Thursday, August 07, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Goldberg: Children of the corn

By Tod Goldberg

I'm standing in a cornfield in eastern Nebraska and I'm trying to figure out how it went so awfully wrong. I think it started when I decided I might close my eyes and spin in a circle for a moment just to feel the nature and the corn and all the living stuff, which, if you know me, is contrary to everything that is primarily true about my being: I'm a bourgeois pig, I drive an SUV and my idea of Valhalla is Page 29 of the current Pottery Barn catalogue, Dr. Dre and TiVoing ESPN Classic. So how did I end up lost in a cornfield, my legs crawling with Day-Glo-green grasshoppers?

I was abducted by a cult. But not really, as Shel Silverstein once said.

Lately, I've worked as a consultant for an environmental group, leading a class of their Fellows in a workshop on writing, covering various topics from personal essays to opinion pieces to speeches to PowerPoint presentations regarding a long-valued pair of Birkenstocks. During the course of this class, I've learned that my previous stereotype of who these people were (see the sentence regarding Birks) was uniquely false. My worst fears posited them as Greenpeace activists in some bad eco-terrorism movie or proto-Haightliens, ex-hippies struggling to find their place in a world of...well...go check out the Haight sometime and you'll see what they're struggling against.

But like I said, I was wrong.

These are executive environmentalists--yeah, they wear Birks, but they also sport Ph.D.s like some people wear charm bracelets: as an accoutrement that you are aware of but which does not demand your attention at all times. And what I found was that they were the most enjoyable people to teach because they were making me learn things, too. So when they invited me out to Nebraska to lead a seminar at their annual retreat, I accepted readily...before really thinking about the fact that it was in Nebraska. All I really knew about Nebraska I'd learned from Bruce Springsteen and the movie Boys Don't Cry and neither painted the state in the finest Impressionist colors.

Here's what I know now:

1. Per capita, Nebraska has more glittery billboards calling abortion murder than any state in the Union.

2. They eat something called Chicken Fried Chicken, which doesn't make a lot of logical sense. Because a chicken-fried steak is a steak fried like chicken, ergo, a chicken-fried chicken would just be, and please write to let me know if I'm wrong, fried chicken. Right?

3. Families in Nebraska, like dead people everywhere else, tend to settle in groups and in sporty outfits. There were two families I met in Nebraska--the Fightin' McBrides and the Blue Eye Shadow At All Costs Dunlops--and they each had decided to wear fantastic (red) tops and delicious (boot-flared) acid-washed jeans.

At the retreat itself, I learned that these Ph.D.s were more than just names and faces and worldwide causes. They were also maniacs. I met a man named Omar who told me about his great love of collecting roadkill in Libya and about how hitchhikers find it very off-putting to sit beside a squashed cat or a gutted six-foot lizard.

"When they find out I'm an American," he said, "it seems to make a lot of sense to them."

I met a man named Jim who informed me that lions wouldn't eat your face or feet. He also informed me that he once owned a van replete with a full-sized bed and that for a year solid he played only the J. Geils Band in the boomin' system he employed.

"You realize," I said, "you fit the exact profile of a serial killer, right?"

I joined in a group hug and did this weird humming thing that made me feel like I was the center of a harmonic convergence. I also felt that if someone popped out and told me to don a cape, a black jumpsuit and fancy white shoes before drinking a frosty mug of Drano, I just might do it. It was that kinda vibe.

There was crying.

There was heavy drinking.

There was a guy who played "Baby Got Back" through his laptop computer and people of all colors, creeds and orientations danced to it. Kind of.

There was a man named Josh who informed me, quite logically, that you just can't mail yourself a frozen walrus head found in the permafrost of Antarctica and expect the U.S. Postal Service to deliver it.

Which leads me back to this cornfield. I figured if I could walk through a grasshopper-infested cornfield under my own free will, I might just start recycling, stop eating meat and generally live a better, more organic existence. I hadn't anticipated dying before the opportunity presented itself. Beyond the field, I hear the sound of a rising hum and it occurs to me for a brief moment that the environmentalists might have brought me here for nefarious reasons; so if you haven't heard from me by next week, don't come looking in Nebraska. I may be playing baseball in heaven.