Dear Uncle Dale,
How do you tell when sweet corn is ready to pick? I planted some in the backyard this year and I don't want to ruin it.
City Girl in Lincoln

Dear City Girl,

This one I know. Look at the silks first. When they've gone brown and dry at the end of the ear, you're getting close. Feel the ear through the husk. It ought to feel full and round clear out to the tip, not skinny at the end. Then peel the husk back a little and push a kernel with your thumbnail. If it squirts milky juice, it's ready. If the juice is clear and watery, give it a few more days. If it's thick and doughy, you waited too long, and you can feed it to somebody's cattle.

Anita always had the water boiling before I went out to pick. Sweet corn starts turning to starch the minute it comes off the stalk, and she wasn't going to give it the time. That isn't advice. That's a fact.

Don't put it in the barn. The raccoons know where the barn is.

Uncle Dale

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Dear Uncle Dale,
My wife says I snore. I say I don't. Who is right?
Well Rested in Red Cloud

Dear Well Rested,

She is. Anita said I snored for fifty years and I said I didn't for fifty years. In 1979 she set the cassette recorder on the nightstand and let it run. I listened to the tape the next morning. I thought it was the furnace.

I'd take her word for it. If you won't, borrow a tape recorder. Then put the tape in the barn, where it belongs.

Uncle Dale

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Dear Uncle Dale,
My granddaughter is getting married in August and she has asked me to give the toast at the reception. I have never given a toast in my life. What do I say?
Toastless in Kearney

Dear Toastless,

Anita and I were married on Saturday, June 15, 1946, at the church in town, and her uncle Herman gave the toast. He started at a quarter past two and he was still going when the ice cream melted. He told about the day Anita was born, and the year the creek came up, and what hogs were bringing. We never did find out what he was toasting. People still brought it up at funerals forty years later.

Afterward we left in the Model A, which Sol had tied tin cans to, and she quit at the end of the lane. I had to get out and crank her in my wedding suit with the whole church watching from the yard. She caught on the third turn. Anita said that was the best part of the wedding.

So here is my advice. Stand up. Say one nice thing about the bride and one nice thing about the groom. Say one thing about the two of them together that's true. Then raise your glass and sit down before the ice cream melts. A minute is plenty. If you go longer than that, somebody ought to put you in the barn.

Anita and I had fifty years in June of 1996. I'd give a toast to that, if anybody asked. Nobody has to.

Uncle Dale

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Dear Uncle Dale,
Our only son is twenty-four and he wants to leave the farm and move to Denver to work with computers. His father hasn't said a whole sentence to him since Easter. They both still come to supper and pass the potatoes and don't say anything. What do I say to them?
Two Stubborn Men in Ogallala

Dear Two Stubborn,

This one I'll answer straight.

In 1946 my brother Sol came home from the Army and told Dad he wasn't going to farm. He was going to Lincoln to the university on the GI Bill, to be a schoolteacher. Dad didn't speak to him the rest of that summer. They sat at the same table and passed the potatoes, just like your two.

The morning Sol left, Dad went out to the field early so he wouldn't have to see him go. Mother sent me out after him in the pickup. I told Dad that Sol was sitting at the end of the lane on his suitcase, waiting for his ride. Dad didn't say anything for a while. Then he got in the pickup and we drove out to the road, and he shook Sol's hand and left a twenty-dollar bill in it, and he said, "Come home at harvest."

Sol taught school for forty-one years, thirty miles from here, and he came home every harvest and drove the grain truck until he was seventy. He's Katherine's grandpa.

So here's what you tell your husband. A boy who leaves with his father's hand on his shoulder comes home at harvest. A boy who leaves without it comes home for funerals.

And tell your son that Denver is a mile up, so the water boils cooler and he'll need to cook his eggs a little longer. That's true. Katherine looked it up.

This one doesn't need the barn.

Uncle Dale

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Dear Uncle Dale,
Our fifteen-year-old daughter is on the telephone from supper until midnight. When she isn't on the telephone she's on the Internet, which is also the telephone. Nobody can call us. My mother thinks we've all died.
Busy Signal in Hastings

Dear Busy Signal,

When I was a boy we had a telephone on the kitchen wall with a crank on the side, and nine families on the line. Our ring was two longs and a short. When anybody's telephone rang, everybody's rang, and you stood there and counted. If it wasn't your ring you weren't supposed to pick up. Everybody picked up.

If a girl got to talking too long, somebody's grandmother would come on the line and say, "That will do, young lady, there are people waiting," and that was the end of it. Nobody talked more than ten minutes in 1935. You couldn't, with nine families and a grandmother listening.

What you need is a party line. Put her on with eight other families and an old woman with nothing to do. She'll be off in five minutes.

Katherine tells me you can't get a party line anymore. In that case, you be the grandmother. Pick up the other extension and breathe. She'll know. And at ten o'clock the telephone goes in the barn.

Uncle Dale

[Katherine here. A lot of families get a second phone line for the computer now. We did. Uncle Dale says that's how it starts. Also, for the record, I am sixteen and I am not that girl. -K.]

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Dear Uncle Dale,
My husband has filled the basement with canned beans, lamp oil, flashlight batteries and forty gallons of water because of Y2K. Every Saturday he comes home with more beans. Should I be worried about the computers, or about him?
Bean-Counting in Broken Bow

Dear Bean-Counting,

I have lived through a few ends of the world.

The winter of 1949 we were snowed in most of January, with drifts to the eaves on the north side of the house. Out west of us the Army flew over and pushed hay out of airplanes to the cattle. We had a cellar full of canned goods, because Anita put up everything that held still, and we ate fine. What we ran short of was conversation. By the third week Anita and I had said everything we had to say to each other and started over from the beginning. What we needed wasn't beans. It was a deck of cards.

So let him keep his beans. A man who is getting ready for something is a happy man, and a happy man is easy to live with. Make sure there's a can opener down there that doesn't plug in. Put a deck of cards on the shelf next to the beans. And if New Year's comes and the lights stay on, put the extra beans in the barn. They'll keep.

Uncle Dale

[Katherine here. If you'd like to see Y2K on a farm done right, a farmer named Elton Queen tested every machine and animal on his place for the Year 2000 problem at the Queen Farm Y2K Compliance Office. The cows passed. Uncle Dale read it and said, "Well, of course they did." -K.]

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[Katherine here. This is where it started. I put the page up and told the family, and the first two letters came in the same night. -K.]

Dear Uncle Dale,
Does this thing work?
Your Niece, Testing

Yes.

Uncle Dale

[That was my mom. -K.]

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Dear Uncle Dale,
We moved out to an acreage last fall to get some peace and quiet. The neighbor's rooster crows at four o'clock every morning. I have asked the neighbor nicely. Nothing has changed. What can I do?
Up Too Early in York

Dear Up Too Early,

Four in the morning is when a rooster is supposed to crow. He's on time. You're the one that's off schedule.

In 1948 we had a red rooster who crowed at ten minutes past four every morning of his life. Anita set the kitchen clock by him. It turned out the kitchen clock had been eleven minutes fast the whole time, so the rooster was right and the clock was wrong, and we never told the neighbors which.

Get up at four. You'll find there's a good deal of morning out there that nobody is using.

If you can't do that, take your neighbor a loaf of bread and ask him to put the rooster in the barn at night. A rooster in a dark barn will sleep till somebody opens the door. Mostly.

Uncle Dale

[Katherine here. I looked it up, and that's only partly true. Roosters do crow when it gets light, but they also crow whenever they feel like it. Bring the bread anyway. -K.]