Corn sweat screwing with my lids

Hey, do you guys like hats?
I love hats. They cover up the receding hairline that Tina Hauck can’t fix.
I can’t golf without a hat because you can’t take it off and shake hands at the end if you don’t wear one. No real duffer plays without one. I know because I pretend to be real a couple times a week. And when we do take them off after 18 holes, we quickly try to fix the matted hackles that point in eighteen different directions.
Some guys are just smooth about the whole thing and just push their hair back - if they’re lucky enough to still have it.  But I struck up a conversation this weekend with a friend about washing ballcaps - or lids - if you’re cool.
I have to wash them regularly and the bills are typically made out of cardboard. So here’s what I do. Spray them with air freshener and let them sit. Then throw them in the washing machine on delicate.  I don’t ever dry them, but I just stretch them over the tub that holds those lovely pods.
They dry that way and are just a little elongated. Fresh smelling and ready for the next sweaty day on the course. Caps keep the sweat from running off your head, too. If they’re on just right, the inside of the brim absorbs the moisture and keeps it neatly intact, until the corn sweaty Iowa humidity overflows the fabric in the liner and your eyes start burning from the sodium in the perspiration.
I don’t blame the cap. It’s doing its job keeping melanoma at bay on your skull and holding as much water as it can. I blame the humidity. And it doesn’t matter how good your hat is, and I’ve had some good ones, especially my new Mark Pothitakis Family Dentistry breathable hat. I think there’s fluoride in the netting on the back side. I haven’t gotten my Titleist ProV1 golf balls, but he did let me drive his Mustang and let me sit with him at an Iowa game, so let’s not stand on principle.
But no hat, not even my Huffman Welding & Mfg., where monumentally great things are built, can keep back the Iowa precipitation this year. I got up early Wednesday and got three miles in. No, I don’t run a 5K, I jalk it. That’s a jog-walk. I made up that word on my own and it will soon have its place in Funk and Wagnall, or at a very minimum, this one Sunday in history.
I left when my phone, which is now our pocket meteorologist, said it was 64 degrees and I went a mile and half out, turned around and came home. I waived to Judge John Wright on the steps of the courthouse. He kept his distance and pretended not to see me because he doesn’t want to go on record about this Downtown Carl investigation. We hear there may be a write-in mayoral candidacy in the works and Judge Wright had no comment on this issue. Actually, I think he saw how bad I was sweating and quickly climbed the courthouse steps ahead of me. ‘Eeeeesh!’

Whatever.
Anyway I went the other three blocks back to the Pen City Current funhouse and walked into the A/C and shivers literally went through my upper body. I grabbed a water and dumped some pomegranate juice in it. Man that’s stinky. It smelled like dirty socks or something, but hey, antioxidants, right? I was out of aronia berry and, boy, you know you have to mix that with anything. Yikes. I’ve said it before – that stuff tastes like someone juiced a stick and added a couple blueberries. Anything that bad, has got to be good for you.
I went upstairs to dump the sweaty mess in the hamper and just taking it off was uncomfortable. I had to shower for 10 minutes.
Jerry Seinfeld would ask “What is uuup with thaaat?” Why is it so humid anymore. We've heard about global warming stuff, but let’s talk a bit about this corn sweat.
Apparently this is legit. A quick search shows corn sweat is what is called transevaporation, wait check that, evapotransportation, no that’s what they did on Star Trek, evapotranspiration. Yeah. That’s it!
So these 13 million acres of corn in Iowa all get together and, with their root straws, suck moisture from the ground and these cocky stalks blast that back into the atmosphere in the form of water vapor. The heat keeps that water vapor close to the ground where we bake in it. Then we give off water that stinks really bad and screws up our damn hats!
I mean, I sat at Brian Mohrfeld’s wonderful Holganix Midwest event this week (and he should rent out that board room. Wow!) and learned from a really long congratulations speech from Iowa Deputy Ag Secretary Grant Menke that Iowa’s ag economy rules - but I think all these seed dealers owe me a new lid.
And speaking of ag guys, Joel Bobb texted me last week and said I forgot my tagline on last week’s Beside the Point. For the first time in almost 10 years I forgot the tagline. Welp, Joel, that really is Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com. You can also send me a letter or free hats to P.O. Box 366, Fort Madison, Iowa 52627.