By LaRayne Topp

    Ron Wolverton peels back the thin, green husk to reveal what’s beneath. He takes a bite of it, raw. It’s sweet and crisp and flavorful. It’s just right. Just the right amount of readiness for the Wolvertons’ annual Sweetcorn and Hamburger Feed. Located in northeast Nebraska, the small community of Pilger is home to an overflow event each year where its guests can sample the sweet ears for themselves.
    For the past 20 years, Ron and Barb Wolverton, plus their volunteers, have put on a corn feed to rival all corn feeds. They do it to raise money for a special project: the town’s pool. By 2027 they plan to have the bill for the new pool paid down to zero.
    The numbers tell the story. In 2022, the event drew in around 1,200 people. The kitchen volunteers used 1,008 slices of cheese for cheeseburgers. The local Midwest Bank used 39 gallons of ice cream dishing up root beer floats, and still ran out. In one day, more than $27,000 was raised, including a matching grant from the Louis and Abby Faye Dinklage Foundation, plus donations from local individuals and businesses. As with every year, 100 percent of the proceeds go to the pool.
    But the story actually begins in 1956, when the town’s first pool was built, eagerly anticipated and readily used. However, through the years, the pool wore out. Fifty years later, its problems were as numerous as the patches required to keep the pool’s rusted steel liner from yet another leak, contributing to the 5,000-10,000 gallons of water it lost per day.
    In 1996, a group of concerned citizens, led by Pilger’s Nancy Beutler, began raising money for a new pool, utilizing everything from bake sales to Bingo nights.
That’s where the Wolvertons came in. They knew that a lot of money was going to have to be raised to even begin to think about applying for grants for a new pool. They had heard about a community that staged a fund-raiser serving sweet corn and sausages. Ron decided he could plant sweetcorn under his pivot irrigation system; they were already growing beef.
    In 2003, the Wolvertons set up shop one summer evening under a shelter in the Pilger Park, piling sweetcorn and hamburgers onto the plates of whoever showed up. They served 187, and made exactly $1,748.77 in the process. So they kept going.
    In November of 2005, the town passed a bond election. Members of the Pilger community utilized monies raised to write grant applications to help meet the proposed $750,000 tab for a new heated, handicapped-accessible, zero entry pool. A grand opening for the new pool was held in May of 2008.
    The fund-raiser continued to gain momentum. In the early years, volunteers showed up at 5 a.m. to traipse through the Wolvertons’ irrigated, one-and-a-half-acre sweetcorn patch, snapping as many as 14,000 ears of corn from the stalks, keeping them overnight in a refrigerated semi-truck. In addition to the corn that was shucked to serve, people also took home some of the ears in the husk to eat or freeze.
    Now, raising sweet corn is no simple task—not once the raccoons get a whiff of it. Those ornery critters can ruin a patch overnight, and they’re not selective. They’ll pull down ears as they go, taking a bite or two and then moving on to the next stalk, ruining a hoard of ears in the process. To prevent this from happening, the Wolvertons ran the radio in the field 24 hours a day; they also enclosed the sweetcorn patch in four strands of electric wire. Even so, the raccoons crawled under the fence via the trenches left by the wheels of the pivot irrigation system. Those trenches had to be filled with shovelfuls of dirt each time the system made a round.
    But the Wolvertons were persistent. They knew how much the community enjoyed the pool including their three young daughters. Those three girls, Belinda, Kendra and LeAnna, now married, grew up to serve as lifeguards at the Pilger pool.
    As the corn feed grew larger, the event was moved from the park to the town’s firehall. When a tornado destroyed the firehall in 2014, the feed was moved to a nearby town. When a new community center went up in Pilger, the feed had a new venue.
    Eventually the Wolvertons began to ask for donations to pay for supplies, instead of providing everything themselves. They applied for matching-fund grants, and following a damaging hail storm plus a tornado in the same field, Ron and Barb began to purchase corn from  the local Clinch’s Produce instead of growing it themselves.
    Through the years, volunteers from the area have asked how they could become involved. In 2022, as in many years previous, around 70 of these volunteers came early the morning of the feed to husk 3,300 ears of corn. Some of the volunteers included retirees from Stanton County Public Power District which provides Pilger’s electrical power.
    Wade Overturf, Wisner-Pilger FFA advisor, brought his students—26 of them—looking for ways to serve their community. After the ears were husked, they were washed, de-silked and inspected as they were run through three, fresh water baths in rows of wading pools.
    In the afternoon before the feed, another 70 volunteers set up on a shady end of Main Street. There are precious bits of shade in Pilger, and there’s a reason for that. In 2014, what the National Weather Service calls a carousel tornado stormed through the center of town, with one tornado twisting around its smirking, evil sister, destroying half the homes there, all of the businesses except for the library, and its trees—a multitude of tall and shady trees. However, the far ends of Main Street escaped that onslaught and the cooks chose one end of Main Street to establish their cooking space.
    One group utilized large charcoal grills, frying hamburgers to perfection. Nearby was another crew, layering as many as 90 burgers at a time into a rotisserie smoker fed with apple, oak and hickory hardwood, smoking their burgers to perfection, as well. It wasn’t about competition, just making the best burgers possible. This year, that added up to exactly 1,554 perfect burgers.
    Other volunteers cooked ears of corn in turkey fryers, after which the ears were dipped in vats of melted butter.
    “One hundred percent butter!” as Barb explained.
    Still others used utility task vehicles or side-by-sides to transport the cooked corn and burgers to the community building where even more volunteers filled plates, served attendees, and bussed tables.
    Some of these volunteers have donated their time to the project for the past 20 years. One of them is Ron Siecke of Pilger. When asked why he volunteers his time, he had a number of reasons: “For the town. For the pool. For the camaraderie.” And perhaps, most importantly, “Because it’s fun.”
    Even though the 2014 tornado stole half the town’s homes, as many as 75-100 kids bring their swimsuits and beach towels each year for swimming lessons at the Pilger pool, many from surrounding communities. Those coming to eat sweetcorn and burgers are given a chance to purchase raffle tickets for free swimming lessons for next year. They also have the opportunity for an evening of free swimming the night of the feed.
    In 2022, the Sweetcorn and Hamburger Feed, held annually the first Wednesday in August, brought in enough to bump up the total raised to more than $222,000. That means that this year, the event will be held on August 2.
    Wolverton is stubborn, he says, and plans to keep at it until the pool is completely paid off. Volunteers have promised to keep working at it as long as the Wolvertons do.
    And in the end, they will all enjoy the sweet taste of having helped to provide the town of Pilger with a new community pool.