Overwhelmed with corn, we set up a stand in front of our house on Saturday. Better yet, we placed a sign that read “Sweet Corn for Sale” at the intersection of the town’s busier streets.
Sales were slow at first. But then we remembered from our Farmers’ Market days that abundance sells. So, instead of putting a couple dozen ears of corn on the table, I harvested about seven dozen and piled them high. Bingo.
I couldn’t pick the corn fast enough – by the wheelbarrow full. Which, of course, begs the question: Why, Moike, did you plant so much goddamn corn?
To which, I can only answer (as I have on several times to my wife): Because.
It works sometime. That, or she’s just come to privately accept that she married a fucking idiot nearly twenty years ago.
Yeah, that’s it.
But the corn was selling. Flying off the table. Word was spreading through the town, I just know it, that “Colby was selling the best goddamn corn in all of the land.” And they flocked for it.
My mind swam in the deep waters of corn-king possibilities.
“Vermont,” I thought, “meet Iowa.”
And there truly could not be a better ambassador. Hand, meet glove.
I admit it, some of my corn ideas were stupid. One Google effort revealed a gentleman who had one of the exact same ideas as I had.
I didn’t let it deter me.
Until tragedy struck the budding corn enterprise.
“Dad?” my daughter called out. “Where’s the corn table?”
“What?” was the only thing that came to mind.
“The corn table. It’s gone.”
And it was.
The corn sold so fast that the empty table looked like a free offering to the community. And off it went, apparently, to some happy folks who snagged one beauty of an antique table.
But the table can be replaced. Maybe. If we bought a table now and lived with it for a hundred years.
What can’t be replaced is the dream that died with that table.
Yes, this is to say that the corn dream is no more. The theft of the corn table was the surest sign yet that being the corn king isn’t worth it.
It’s clear: Corn attracts crime.
And I will not subject my family to it. Period.
Friends and neighbors: I am out of the corn business.
P.S. Please return my corn table.
[Update: At 5:27 pm this evening, just as I was feeding my family another meal of corn (and chard and beans, etc.), a man knocked on the door. "I was told that I took your corn table." Gotta love small towns and blogs, baby. But wait. Now I've got my corn table back. Oh shit.]
the theft of the table left a corn hole