Children of the corn

Putting a group of relatively unsupervised teenagers in a cornfield will lead to pranks and hijinks. Guaranteed.

Irrigation gate

The worst prank I know of was perpetuated by another crew. “Prank” is not strong enough. Their case was sheer vandalism. They were angry at the farmer for irrigating the night before they showed up to detassel. This farmer had gated irrigation. They reopened every one of his gates, then left. No one noticed what they had done until much later. By that time, the field was badly flooded.

That crew and its leader were summarily and deservedly fired. We hated them. Our crew had to go in afterward and detassel in very deep mud. Most of us gave up on our shoes and went barefoot. The mud sucked off our shoes at every step. We should have received extra pay for working this field, but of course we didn’t.

Hybrid corn must also be purged of volunteer corn plants or “rogues”. This process is called “roguing”. A roguer walks through the rows with a rogue knife, a kind of sharpened hook on a long pole. She cuts down or digs up the offending plant. Volunteers are generally cut before the corn reaches the tasseling stage. Volunteers get an earlier start so are taller than the surrounding hybrid plants. In this case, it is definitely beneficial not to stand out in a crowd.

The male rows were sometimes rogued later.

While we were detasseling, an all-female crew came to rogue the male corn rows. One was foolish enough to take off her shirt. One male crew member, well known for his pranks and his roaming hands, was assigned to detassel the row next to hers. He jumped out and grabbed her. She screamed, of course, and nearly fainted from fear. Other crew members pulled him away before anything else could happen. He was fired on the spot and banned from detasseling on any other crew.

A favorite prank was to come behind and to the side of another detasseler and push them over while shouting “Corn bore!” Caught off guard, the victim would go crashing into several corn rows, knocking down corn stalks.

Another one was less destructive. The perpetrator would collect tassels as he went along, then would bomb the victim with them.

Tempers often ran high in the heat, humidity and misery, leading to fights. Most of them weren’t serious (who had the energy?), but I remember one that ended in a broken nose. Both fighters were fired.

Teenagers thrown together will also “fall in love.”

Some hothouse romances sprung up, but wise crew leaders kept the “puppy lovers” from working adjacent rows. Crew members making out instead of pulling tassels were not very productive.

I never could understand how anyone could have energy for romance, but some people did. For me, as well as most detasselers, detasseling season was about survival, not romance.

We were the “children of the corn”.