sweet corn

I was sixteen and going to school on a farm in Vermont when I ate my first ear of raw sweet corn. I had just finished loading the harvest into a pickup truck and was sitting in back with a bunch of other kids, when my friend Caen reached into a burlap sack, pulled out an ear, and began shucking, throwing the silk and tassels over the side as we bounced down the road.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

And he bit into the ear, nonchalant, easy as that. To me, it was as if he was eating uncooked rice, or a raw potato. Nobody does that. I had to do that.

“Hand it over,” I said.

Caen crawled back over the scratchy bags and handed me that gnawed on, vividly yellow ear.

The first bite was a shock. Expecting starchy, I got watery, fresh, sweet. I needed my own.

It’s my favorite way to eat corn now, straight off the stalk. It has to be grown well, extremely fresh, or else, to be frank, it’s disgusting. Starchy, chewy, everything you think it would be. But right place right time, raw corn is a revelation.

I ate an ear of corn from Morning Glory Farm this morning while I was at market, pausing here and there to sell pints of cherries. The corn had been out of the field a few hours, for sure. But it was still the best I’ve had all year. I’m pretty sure that there’ll be no Obama sighting for me during his time on the island, but really, it’s whatever. My summer is now complete.