Bob's Corn Maze of Silty Death

Well folks... it's been SLOOOOW lately. Not much excitement from the road, or the home front. So its story time...about two innocent boys named Ayric and Phil and what happened on a dark and rainy night about a year ago.

Phil (good friend, co-condo-dweller, and awesome cook) invited me just about a year ago to attend a "singles and young couples" gathering hosted by some great folks from his church. This particular event was quite well attended and I met some nice people over dinner and a few drinks. All well and good, until the second part of the evening. You know how in horror films how everything seems too good, too quiet, too happy at the start? Same thing here...

Flash-even-more-back... Phil and I had attended a conference earlier that day at another Church in town. While not in our Sunday best, we weren't slouches either. I was wearing a new pair of black Rockports for the event. This important to remember, as I retell that fateful evening.

As the meal wraps up, the announcement goes out that people will be departing shortly for the Corn Maze. I guess you could say I grew up in the "city" only if by growing up in the country means you visited a corn maze. I had not. Phil mentioned a Corn Maze and it didn't set off any red flags. I think I imagined something about 12' by 12' for the little kids to run through, daylight streaming though the crisp clear fall air, and lots of hot cider and pumpkins around. I was right about the pumpkins.

My radar started to register the impending doom of our situation when people started changing. They wore pretty typical street casual wear at the meal. Now they came back looking like they were either going to a Gallagher concert or an all-you-can-eat ribs night at Tony Roma's. Boots were offered, but they were kid's size 5, not the ski size 14 that I needed.

So we drive out to the country. By now it's quite dark (being fall and all). Eventually we arrive at Farmer Bob's Corn Maze. The place is packed! I'm starting to feel better thinking that it's not as bad as people were thinking. However no sooner had this thought come to my mind than, Farmer Bob drove his John Deer out of the darkness, up the road from his "maze", with some of the most miserable people heaped on to his hay trailer. Imagine about 20-30 folks, looking like they had been pulled out of the North Atlantic, bouncing, flopping and flailing around on a very unsafe hay trailer. All of them looked dressed for a season of crabbing off the coast of Alaska. Also, it started to rain. I had only a leather jacket.

At this point, I'm certain that I won't be going into Bob's little sick trap. I'm smarter than that... I know when I've not adequately prepared for an undertaking and this was the mother of all inadequately prepared undertakings! I decide its time for my hot cider, which I am a huge fan of. I get my cup of apple-ly goodness when I notice that Bob either had a bad corn/pumpkin crop or was a protégé of P.T Barnum. He’s CHARGING for his hellish ride and soul-stealing adventure. I turn to Phil and I say that there is NO WAY I’m paying 5 bucks to get dumped a dark and rainy corn field wearing my new dress shoes and only a leather jacket. Oh and we don’t even have a flashlight. The moment the last syllable was out of my mouth… this gal in our group literally appears out of thin air, right in front of me, and says in a very loud voice, “What?! Are you CHEAP?!” At this point the whole joint goes quiet and all eyes are on me. I got called out… and pride goes before the fall. I pay my five bucks, grab a map, find the complementary “galoshes” (plastic grocery bags… I doubled bagged each foot) and someone was kind enough to give us a glow stick for light. We all load up on Farmer Bob’s sadistic hay trailer and go bounding down the dark, muddy road to our eventual doom.

The ride took years off my life. Imagine standing on a drenched wooden floor and dropping down into corn field much like the waterfalls in Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. I was certain that if I had fallen off the cart at this point, my body would have never been found. (which made me wonder if there were previous passengers missing). There was mud EVERYWHERE. Oh yeah, Farmer Bob’s wicked maze was on a silty flood plain. The trailer is basically drug through the sloppy mess. Finally we stop… in practically the pitch dark.

With trusty glow stick in hand, we have to walk to the front of the maze. Phil and I team up with another guy Andrew to help tackle this Herculean task. Before we start, I try to orient myself using the map. Holding the weak glow light next to the paper I can make out patches of light green, and lighter green. It looks like we fell pray to another one of Farmer Bob’s evil jokes. Instead of getting an actual aerial shot of the 4 acre maze, he just got a 9 foot ladder to just crest the tops of the 8 foot corn and snapped a picture. This was then photocopied, faxed, photocopied again, thrown in the garbage, fished out, faxed and then photocopied to make what was called "the map". Basically, I could see the parts of the maze that went North-South, but nothing that went East-West. So we started off. The trick was to essentially cross country ski using plastic-bag feet and sliding through the silt. If you were to lift a foot off the ground the other would instantly lose traction and send you on your butt.

Holding the weak green glow stick as high as I could and skiing through slit, we come to our first fork in the road. Farmer Bob strikes again with agricultural questions. He must be doing night classes for his PhD in Gourd Sciences and Corn Landscaping with an emphasis in Bad Ideas. The questions are something like, “If you grow corn on a 72 hectares of land and pumpkins on a 3 square mile patch with a train leaving Chicago at 8:45pm going 55 mph, how many people could you bilk for five bucks?” You were then given a list of answers with corresponding directions. So the answer “1-1000” would have been “go back”, “1000-3000” was “left”, “3000-6000” was “right” and “depends how many fell off the hay trailer” was “start digging”

Luckily Farmer Bob is not used to someone who got though college on multiple choice tests. And of course Phil knew a lot of the answers despite going to college for Finance. I suspect that he hung out with a lot of 4H’ers back in the day.

Well after a harrowing hour, we found our way out, and we were the first. Not that anyone noticed. We gathered our band of brave souls and headed back in Farmer Bob’s muddy death sled. Getting back to the relative safety and civilization of the barn, I got a chance to see the damage to the shoes. They were coated in mud, but a good spray down got them back in shape, not too much worse for wear.

So what’s the moral of the story? Always be prepared. Rural folks are a lot more crafty than you think. If a gal calls you cheap, tell her that you are, save $5 and possibly your life.