Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

I’ve spent more than a few nights this week trying to stay awake and pushing the alarm reset button on the grain dryer at work, which might lead one to believe that I would have copious amounts of time to come up with a really good column. Alas, as much as you and I both want to believe that could be possible, this should not be considered a good column let alone really good.

The object of the grain dryer at work should be to take grain that is above the allowable moisture content to store and dry it down to a suitable moisture. Or at least that is what the giant three-ring binder keeps telling me as I read through it. However I’m sure that the dryer here at work is possessed. Not only is it subject to random fits, I think it waits until I’m just far enough away from it to not hear the buzzer or it finds a time when I’m knee deep in something else and wants to make sure that I know it is still there. It has become a real love hate relationship at this point. Who doesn’t enjoy having a piece of equipment nag at you randomly?

Corn. There isn’t a single inch of me that isn’t covered in the fine grit and bees wings that come with drying corn. I now know what my ancestors felt while threshing oats. I’m really not a fan of being dry and itchy and finding small clumps of chicken feed behind my ears. At some point around 1 a.m. the other night I may have nodded off just a bit while staring in the white five-gallon bucket that the samples end up in and as I was startled back to life by the dryer sending an alarm that isn’t even in the manual I got to thinking about corn and you and I.

Looking in that bucket I noticed just how different each kernel of corn was. Some were long and flat, others round and stubby. Some had brown damage marks on them, and some were even missing a piece. Yet every one of those kernels tucked themselves together in that bucket, mixed all in there being happy and getting along. Oh sure maybe corn doesn’t have feelings; if it did I bet it would be excited to be covered in butter and salt and pepper, but I don’t think it’s about the inward workings of a kernel of corn as much as it is in how we view those kernels. Unless you’re tired from working ridiculous hours at harvest or are some sort of corn micro biologist you will look into the bucket and just see corn. You won’t see all the different kernels…you just see corn. Wouldn’t it be nice if we felt that way with other people? We wouldn’t see the differences we all have, the good and the bad? Instead we would just see people…all of us tucked together in a great big bucket of a world. You know…maybe this wasn’t such a bad column after all. See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.