In rural Nebraska during the 1960s, there were relatively few job opportunities for kids living in small towns, let alone kids like me, who lived on a farm outside of town. While my parents gave my brother and me an allowance, it was a modest fifty cents a week. Most girls in my class had served stints as babysitters, but that was easier if you lived in town and could simply walk to a neighbor’s house. As a result, babysitting was something my parents never encouraged me to do. Since I would rather collect insects and play with the farm cats rather than baby dolls, that suited me just fine.
My ongoing campaign with my parents to find a summer job ramped up after I finished junior high school. I was excited to learn that Pioneer, a seed corn company, was hiring teenage girls for several weeks in the summer to detassel corn. While the pay was modest, at $1.25 per hour, it was nonetheless a job and a way to earn extra money. My parents reluctantly allowed me to apply; I was ecstatic to be hired at the ripe old age of thirteen. Little did I know at the time, that my detasseling career would be very short indeed.
The job entailed getting up at 4:30 in the morning; eating a hearty (but typical) breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast with homemade jam, orange juice, and a glass of milk; and riding with my parents six miles to town on dusty, gravel roads to the high school parking lot. Arriving in the dark around 5:30 a.m., lunch box in hand, I was herded into back of a cattle truck, along with 30 or so other teenage girls from the surrounding area. We sat in three rows on makeshift, long, wooden benches underneath an enclosed canvas top. With everyone loaded, we began an approximately eighty-mile journey to the company’s seed corn fields near St. Joseph, Missouri.
Those were the days of narrow, winding, two-lane roads with curbs that caused vehicles to swerve back into their lane when the driver inadvertently hit this concrete edge. With our view of the outside world blocked by the canvas cover, our bodies shifted around uncertainly on the hard benches as we made our way up and down hills and around unending curves. It took some concentration to keep from sliding off the bench or into another girl as the truck rounded some particularly sharp corners. The initial chatter among the girls, which could be heard above the sound of the truck’s motor, shifting gears, and tires on the pavement, soon gave way to silence. Eyes closed, each lost in our own thoughts, I sensed that I was probably not the only one questioning the wisdom of signing up for this job.
With no rest stops along the way, we reached our destination about two hours later. Climbing out of the back of the truck, leaving my lunch box behind, I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the early morning sun, and shivered as the cool temperatures penetrated my ankle-length, cotton slacks and long-sleeve cotton shirt. Initially a bit unsteady on my feet after the long, cramped ride, I waited, along with the rest of the group, to discover what we were to do next. All around us was a sea of dark green, as we stood among hundreds of acres of still-growing corn. The only break in the flat-as-a-pancake landscape was our cattle truck.
Living on a farm that produced both corn and wheat, I was very familiar with the different parts of a corn plant. That included the corn’s shallow roots and tall, sturdy stalks, which are thick on the bottom and grow thinner toward the top, ending (in its mature stage) in a thin, feathery, tan-colored tassel, which pollinated the “silk” at the ends of what would become an ear of corn. I also had first-hand experience with how sharp the edges of the long, thin, green leaf blades could be. However, I was not familiar with the purpose or mechanics of detasseling corn.
Our supervisor explained that the field in front of us was comprised of alternating rows, each 1.5 miles long, of male and female corn. Our job was to remove the immature tassels from the female plants, so the female corn could be pollinated the by male corn in adjacent rows. This would allow the detasseled plant to produce hybrid seed, which in turn, would have desired characteristics such as higher crop yields or being more resistant to drought or disease. The act of detasseling involved walking between two rows of corn, one male and one female, reaching up to the top of the female plant, inserting your hand into the top with fingers curved and thumb pointing down until you felt the not-yet-mature tassel. After grasping the tassel, a quick pull upward removed it along with the single leaf that was still wrapped around the immature tassel. If this task were performed incorrectly, two or more leaves were removed, which could have the unintended consequence of the detasseler being fired. Following its removal, the tassel was to be dropped to the ground behind the detasseler between the corn rows.
While I was five feet, six inches tall, sometimes the top of the corn, which was at least six feet in height, was too high for me to reach into with my right hand. In those cases, I had to grasp the stalk under the leaves with my left hand and then carefully bend the stalk toward me so I could reach my right hand into the top to find, and then remove, the tassel. That done, I released the stock, which then quietly snapped back to its upright position. Breaking the tops of stalks while bending them over could also get a detasseler fired. To ensure the quality of our work, “checkers” moved throughout the fields to confirm that no tassels were missed and that the detasseling process did not result in too many broken stalks or multiple leaves being removed along with each tassel.
After receiving our instructions and despite the fact that there was not a cloud in the sky, we were each issued a large clear plastic bag to wear over our clothes. After pulling the bag over my head and sticking my arms out holes on the side, I secured my broad-brimmed hat on my head by tying its built-in scarf under my chin. The bottom of the bag covered my torso and extended down, well below my knees. Having been used multiple times, the bag exuded a distinctly rank, sour smell that made me wrinkle my nose in disgust. Once we entered the field, the reason for wearing the bag was clear. The corn stalks and leaves were covered in heavy, early-morning dew.
