I Was One of the REAL "Children of the Corn"

Oh, My Goodness! They're remaking Steven King's 1984 horror film, "Children of the Corn". Click to read more about it.

Just a little note here...I and all my friends at school were truly Children of the Corn. Every summer we spent weeks in the cornfields, detasseling seed corn. It was hot, sweaty, dirty work. But it paid well since we not only got minimum wage (Oh, Wow!) but we also worked enough hours that those $$ added up to a paycheck large enough to buy school clothes or provide spending money through at least part of the school year. It was a lot better than picking up old pop bottles for 2 cents a bottle! Our second year in the fields we signed up for Social Security numbers and we began paying for our retirement. Children of the Corn we were. Hot, sweaty, tanned and blistered. Children. Beginning to pay our own way. Moving into adulthood at age twelve! But let's move on.

I'm such a name-dropper. I mentioned once before that I once worked for THE Howard Hughes. (I was a lowly lab assistant, fresh out of high school and I never saw the man the entire time I worked there!) That was eons ago. (An eon is a huge number of years.) And I think I've told you that I once toured the locker room of the Denver Broncos. I've shaken hands with Chuck Colson of Watergate and Prison Fellowship fame. (No, I'm not a politician!) And last week I ate dinner at a small steak house and watched George McGovern at the next table over. The world is a small place and I've dropped enough names...let's get on with this corny post about Children of the Corn.

I grew up in the small town in western Iowa where "Children of the Corn" was filmed. I had already entered adulthood by then so, no, I did not appear in that film, either as a major star (I jest!) nor as a lowly extra. I did some previous acting in a one-act play in high school (I had to play "Chopsticks" on the piano...Oh, Yeah, THAT was an experience!) but had no yen to move into the film world. Besides by then I was busy, raising a daughter, working, living. I barely knew the movie was being filmed just up the road a ways.

Besides having no yen to act, I also have no yen to watch horror movies. No, horror movies don't thrill me. And this one wasn't all that highly rated anyway. The film received two thumbs down from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Both found the film extremely distasteful. That's how I view horror films...distasteful. (I'm such a wimp!)

I was thirteen years old when I saw my first horror movie. Everyone in school was talking about it. The local theater (remind me to tell you about the theater sometime) was featuring Steve McQueen in "The Blob". How's that for a moniker for a Horror Movie! The Blob! (Two words. Accent on the second. Draw it out in a deep baritonevoice. The Blahhhhhhhbbb.) It was Halloween and word got around in spite of the fact that texting was yet non-existent and half of us lived in one phone area and half in another, which meant that phone calls to half our friends would be the dreaded "Long Distance" which meant an extra ten cents on the phone bill. Nobody called Long Distance except in events of greatest emergency such as death in a family. (People knew how to be frugal in those days!) But somehow word got around and Everyone knew that EVERYone would be there. So when my oldest brother got permission to drive to town we younger ones got permission to tag along. We were all suitably scared, of course! "The Blob" was, after all, a Horror Movie!

As for "Children of the Corn", I have never seen it. I probably never will. I've seen only one Stephen King movie, "Carrie", and that pretty much eliminated any desire to see more. (Sorry, Mr. King! Nothing personal! It's just that I'm not a fan of this genre!)

So when the remake of "Children of the Corn" comes around I think I'll pass. Maybe, just maybe, if the remake were made again in my old home town, then I just MIGHT go see it. Maybe. Just to see if the old street still looks the same.
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