DEAR TABBY: I want to impress my girlfriend and take her on a trip this summer, but being a student and working only part time, I'm on a tight budget. I thought it would be fun to do something different and take in some agri-entertainment by driving to some nearby corn mazes! I was hoping you'd lend me your "silky ear" and give me your opinion on whether you think my friend would enjoy this type of vacation or whether she would think it was lame or just creepy. Also, are there typically a lot of corn snakes in the cornfields this time of year? SMOOTH AS SILK (HOPEFULLY)
DEAR SMOOTH AS SILK: You kind of sound like a "stalker" with the "silky ear" comment! To tell you the truth, going through a corn maze can be really fun or really creepy! It is certainly a popular theme in films, books, TV shows, and video games. Movies such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Children of the Corn, or Signs are good examples. A lot of TV shows have featured someone getting lost in a cornfield, like The Simpsons or The Middle. The Tick had villainous sunflowerman El Seed raise an army out of an evil cornfield maze! In the Stephen King story, The Stand, a number of characters dream about being chased through a cornfield by the Dark Man. No explanation is needed for The Goosebumps book, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight! There are some cornfields you can visit that are "haunted" by people dressed up in costume! Imagine that at night!
Iowa is the Tall Corn State! Don Radda of Washington, Iowa, put all arguments to rest in the 1940s when officials from various Midwestern states claimed they were the tall corn state. In 1946, Don grew a stalk of corn 31 feet and 7/8ths inch tall. It still stands as the world record. Radda's cornstalk was in Ripley's Believe It or Not, Guinness Book of World Records, Britannica Encyclopedia, newspapers, and magazines all over the United States, including LIFE. To preserve the history, a welding shop in Washington made the metal sculpture replica of the world's tallest cornstalk by Don Radda, the World's Tall Corn King and Iowa's first Master Corn Grower. Radda's daughter, Julie Zieser, lives and farms on the family farm north of Washington. She has had a dream of replicating the corn stalk.
Visiting a corn maze is being called agri-entertainment and it's big business! For the last 15 years, corn mazes have become a popular way for farms in both North America and Europe to make money both to sustain their farms. In fact, a corn maze can earn up to five times more than the farmer could make growing corn for food. If a farmer planted three acres of corn, he would make around $10,000, but if those three acres were turned into a corn maze, the farmer could make around $50,000! If the farmer doesn't have time or the know-how to do a good maze, they can hire a company like The Maize out of Salt Lake City, Utah, who has done a few thousand mazes since 1996. The cost is between $2,000 and $10,000 for each maze. Let's check out some of these mazes.
This is a Harry Potter maze built by farmer Tom Pearcy in York, England.
Nevada farmer Rick Lattin hired The Maize company last year in order to get consumers to support local farmers. An aerial photo ended up being posted on the official blog of the White House!
This corn maze is a tribute to Chris Ledoux (a rodeo champion and a popular country singer who died in 2005), made in 2007 in Lasalle, Colorado:
This Oprah maze was made in 2004, located in Queens Creek, Arizona:
This one is my favorite from Lasalle, Colorado:
I guess it's true that "If you build it, they will come." In Dyersville, Iowa, Universal Studios built the famous field for Field of Dreams (Academy Award nominee for "Best Picture of the Year") in just four days during the summer of 1988 at the century-old Lansing family farm. You can now visit this magical site and bata few balls, play a little catch, run the bases, or sit and dream on the bleachers. Now, doesn't that sound romantic?
Corn snakes, sometimes called red rat snakes, are most abundant in Florida and the southeastern U.S. They got their name both from the pattern on their belly, which looks like Indian corn, and from old southern farmers who stored their harvested corn in wooden buildings called cribs. Rats and mice were attracted to the cribs to feed on the corn, and corn snakes were attracted to the cribs to feed on the rodents (which can spread diseases and damage food crops).Like most snakes, corn snakes would rather not see you as much as you'd rather not see them. They are nonvenomous, but resemble the copperhead, which is very venomous.
Remember to wear comfortable shoes on your journey, Smooth as Silk,or you might end up with painful corns or calluses on your feet (not so smooth)!
Let's watch Bugs Bunny sing Jimmy Cracked Corn (And I Don't Care), but Tabby cares:
It would be as "corn sweet" to watch Donald Duck and those darling chipmunks in Corn Chips:
Iowa is the Tall Corn State! Don Radda of Washington, Iowa, put all arguments to rest in the 1940s when officials from various Midwestern states claimed they were the tall corn state. In 1946, Don grew a stalk of corn 31 feet and 7/8ths inch tall. It still stands as the world record. Radda's cornstalk was in Ripley's Believe It or Not, Guinness Book of World Records, Britannica Encyclopedia, newspapers, and magazines all over the United States, including LIFE. To preserve the history, a welding shop in Washington made the metal sculpture replica of the world's tallest cornstalk by Don Radda, the World's Tall Corn King and Iowa's first Master Corn Grower. Radda's daughter, Julie Zieser, lives and farms on the family farm north of Washington. She has had a dream of replicating the corn stalk.
