There’s yellow corn, unsurprisingly, sold off a truck bed the day it was picked, humidity slowing down the sunlight and licking your shirt. We shucked it on my grandmother’s kitchen steps, boiled it quick, and served it to my grandfather in a blue and white bowl with salt dishes and ample butter. Grandfather’s summer rules: We eat dinner on the porch with the slate floor and metal chairs, and there must always be corn. Also in summer there’s butter-and-sugar corn, white and yellow kernels intermixed like crooked teeth, utterly sweet and comforting, with no salt; a few bites and you’re halfway to dessert. Months later, brown corn: cans labeled “John Cope’s Golden Sweet Corn,” strictly for Thanksgiving and Christmas only, heated in a tiny pot and reserved for Mom and me because no one else could abide it, but how else would I know the winter holidays had started? [150]
by Erik Schwab
Table Tales - 150 word stories 