I remember corn season for our family was a big job. It was also one of my favorites! My grandmother always planted the corn in part of her garden. The garden was huge—mind you, not your everyday sort of backyard variety, but long, full rows that you could disappear in. The corn and its long golden silks were picked and piled high in big galvanized washtubs. The assembly line began. Dad hacked the ends off with a meat cleaver. My sister and I used an old toothbrush and a kitchen knife to get the silks off. Then the clean cobs went to the sink inside for washing and scraping with this long wooden tool with a metal blade at the end of a cob-shaped groove. My mother and grandmother scraped the fresh corn and milk into big dishpans for blanching and putting up in freezer bags. The whole house smelled like the sweetest, freshest corn imaginable. But with all the scraping and splattering, my mother’s and grandmother’s glasses looked like dirty windshields; bits of corn and white creamy residue covered their glasses and faces. They took one look at me, then at each other with their speckled faces, and we all had one of the best laughs of our lives. It was one of those special moments that happen once in a lifetime, three generations of women united in “corn.”Every time I make fresh fried corn, I remember that time and smile all over again.