13 year old boy needs a job

by Isaac Ronyo
(Perth, Indiana (IN))

Does a 13 year old boy need a job?

At the tender age of thirteen, I headed out into the dangerous corn fields of Indiana to detassel corn. Now, to those of you who are not from the heartland, you are probably asking yourself what that is. Believe it or not, there is male corn and female corn. When the corn is grown it has tassels that protrude from the top of the corn stalk. Our job was to pull the tassels out of the top of the female corn.

The rows were all planted the same, six rows of female corn and two rows of male corn. So what does a 13 year old boy who needs a job do? The corn was usually seven or eight feet tall when we were let loose in the fields, so our arms were above our head the whole time. I, and my fellow gluttons for punishment, would walk up and down the rows of corn in the humid heat of July in Indiana.

Some field were so large it could take 2 ½ hours to get from end to end. You can use your imagination to figure out how you relieve yourself in the middle of a corn field. The season would last two to three weeks. We were paid the grand sum of $3.40 per hour. If you worked every day, you received a twenty cent per hour bonus at the end of the season.

We worked ten to twelve hour days. Believe it or not, there are no child labor laws if you are working on a farm, besides, a 13 year old boy needs a job. We would all meet at the local town square and were transported to the field of the day by bus, or even occasionally in the bed of a huge dump truck. Since I was from a very poor family, my money went toward clothes and the occasional splurge on an ice cream float. The experience definitely proved I am not afraid of hard work.