Twelve years ago, my hometown spent 1.5 million dollars on corn. Not the kind you can eat, mind you, but big metal stalks in the middle of a roundabout. Not a roundabout people used, either. When the installation was installed, the roundabout was on the northernmost part of town, five stalks of corn, each ten feet tall in the middle of a roundabout with only a single entrance and exit.
Why did they do this? There are a number of reasons, but the most pertinent is a requirement that we spend money on art if we’re going to take federal funding, and we wanted that federal funding. So, corn stalks. Why corn? Because it’s Iowa, and we are a mockery of ourselves.
The sculpture doesn’t have an official name, but everyone I know refers to it as “cornhenge”. Some people scoff at the name, and insist that it shouldn’t be called that (they of course have no better alternatives), or claim ignorance, as if they can’t piece together what “cornhenge” could possibly refer to.
Iowa has a reputation for being full of nice people. We have an entire Wikipedia page about how nice we are. It’s the kind of nice where if you see a stranger who needs help, you offer help. The kind of nice where you never ask for help, but hint about it, knowing that someone else will pick up the slack if they can. The kind of nice that bears with it an expectation of three refusals. Do you want the last cookie? Oh, I couldn’t possibly. Are you sure? Go for it. It’s yours if you want it. Oh, if you insist, we can split it. There’s a lot of beating around bushes in Iowa.
My child had never been to Iowa until we took him over Memorial day. What’s it like, he asked. I explained about the niceness, and about the bush-beating, and about the corn. He wanted to see Cornhenge, as he’d never seen a henge before. I promise we’re overselling it, my wife and I insisted. He wanted to see it anyway.
That’s how I found myself in the middle of a roundabout on a rainy Friday morning. It had grown. What was once remote, with corn fields on three sides, was now a flourishing slice of suburbia, with new developments and proper cross streets. The roundabout had a full three exits, with room for a fourth underway.
My hopes were riding in the moment. This was my hometown. I was showing it to my kid. Would it live up to expectation? Would any of us? I parked in the empty exit, just before the danger sign.
We got out of the car and I immediately stepped in a puddle, soaking my foot to the sock. Not a very prodigious start! Undeterred, we rain to the henge in the middle, dwarfed by the ten-foot-tall pillars of metal corn and squished together into the classic selfie pose. My wife reached her arm out as far as it would go, and before she could snap off a single digital frame, a passing car slowed down. “Do you want me to take your picture?” a woman called out.
“Please!” She pulled over, right next to us, and took our phone. “And do you want me to get Cornhenge in the background?”
I was home. The first car saw us with a problem they could help with. Iowa nice. She called it Cornhenge. Just like us. This was Iowa, exactly how I’d describe it.
Did it live up to expectations? Well, he wants to go back, and next time to bring a friend.