A Hunger for Tomatoes

I earned the money for my Commodore 64 by raising and selling sweet corn one summer. Growing sweet corn for market is its own special kind of hell. The silk of the individual ears have to be sprayed with insecticidal oil several times during the growing season to prevent corn worms from getting inside the ears, making them unsalable. This is accomplished with a backpack sprayer, basically a ten-gallon water tank you carry like a backpack, with a spray head and a pump handle to pressurize it. Corn fields at full growth are murder to walk through. Corn ears are abrasive at best, and if you catch them right they cut like a serrated razor. And there's always morning glory climbing the stalks, meaning you have to push through; it's what I imagine walking through rain forest must be like. The corn is high enough that there's no wind, and the stalks actively produce humidity. Then there are the ticks and chiggers.

All in all, that was the hardest job I've ever done. And at the end of the summer I cleared $200. Which was enough for the C64, but it worked out to be like 25 to 50 cents an hour.

I never looked down at physical laborers after that, and farm workers least of all. And I also went to college, and the fact that this was a privilege that most of the kids I grew up with didn't have was not lost on me.