Blogs

By Bob Eckstein

(This piece first appeared in Big Laugh Comedy. Reposted by permission of Bob Eckstein.) 

As God as my witness, if I see one more person husk corn in the supermarket I’m going to bash them over the head with the nearest acorn squash or, at the very least, shoot them.

Do I peel the bananas before I decide whether or not I’m going to buy them? I am not a religious man, except in church, but for the love of all that is holy, where the hell do you get off manhandling produce in broad daylight? Are you a corn expert? Did you go to school to become a corn inspector? Because if you had, you’d know that once you peeled the corn, it was no longer fresh. It was soiled, corn of ill repute. Cooking UNpeeled corn is the only proper way to cook them. And the fresher the corn, the better and that’s means UNpeeled, fully clothed. The American way.

There is no one more American than my Uncle Gus and the way he made corn was to boil water in a kettle on top of the grill adjacent to the corn stalks. He would just wheel it right up to there and with the corn still on the stalk and dip it in the pot, husks and all. Even when you eat it, still don’t remove it from the plant. Uncle Gus had us eat the corn standing up.

So than what exactly are you looking for, Mr./Mrs./Ms./Them corn expert? Is there something in the corn you are expecting to find, like a welfare check? Go back to wherever country you came from and shuck all the corn you want. There you and your friends can buy cucumbers and gourds and do God knows what with them. In this country cucumbers are for summer salads, not perverse activities like I found on the internet. We have laws here, laws to protect the lives of corn and cucumbers from being pawns in some perverse food pornography. We, the people, and by people, I mean my kind, should not have to pay for the demented Harlequin desires of corn shuckers and melon sniffers, which I will get to in a minute. This is not the Banana Bar in Amsterdam, which I don’t even know if that exists anymore.

I’m guessing you also like to sniff all the melons first. I see your type, groping the melons, running your hands over their skin like you’re hoping for a happy ending in aisle six. You’re a melon sniffer and a serial corn shucker. I hate you folk and kindly ask you stick your Weis discount card up your …. It’s Weis employees who have to not only clean up your mess and all the corn silk that has now made the floor dangerous and susceptible to libel, but also absorb the loss for any corn they cannot sell, which affects the store’s overall bottom line and dwindling profit margin. And do you know who pays for that? Me. We are paying for that with my American taxes. You are the reason for inflation.

All for your precious little bar-b-que, which nobody wants to go to anyway, or your grilled artisan tofu dogs and kale chips. There are two groups of people in this country. Those who don’t even light the grill until all your precious snowflake guests arrive. And those who are standing up for the rights and freedoms in this country and teach tolerance.

That said, start the grill BEFORE the guests arrive. Real Americans light their barbecue before everyone shows up so there’s food available, not just your life partner’s lousy potato salad that he or she, sorry them, is bragging to everyone has no salt. You can’t cook without salt. Everything needs at least a pinch of salt. This country didn’t get to where it is without salt.

This country wasn’t built by melon sniffers and corn shuckers but people controlling and telling other people what to do. That is why I am meeting with the Weis manager next week and insisting on a “No Shucking sign” to go up in the produce aisle, and I will not take no for an answer. I will take this to the Supreme Court if I have to. God bless, America and let’s make America irate again.

— Bob Eckstein 

Bob Eckstein is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author, New Yorker cartoonist and NYU adjunct professor. He’s written for SPY magazine, MAD magazine, McSweeney’s, Reader’s Digest, Points In Case, Playboy, National Lampoon, American Bystander and many others. His new book is The Complete Book of Cat Names (That Your Cat Won't Answer to, Anyway).