The first time I learned my cornfield had become the biggest fall attraction in Cedar County, a woman I had never met was pounding a wooden sign into my soil.
The sign said the corn maze opened Saturday.
I was standing ten feet away holding the deed to the farm.
And nobody had asked me.
“Sir, you can’t park there,” the woman shouted.
I looked behind me.
My Ford F-250 was sitting on the gravel lane my grandfather had built in 1964.
“Where exactly would you like me to park?”
She pointed toward my south pasture.
“General parking is over there. Vendors go behind the barn.”
I stared at her orange volunteer vest.
Then at the temporary fencing stretching across my field.
Then at the portable toilets lined beside my irrigation shed.
Someone had driven forty steel posts into my ground.
Orange flags marked parking rows.
Three rented carnival tents