I soon learned that the easiest part of the day had been the ride in the truck to the fields. While the rows of corn were planted 36 inches apart, the elongated leaves reached into the space between the rows, such that you brushed up against them as you moved along, detasseling the corn. Initially, the leaves showered me in dew as I moved through the field. The bag did at least keep most of me dry. However, it didn’t prevent the dew from running uncomfortably down my arm when I raised my hand over my head to reach a tassel, or from running off the bottom of the bag onto my slacks and shoes.
As the sun rose higher in the clear, blue sky, it dried the dew and began to cook me in the plastic bag, which I was more than happy to shed, rank odor and all. As the day progressed and the sun rose even higher, the humidity increased, making the ninety plus-degree temperature unbearably hot. While my shirt and slacks helped protect my arms and legs from the razor-edged leaves, the heat and oppressive humidity caused the cloth to stick uncomfortably to my sweaty body. I did count my lucky stars that it had been a while since it had rained, so at least the ground where I walked was not slippery or sloppy with mud.
That day was one of the longest in my life. I methodically worked my way down my assigned row, dutifully pulling the tassel from each stalk on the row to my left. It did not dawn on me at the time that, with the corn planted twelve inches apart, I would need to pull almost 8,000 tassels to reach the end of the row. One of the most challenging parts of the day, especially for a thirteen-year-old, was being left alone thinking my own thoughts, which ran through my head in a continuous loop, over and over and over again, as I pulled and pulled and pulled one tassel after another. With the top of the corn above my head, it was impossible to see another human being. What I would have given to be listening to music while working, or having another detasseler laboring close enough so that we could occasionally speak with one another. Instead, the only sound was my body rustling the green leaves of the corn. The only sight was the towering stalks of corn surrounding me. I felt totally alone and depressed. However, I was also filled with resolve.
It was a day of discomfort, which grew as the temperature and humidity increased and winds failed to materialize. I was thankful there was little chance of stepping on a slithering snake, since this was not their preferred habitat nor time of day when they were typically active. I did learn however, that you never knew what you were going to find when you stuck your thumb into the top of the corn stalk. Unwelcome surprises included spiders, insects, worms, mildew, and fungus. While spiders and insects fascinated me, there was something about worms that had always repelled me. In general, I avoided, whenever possible, touching any kind of worm, no matter what the size, and would instinctively scream if someone, such as my brother, decided to throw one at, or worse, onto me. So, in addition to dealing with the monotony of detasseling corn, there was always the worry that my thumb and hand would unknowingly find one of these surprises. Fortunately, most of the insects were large grasshoppers that were chewing the still-tender, outer, green leaves, and worms and spiders were a rarity. It was more common to find pre-emergent tassels that had been attacked by mildew or fungus, which resulted in a squishy and messy tassel extraction.
After a more-than-welcome, half-hour break for lunch under the noon-time sun, back at the truck, I walked once more down my row, stepping on previously pulled tassels, to find where I had left off, so I could continue my work. Not long after lunch, as I was moving from one plant to another, a corn leaf managed to poke its way behind my glasses and into my right eye. I instinctively brought my fingers up under my glasses to my eye to investigate. While it felt like the leaf might have cut my eye, my vision was fine, so I continued working my way down the row of corn, dutifully removing tassel after tassel. In the heat and humidity of the afternoon, as my eye began bothering me, I began rubbing it, which made it feel better, if only temporarily.
By now, I was resigned to the fact that there would be no relief from my day in hell until I finished pulling every tassel as required. While it had been a miserable day, one thing was for sure; I was not was a quitter. I continued working my way to the end of my row, finally arriving at 5:30 p.m. Feeling proud that I had not given up, I was eager, once all of the remaining workers emerged from the cornfield, to get back into the truck for the long ride home. Exhausted, we quickly fell silent during the drive, knowing we would be repeating this entire process every day for the next two to three weeks. I was happy that I had endured my first day, and felt proud and excited that I had earned $10.25 for my day’s labor.
My parents were waiting for me in the parking lot when the truck arrived back at the high school around 8:00 p.m. They were also happy to see that I had survived the experience, except for the mishap with my eye. As fate would have it, my detasseling career lasted only one day. The next morning, when I was awakened at 4:30 a.m., it was obvious that rather than heading out into the fields again, I needed to see our family optometrist. My right eye was letting me know it needed attention. It turned out that the edge of the leaf had sliced the cornea, which then provided a gateway for that wonderful fungus I encountered with the hand I also used to rub my eye. While that was the end of my detasseling career, after my eye healed two weeks later, still wanting to earn extra money and with the beginning of school still two months away, I turned my attention to another option… waitressing.