VIEWPOINT

By Ken Knutsen

The job I really hate the most is pickin’ corn by hand. It absolutely terrifies me that I could be sentenced to this for more than a week or two.
It may be that you don’t know what farming was like in the old days. To pick corn, you have to get up at some gosh awful hour, curry the horses, hitch ’em to a wagon that holds about 25 bushels and drive ’em to the field. When you see all them stalks out there, your heart sinks; there must be a million of them and each one has a couple of ears on it. You resign yourself to the most boring job in the whole wide world.
The stalks are all dried up and crinkly and the tassels have this flowery stuff that flies all over the place; down your neck, in your eyes and up your nose. You sneeze a lot. Anyway, you grab an ear and pull the wrapping off it with a little peg and throw it at the wagon and hope the darn thing goes in. Good people, do you know how long it takes to fill the wagon? Forever! As time drifts by, you wonder if you have even moved at all. Dad used to get mad at the horses when they grabbed an ear to eat, but I thought, keep at it, horsies, one less ear to pick. The next day, more of the same; and the next and the next.
The next job I hated was to bait up for shark fishing ( I used to fish commercially). I hate pickin’ corn more, you understand, but this sure is a close second. First, you have to buy some smelly bait which costs too much in the first place. When it thaws out, you cut the greasy things into a million pieces. Then you mesh the bait on the weirdest hooks you’ve ever seen; the barb is bent at right angles to the stem and you wonder how it can catch a fish at all. Someone told me that some Norwegian invented this thing. You groan when you survey all the hooks that have to be baited. And it’s hard on the back and you sweat like the Dickens in warm weather. And boy, does that stuff stink if you forget to put a tub in the freezer.
Number three on my list is washing clothes at a laundromat. I sometimes think this should be number two but never number one. I really hate pickin’ corn!
One time in Seattle, late at night, I went downtown to wash some stuff. It was a spooky place; dim yellowish lights that had atmosphere like one of Edward Munch’s paintings. (I know a little about him since he’s Norwegian like me). I was all by myself. Outside, none of the dreary houses had lights on. Only an occasional car drove by. A nice looking lady walked by, looked at me and really took off. Wished she had come in to keep me company but maybe she was shy. I wait and I wait. No noise now but the moaning of the washing machine. Aha, the spin cycle had begun and it will be over soon. Wrong! It kept spinning and spinning until it seemed like an hour had gone by.
Einstein thought time was an illusion. Well, I’m here to tell him he was wrong! I’ll just bet that he never had to wait for the spin cycle to finish.
And watching the clothes in the dryer go round and round and round again? It’s a sure way to get depressed if you don’t die of boredom first.
But I still hate pickin’ corn the most!

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