Corn Festival

When I grew up in Sun Prairie, WI, it was quite a different community than it is today.  I wrote a post about the changes I experienced growing up in that community in September of 2014, and you can find that post here.  Things have changed quite a bit since I was a boy with those experiences.  There are a few things Sun Prairie is known for:  Jimmy the Groundhog, Midget car races, and the its annual Sweet Corn Festival.

After eating corn

As a child I was an annual attendee at the corn festival.  But times have changed.  For as long as can recall the number of attendees has been placed at 100,000.  It may be one of those numbers someone came up with and it sounded good, but perhaps with little basis in reality.  Growing up it was all the sweet corn you could take, and eat.  Back in my day, the corn was steamed at the local canning company, just across the street from Angel Park, but with the closing of the canning company, the festival organizers had to construct a new steam facility.  When we were young, one of my sisters would find her way in past the long line and fill up a large sack of sweet corn which was brought home for us to eat with the annual staple of BBQ chicken my Dad would grill. 

Corn being pulled off conveyor belt

Dad was always working at the festival, after all it was at that time that most all local organizations had some sort of game or drink and food tent.  He would work at the VFW food tent (which sold, but what else, brats and burgers and was conveniently located next to the beer tent), sell tickets for the carnival rides for the KC's, work the KC bingo toss game, and work for what other local organization of which he was a member.  He was one of the persons on which a community counted for social capital, which I talk about in that one August 2014 post.  As a child, we could only play the games or buy the food on the Sun Prairie side.  We could go on the carnival rides.  In that way the money we spent benefited the local community via the respective service organizations.  My favorite game was the KC ring toss.  As a child, when I played you would ring and earn a quart bottle.  One time I won a case, and had to depend on Dad to get it home for me.  Today, the Sun Prairie side is populated by small booths of different businesses providing information on their wares.  Some have a small game to win a token gift.  My twin brother won a pair of sunglasses (or as he termed them "songlasses") to give to his 25 year old son, who was unable to win them himself with his spin at the Ho-Chunk booth.  

Have an Ear

For a long time I never attended the event, but over the past several years, my 25 year old nephew has seen that I attend, because as he says, "It would not be the same without Uncle Tom."  Every year I tell the same stories of the corn festival of old, and how it has changed.  We play the KC ring toss game, where it was to earn a can of pop after getting a wood ring on a small plastic bottle.  Not the large quart glass bottles of my childhood.  Yet, showing a changing demographic, this year the ring toss game was not to be found, and even the persons managing the information booth did not know if it was there.  

Our take of Corn

As much as my nephew likes the stories, he most appreciates the way I stack corn in the tote.  The corn fest has gone from free admission and free corn, to $1.00 for a tote with as much as you can fill, to now $7.00 for a tote for the corn and a small admission fee.  I think my record for stacking corn in a tote over the past few years is 23 ears.  Last year, I fit 17 ears in. However, this year I experienced something I never have heard before--a limit as to how many ears can be placed in a tote. A conveyor belt takes the steaming hot corn dumped from the steam tubs past workers who stack it on narrow tables.  Many of the workers will fill a tote for you.  As I took my tote, a worker wanted to fill it and I said I preferred to do it myself.  It is then when I had a new experience, when she said, "Well, you can only have twelve ears anyway!" Was I taken aback. There was no sign that said anything about a corn limit.  Although this is the place that charges $2.00 for one cooked ear of corn.  And I said, I had never heard that limit and thought it was as much corn as you could fit.  She said "It has always been that way!"  Well, I know it has not always been that way.  No one, but no one, is going to limit me to a tote of twelve ears of corn.  I grabbed fifteen ears this year. A more reasonable price of just under $.50/ear. I have my own special way of filling a tote and I have to say even the butter girls, and they are always butter girls, seem to get a kick out of the way I filled the tote.  When I was young they would dip a paint brush in melted butter and slather it on the corn, today, they use pounds of butter and wear rubber gloves while they roll it in the butter.  I even buttered corn as a boy scout, at a time when they would allow boys to butter corn.

Buttering corn

I can appreciate the need to charge for the corn, it may cut down on waste, although seeing the amount of nice steamed ears which go up the conveyor belt into the large dumpster, I am not sure it does.  My sister-in-law, who was watching from just outside the metal corn building (it used to be a large canvas tent) noted to me that one women had the corn police confiscate an ear or two out of her tote.  The corn police did not confront me.  If they did I would ask were it says there is a limit.  Apparently, buyer beware at the corn festival.  Things will not go back to the way they were. In present times social-community organizations seem to take a back seat to businesses, perhaps they lack the persons to man the booths as was the case when I was growing up.  Just like the KC's for some reason did not run the ring toss game this year. It is a changed society.  Whether such changes are better or worse can be left to each individual to decide.  

Floss or tooth picks come in handy

Photos courtesy of Christopher B. Hovel, August 19, 2017

Twin Time at the Corn Festival