Detasseling Corn or Why I Went to College

There are pivotal moments in a person's life.

Detasseling corn was one of mine.

This simple job caused me to start paying attention in high school.

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Detasseling corn has two steps.  You just walk down a row of corn and pull the tassel out of the top of the corn stalk.  Then you drop it on the ground. No, we didn't have machines that cut off the tops of the stalks.  We just didn't find the ones left behind.  We pulled out every tassel that our crew leader told us to pull out.  We were helping man make the seed corn he wanted.  And friends, there are lots of corn stalks in one row of corn.

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Walking fields...wet and cool in the morning....

Grabbing the tassels of our rows as fast as possible

Sweating buckets by noon

Riding the machines...grabbing the tassels of our rows as fast as possible

Finding really weird bugs (gross, huge bugs)

Getting food poisoning.....salami sandwich in the sun

Itching corn stalks....everywhere

Making new friends

Laughing

Paying for new store bought school clothes

.50 per hour

1.00 per hour on Sunday

Two shifts-- morning and afternoon

Hard work, bleeding hands, great tan.....

No sunscreen....it was baby oil and iodine!

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I did not want to do this for the rest of my life....

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I knew from the first day of detasselling that Erin Therese Malloy was designed to work with her head, not her hands.

I didn't like bug bites, or the cuts, or the itchy leaves.  AND back to the bugs, I really didn't like the bugs.

But, the money was great, the friends were terrific and I learned lots about me!