Kid of the Corn

Willy Blackmore wrote about his first job detasseling corn plants as a teenager in Iowa. He got paid $5.15 an hour. All legal! (“The job, the first held by many a Midwesterner, mixes hard manual labor with a summer camp vibe. Month-long romances, colored by exhaustion, are born in neighboring corn rows; pranks are laid; fights break out, some involving nothing more than water, others punches; myths and memories and money are made.”)

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