch for those...
But the kids are fun - we're all there for one reason and, by the day's end, we all stink to high heaven. There is no hierarchy of brains, brawn or wealth. It's refreshing to be back in an environment where no one cares about ridiculous outer things like appearance. All that matters is that you are willing to work hard and clean your row.
My hands and feet are torn up and my head hurts. The skin on the back of my neck and my nose is peeling. I found new muscles in my shoulders and my ankles kill from the muddy rows under the dripping pivot. But I'm still alive - 9 more days.
There's nothing like listening to a country station on my headphones while I walk down a corn row to make me feel like more than some snot-nosed city kid.
P.S. - Lincoln kids, anyone want to go to Grease tomorrow night with Michelle and I???? Let me know...