I did a couple of times. Playing hide and seek was totally a blast!
When you’re four or five those corn stalks are the size of small trees, or at least they seem like they are. And then you tie in how finite things at that age seem infinite (like being in a row boat on a lake and being mesmerized at how the landscape underneath disappears into a dark world of mystery) … and you’ve got the makings of great fun and wonder!
I can’t imagine how fantastic it would be to live in Nebraska, with all those giant corn fields that are like vast, green oceans. A little kid would go wild with joy to play in those beauties!!
Does anyone else relate to corn fields and the fun of getting lost in them?
Actually… cornfields scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I kept imagining getting lost with something sneaking up behind me in that huge silent grid of rustly stalks. Probably some Children of the Corn related imagery didn’t help, either
My grandparents owned a lot of farmland in Nebraska (Kenesaw). So when we were kids, that was where we played – it was either that, or continually have to run away from the eeeeevil peacocks the next-door farm let roam around. Nasty, evil birds.
Anyway, corn fields are fun and all to play in. Until you’re old enough to help tassle the corn. Which is not fun and not play, and if you’re related to the farm owners, you don’t get paid even the pittance they pay to do it. And we were related to everybody that lived near my grandparents.
Fortunately, we lived in Lincoln most of our younger years, so my brother and I only got shanghai’d into tassling corn during our vacation time visiting the grandparents. My cousins, who lived in the area, got to do that all the time – particularly since my uncle ran some Coop grain elevators, too.
Gleaning ears of popping corn from harvested fields was always a treat, though. Plus, fresh corn, all the time. Yum.
Yes, the corn fields look like great seas of green – I remember everything seeming so wide-open and BIG from my childhood. You could really see the horizon there, like when you’re at sea. But it’s really the wind I remember (and miss) the most, which was even more fun after the fields had been harvested and there was nothing in the way of the wind as far as you could see.
Corn fields and the oats too. We used to make paths in the oats by crawling along and trying to sneak up on each other. My uncles didn’t like it because it laid the plants down and although they usually straightened up they didn’t always and we could knock down a lot of oats.
Corn fields were cool - a little creepy, a little snug - You could be invisible if you wanted, but others could be invisible too - hide and seek rocked!
Me and my buddies ran around a cornfield new Bewdley in Worcestershire, playing chase, and generally having a good time trampling the crops.
Then we were shot at by the farmer with a shotgun.
(I think he shot in the air to scare us, but aged 8 it didn’t seem so.) We hit the deck and crawled a long, long way to the woods at the edge and ran away home, shitting ourselves. It was a real Stand By Me moment.
I never did it again - until one night when I was a drunk teen and we tried to make a crop circle.
We stayed out of them. Being all itchy isn’t fun. Once they started pollonating it was even worse. You’re hot, sweaty and the leaves all rub against you, then add a coating of pollen. No thanks, we played in the woods, barn, corn crib, wagon, or other location. The corn field was the last place we’d want to play.
Soy fields pelt you if it’s the right time of the year. We would have gotten in trouble, going in an oats field or soybean. Anything that made the field less productive was a big no no.
No corn fields where I grew up but there were sugarcane fields right next to our school, and the experience was about the same. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw on bit of cane. We joked about putting together a Hawaiian remake of Stephen King, “Keikis of the Cane”.
I wasn’t so little a few years ago when friends did a corn maze. After Halloween we had way too much beer one night and decided to take a golf cart in the maze.
The cart didn’t have lights. My stomach hurt the next morning from laughing so hard.
Oh sure, a green cornfield is great fun to run through, until you come out of the cornfield and realize you have about a thousand tiny papertcuts on your legs arms and face from the corn leaves. Some are so nasty they bubble up a little blood… not only are they painful in that subtle papercut way, they are itchy, as well.
