(Editorís note: Steve (Nelson) Alden is a Caledonia native, the son of the late Margaret and Alden Nelson, who currently lives in Los Angeles. He has offered to write a column for Argus readers. E-mail us at editor.argus@ecm-inc.com and let us know what you think!)

Dude,

I eat oatmeal with fresh blueberries six days a week. Sunday is a full-on brunch with eggs, bacon, ham, sliced avocado and a short stack of freshly grilled flour tortillas.

I swallow enough vitamins and goofy herbal supplements every day to kill a medium-size child. I also drink enough water to drown that medium size childís large pet.

So, Iím a pretty healthy eater, but who can say no to a double bacon cheeseburger every so often? My taste in food has expanded beyond my wildest expectations. I mean, if anybody would have told me forty years ago that someday Iíd enjoy eating marinated octopus, raw tuna, or baked eel, Iíd have thought they were an alien from some distant planet, like Chicago.

Back on Kingston Street we were meat and potatoes people. (Way more potatoes than meat, cause meat was expensive.) But in late summer, we pretty much lived on sweet corn. No meat and potatoes, just corn. I remember paying 50 cents for a dozen ears of corn from Colleranís. That may be inaccurate, but memoryís funny like that.

I guess I could call one of my siblings to fact check, but a long distance call would defeat the whole purpose for writing a letter home every week. So, if I am wrong, I hope someone will write a note to the editor and straighten this out once and for all.

Anyway, weíd take turns walking the six or so blocks to load up on grocery bags full of corn. (Again, in my memory, I walked the walk more often than anybody else.) The ones who delivered the corn were supposed to be exempt from shucking, but that didnít always pan out. It was the ones who got hungry first that sat down in the backyard and went to work.

There werenít a lot of rules in our house, but one really important one was that we werenít allowed to drink milk with sweet corn. Our folks warned us that milk with corn was a dangerous combination that caused bloating. Back then the only thing Iíd ever seen bloated was a dead cow in the back of my Uncle Cliffordís rendering truck. Well, that cinched the deal right there.

I had nightmares where I accidentally drank a glass of milk with dinner and puffed up like ghastly helium balloon. Had this actually happened Iím pretty sure my brothers and sisters, always able to make the best of a bad situation, would have tied a string to my ankle and dragged me around town like we were in the Macyís Thanksgiving Day Parade. Iíd have done the same to any of them, and probably still would, except the corn and milk myth was debunked years (and ears) later. The truth is, we drank Pepsi with our corn because milk was too expensive.

Our folks were kindhearted people. I guess they figured instilling a fear of bloating was less damaging to our young psyches than letting on just how poor we were. Funny enough, it never occurred to any of us that slathering butter on corn, which we did, could have any adverse effects on our digestive tracts. Thank goodness none of us ever made the whole "butter is made from milk" connection, because sweet corn without butter is just no fun.

These days, with the exception of going to the super market, Iím hardly ever around large quantities of corn on the cob. That is, until last summer. We had a massive sweet corn processing party at my sister Lisaís house in Hillsboro. We didnít know what we were getting ourselves into until we saw her huge deck covered in corn about three feet deep. On top of that, another truckload was on the way.

We lost track of how many hundreds of ears of corn we shucked and shaved from the cob before it went through the cooking and bagging process, and finally into the deep freeze. As grown ups, it was a completely different experience than back in the olden days. There we were, sipping beers, laughing and listening to oldies rock and roll, the same songs that were brand new 40 years ago. Songs that used to float invisible through the air, from some far off magical place called La Crosse.

More later.
Peace, Steve.

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