With an unexpected morning off tours I turned on Netflix and landed immediately upon Stephen King’s latest film, Into the Tall Grass. It had me at hello since one of scariest moments of my life was, while in university, finding myself lost in cornfield near Hershey, PA with my preschool aged niece and nephew.
Tall corn is confusing. I lost all sense of direction and, after a bit of wandering about in circles, was partially okay with dying there but didn’t want to go down in family lore as the uncle that led a niece and nephew to their deaths. We got out and, no worries, my charges were so young that everything in world was much bigger than them and they didn’t remember a thing of the day beyond going out for ice cream afterwards.
Into the Tall Grass starred today’s version of the middle aged Bette Davis, middle aged Patrick Wilson, who, like Miss Davis, will star in any horror movie that gives him above the title credits and his own trailer.
In the film, the characters arrive upon fields of tall grass, eventually tricked by children’s voices into entering to spend eternity lost in time and space endlessly repeating their life’s mistakes until they die, again and again. I didn’t get lost in the validity of a time/space continuum as I was simply baffled why anyone thought it was normal to grow acres of grass for as far as the eye could see. Grass isn’t a crop, like the corn is!
For as far as I could see, all the characters (including the dog) got what was coming to them as we all (including Stephen King) know scary children grow in corn, not grass.
Ah the magic of corn!
Early man in Mexico felt the gods created the first man out of mud, but mud man didn’t sing and dance to appease the gods so he was destroyed by rain. Same goes for man made from wood which lightning was created to burn and destroy them. Third time was the charm, as man made from corn could sing and dance so he/she (Hershey?) was a keeper!
That’s why it is illegal for Monsanto to genetically modify corn in Mexico, it is the beginning of life.
Ironically, I was meeting salsa pals that afternoon for a surprise. Given a corner to be picked up on, I assumed it was my annual surprise birthday party in a new venue. I was right and, oh, so wrong.
We loaded up the truck and went out to the countryside near the village of Banda. (For those hooked on GPS, Banda is nearly always misidentified as Panda, like in bear.) It is a simply lovely site!
As the fairer sex gathered firewood we lads went hunting for corn. Instead of my misadventure with the under a meter set, I was reminded of how my father’s best pal was a farmer back in Hershey, PA.
As a little kid, I adored going out to corn fields on weekends with the older, and cooler, teens to pick out corn ripe for the picking.
My salsa dancer pals were surprised I knew how to pick corn. I had no fears of getting lost as since there is much less summer rain here than Pennsylvania, the corn stalks were few and far between enabling a view for miles. Stephen King would have no fun here.
For all the times I attended corn field parties where my danzon dance students worked in fields around Comonfort, the corn was always hard as a rock and needed mayonnaise, cheese, limes and anything else you could apply to make it edible. The corn near Banda was multi-colored and much more succulent.
Despite the tasty corn and having a happier feeling towards agriculture in general, as the sun set I was more than anxious to go back into San Miguel. Though the logical side of me knew coyotes don’t attack humans in a group drunkenly singing songs, I knew, like being in a field of grass, we’d one by one peel off and get picked off by the children of the corn, or coyotes, along the way!
Suffice to say we were back in San Miguel early. Why press your luck with the magic of corn?
by Joseph Toone
- TripAdvisor’s top tour guide in San Miguel de Allende with History and Culture Walking Tours and Joseph Toone Tours.
- Amazon’s best selling author of the San Miguel de Allende’s Secrets book series on history, holidays, tours and living in San Miguel.
