Pressdog.com

P'dog's Lookin' to Score

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 08/10/02)

5:12 p.m. Friday. Sunny and 84 degrees. Westbound on Grand Avenue in tony Des Moines. Traffic is light, non-existent by New York and LA standards.

Rolling down the hill toward 63rd and Grand. Where’s that damn awning? Where’s the tent? The crappy, white Dodge van? The hand-painted signs?

It’s been a few days and I’m getting the shakes. I’m crashing off my vitamin C, folate, thiamin, phosphorus and beta carotene high. I hurt. I hurt all over, baby. Gotta make a connection today. Gotta get some primo stuff.

I’m trying a new source this time. My old connection dried up. One day he’s in the Lowe’s parking lot, next day he ain’t. Cops must have busted him. Doing hard time for selling without a permit. That’s The Man, keeping us down.

I spot the new guy on the southwest corner of 63rd and Grand. I pull my flamin’ hot 1995 Ford Contour ride in, big bass thumping out NPR's All Things Considered just as Cokie Roberts represents on Iraq. Every head turns when they hear the throaty roar of my four cylinders. Yeah, pressdog be in the house. And he’s hungry, you dig?

The woman behind the table is as cool as a cattle tank at dawn. Oh, she’s holding all the cards. I’m the drooling fool looking for a $4 fructose fix.

“I just need a dozen,” I say, stepping around some sandal-wearing, SUV-driving gomer who wants to inspect the merchandise with a microscope before he makes a deal. Hey, pinch a kernel and call it a day, Chopper. I got places to be.

The lady deals me out 12. Green. Turgid. Lush. “How much longer?” I ask, gazing lustily across the pile. “Probably through the end of September,” she says. “He’s got it planted so it matures throughout the season. We’ll be here every day until the 26th, and then every weekend through October.”

“But we need a good rain,” the guy behind her in the stand says. “Without a good rain, I don’t know.”

The damn rain. We’re held hostage by it. Too much and we’re screwed. Too little and we’re screwed.

Too much too early or too late? Screwed. “It’ll rain,” the woman says, handing me a bulging Fareway grocery store bag. “It’ll rain.”

Back in the flamin’ Contour, I lift one of the green skirts and peep out flashes of yellow and white. Feel like dialing Mrs. ‘Dog on the StarTAC, ‘cause I’m bringing home the sweet corn.

We'll boil, butter, salt and eat a few ears later that night. I might microwave another for breakfast. Inhale a couple for lunch. Take another couple hits for supper.

That’s the way it plays out when you’re a sweet corn addict.

Here’s the 4-1-1 on Iowa corn, G. A good 99% of it is what us rural home boyz call “field corn.” It’s hard as a 9mm hollow point when harvested. Most of that gets ground up and fed to our millions of cattle and hogs. “Sweet corn” is the stuff humans eat. Our farmers hook us city folk up with a bit of the sweet stuff each year starting around July 4.

You want the real stuff? You got to go to the street. The suburban streets aren’t just for lemonade stands, golden retrievers and joggers, baby. It's also prime ground for the street corn vendors, representin' in their beat-up pickups and vans.

If us corn tweakers need a fix the vendors clear out at dusk, we may even resort to going to the grocery store.

It'll do in a pinch, but true connoisseurs know store corn is for posers, people who have a problem parking their Volvos next to a vendor’s ragged Ford F150 pickup. Everyone knows the most righteous stuff comes right from the source. The guy who actually planted and picked it. Like the little old dude who sold me some awesome Peaches and Cream in front of the Catholic church about a mile from my house.

He was a cheery little man in his 70s. Cap, checked, short-sleeved shirt, glasses, work pants and boots -- striking. He sat like the Corn Godfather in his lawn chair while his granddaughter hooked me up with a dozen.

“This corn from around here?” I say. Don’t have me eating some Florida corn or some stuff like that. My cash only goes to the local growers, ‘cause I’m fifth-generation Iowa hard.

“Yep,” he says. “Just about a half mile down the road. Farm’s been in the family since 1902.”

A hundred years on one farm is what we call “brand loyalty” around here, Chief. I ate that corn with reverence and respect, brothers and sisters, giving thanks to almighty God for this great land. The crew in Adel, Iowa knows the deal. About 10,000 hardcores showed up for their annual sweet corn festival on August 9 and ate through 5 tons of corn (15,000 ears).

Sure, we're diggin' the corn, but Iowa's not just one big corn field. Only about 3 ½ percent of the 3 million Iowans are farmers. Still enough to feed China and have Russia over for desert, true.

The other 2.9 million of us do lots of stuff that doesn’t involve cattle, hogs, corn, beans and tractors. Mighty Des Moines is full of concrete and 400,000 people.

But hey, don’t diss the farmers. They built Iowa from the ground up with raw physical determination and Iowa stubbornness. I’m down with being from a state famous for farms.

So I lift an ear of corn to my farm posse. You keep on plantin’ and the P'dog will keep on eatin.’ True dat.

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