The Corn Stalker

We are enjoying a wonderful Indian Summer this year, but a bit more each day fall is peeking from behind the clouds and leaving little reminders behind. Just little nudges that say this sun won’t last too much longer and the warmth will soon give way to the cool soft rains of early winter and maybe an early frost. Trees are trading in thir summer dresses for frocks of yellows and oranges and browns, the flowers while still beautiful are blooming much slower.

The heat has been kicking on in the early morning hours and the air feels toasty warm as I leave my open air bedroom and descend the stairs in the morning chill. That first cup of coffee tastes especially good and it’s cozy in my kitchen – an oasis of light in the pre-dawn morning. Dawn is just breaking as I walk George to the door and kiss him good-bye and the temptation is there to crawl back under the covers just awhile longer.

We often joke that we aren’t really very social people. We love having friends and family in our home but when it comes to going out – well, we’d rather not. We were speaking yesterday of the week-end coming up and we have a couple of engagements we have to honor. There is an installation banquet on Friday night for the service club George belongs to and we will go to that. On Saturday, there is a Hawaiian Pig Roast at our Health Club (oxymoron!!)and we’ll be working there.

We also talked about going to a cornfield maize on Sunday. I’ve been wanting to do that for several years and we may as well make a week-end of it. I was thinking about that this morning while printing out a map and directions. I was remembering another early fall day long ago – and another cornfield.

Many southerners drifted north after World War II. Times were hard everywhere, but the north held more promise than the south, which was more economically depressed. There was more industry, more opportunity and more money to be made there. My parents who were barely in their 20’s headed to Chicago at about the same time some other members of our family did – some of my father’s cousins and, eventually and much later, my grandparents.

I went to stay on the farm with my grandparents while my parents were finding lodging and jobs in the north. It was the fall of the year, but I was not yet in school and there was no reason that I couldn’t stay behind for a short while. It was a happy time for me, as it always was when I got to stay with my grandparents. There was so much to do on the farm and they were so quick to let me help and make me feel important and needed.

I remember many things about that particular visit and each memory is a story. This story is about a cornfield.

I loved helping my grandmother with her chores and never got bored with working in the garden, canning, churning butter, feeding chickens, gathering eggs, drawing water at the well and a myriad of other tasks that made up her day. She would always take a short rest during the “hottest part of the day” as she called it. After she had made dinner for my grandfather and me and cleaned the kitchen, she’d take a pan of beans to shell or a basket of mending out to the swing on the front porch and sit in the shade for awhile. This was the one time during the day when boredom would catch up with me and I’d wander off on my own.

Their little farmhouse was white with a tin roof – the most wonderful thing in the world when it rained. I’ve wanted a tin roof my entire adult life just to hear that sound again. The house was surrounded on both sides by fields – cotton on the north and corn on the south. I used to love to go into the cornfield and pretend I was in the deep jungle. I was making my way through the jungle one day keenly on the lookout for wild animals and snakes. The corn was just beginning to tassle and the ripe smell of it was intoxicating. It was at least twice as tall as a adventuresome five year old and provided many hours of entertainment.

I don’t know how long it was before I began to think I might be lost. I suddenly looked around me and the endless sea of cornstalks and realized I didn’t know which way to go. I clearly remember the sweat standing out on my upper lip and wishing for water. Flies that I hadn’t noticed before were buzzing all around and the heat from the sun was merciless. It was somewhere around this time that I became aware that my grandmother’s little dog who had gone into the jungle with me was nowhere to be seen – I was alone and I was lost.

I ran down first one row and then another feeling the panic rising in my throat. I began to cry and my tears mixed with the sweat making my eyes burn. My hair was wet down my back and my bare feet were burning from the heat in the ground. I sat down in the red clay and wondered what to do. I had been gone for such a long time and I knew they were probably looking for me. My grandmother would be angry if they had to stop work to look for me and my grandfather would lose precious daylight hours in the cottonfields.

Still, I was hoping they were looking for me and even began to imagine I heard their voices calling. I began to worry it would get dark and I’d be out there and alone all night with who knew what kind of wild animals. I was in full panic mode.

I struggled to my feet and decided to follow one row just as far as it would take me until somehow I came out of the forest of corn. After traveling some distance, I saw something bright shining behind the tassles of the tall corn in front of me. I couldn’t make out what it was – some reflection and it was blinding me. As I slowly walked toward the brightness, I realized it was the sun reflecting off of my grandparents’ tin roof! It was the most beautiful sight in the world when that little farmhouse took shape in my line of vision as I emerged from the field – the tin roof sparkling in the sun and the slanted roof leading down to the front porch.

As I ran out of the corn jungle I could see my grandmother in the swing shelling beans and further past her, the swell of red dust marking my grandfather’s progress as he guided the mule-driven cultivator through the cottonfield. No one had even thought of looking for me. As I ran up the wooden steps to the coolness of the front porch my grandmother smiled at me as she slowly swung back and forth. “There’s a glass of sweet tea here on the table for you Patalija. Get it and then come sit by me here and cool down.”

My grandmother turned 99 recently and I was so thankful to share that day with her. I will think of her on Sunday when I come home and fix myself a glass of tea.