HARD WORK FOREVER [W, 7-2-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man--HARD WORK FOREVER [W, 7-2-25]

 

I was thirteen years old. Maybe twelve. Maybe fourteen. Hard to remember, through the haze of 75 years of memory. And through the sweat.

I had lost touch with the rest of the crew. The corn stalks were so tall, way above our heads. And so thick. Even if a fellow “corn jerker” was only two rows over, he was hard to see. [We detasseled the rows on either side of us, so the nearest other corn jerker was always two rows away.] [1]

It was slow work, walking through that long, long corn field of Princeton Farms, pulling the tassels out of the tops of the stalks. I had to reach as high as I could, bend the stalk over without breaking it to get it down to where I could grab the tassel and jerk it out.

It was uncomfortable work. There was no breeze down in amongst the corn stalks. They were wet with dew, and the humidity was always over a thousand percent, so we were drenched. We had to wear straw hats and long sleeves and pants, because the corn leaves were like knives.  

When I got to the end, everybody else was already there. The other guys didn’t worry if they missed a “few” tassels, or broke some. They were just in it for the quick money, fifty cents per hour. They made fun of me for doing the work the right way. Even the foreman was more interested in getting it done quick than in getting it done right, and was disgusted with me for slowing things down.

Yes, they were in it for the quick money, but I was in it for the slow money. Anyone who worked the entire detasseling season, from first day through the last, made an extra twenty-five cents per hour. That was a huge extra bonus. Only two of us got it.

More importantly, I was in it for the satisfaction. No, I didn’t like farm work. I had experience with it already. We lived on a farm where all the labor was manual. I knew all about being hot and sweaty and chigger-eaten and hen-pecked. But I liked the feeling of achievement, of beating the hard work at its own game.

Anne Lamott says that staying sober is “…hard work forever.” I think that is probably true of life in general. I think about that now in this late June-early July season of corn detasseling.

I still don’t like being miserable and uncomfortable, whatever the reason, any more than I did growing up on the farm, any more than I did down amongst those tall corn stalks. But I want to be able to say to myself, on my final day of life: You did it. You did the hard work, and you did it right.

Well, not just my final day. I want to be able to say that on any day.

But here’s the catch: the hardest work is remembering the satisfaction of hard work. Every day, sometimes every moment all day, I need a reminder. At any time, there is that temptation to take the easy way, to break the stalks, to leave some jerks unjerked, to hurry to the end of the row. 

When you are old, remembering the satisfaction of hard work...that is the real hard work…forever.

John Robert McFarland

 

1] I did not know then that detasselers were called cornjerkers. I came across that name when we moved to Hoopeston, IL and the high school teams were called Cornjerkers.