Dispatch from the Empire Builder: Corn, the grain that makes our nation great!

"Jack, I'll tell you, after this trip if I never see a damned cornstalk again it will be too soon! What in the name of Aunt Donna's davenport do we need all this corn for?" "Well, corn chips, corn bread, corn..." "It was a rhetorical question, Jack--do you know what that is? Did they teach you to investigate that?" Dolly-Girl was getting cranky after too much time in the mid-section of our land..."And quit calling me Dolly-girl, I have a perfectly good name." Cranky. As in cranky as Uncle Bill's Model T. "OK, Fiora, F-I-O-R-A, as in eff-eye-oh-are-eh, but think of everything corn brings to the U.S. of A. Look at those grain storages we are passing by--jobs!. Look at that sun on that corn." "I don't see any stinking corn..." "Well, there was some there a week ago..." "Oh for the sake of Isabelle's eyeball, Jack. It brings high-fructose corn syrup, obesity, animal confinement, cholesterol..." "There's no cholesterol in corn, Fi..." " ...I know that Jack...pesticides, global warming..." "OK, Fi-Or-Ah. I get it. You are up to your gullet with Middle America, as represented by Zea mays (and the should be italicized). I'll go find the conductor and tell him to get this train rolling!" "For the sake of Uncle Mike's mandolin, make it so..."