Shucking Corn on the Porch

On an August evening at my grandparents' house in Iowa, my grandmother put a bushel of sweet corn on the porch and handed everybody a paper bag. "Shuck," she said. That was the whole instruction.

We sat in a circle on the porch steps, eleven of us, peeling husks and pulling silk while the sun went down over the fields. My little cousins had a contest to see who could shuck fastest and made a huge mess. My uncle told stories about growing up on the farm. My grandfather sat in his rocking chair and supervised.

The corn went straight from the porch into a giant pot of boiling water. We ate it with butter dripping down our chins at a long table in the yard, under strings of lights, with the cicadas singing.

Nothing fancy. Just corn and family and a summer night. It was perfect.