A Yankee, a Foreigner, and the Texas Holy Trinity

There I was, taking the back roads toward New Braunfels with a newfound possible friend in the passenger seat.

I had known her for approximately thirty minutes.

I told her I was heading to New Braunfels to make some returns and could drop her off first.

“No, that’s okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

And that was how she became my temporary passenger, possible new friend, and companion for every errand I had planned that late afternoon.

As we were driving, the wind suddenly threw open the door of a portable construction toilet sitting beside the busy road.

Fortunately, it was unoccupied.

The portable toilet had apparently grown tired of modesty and decided to expose itself to traffic.

We both jumped.

“What the fuck?”

Then we started laughing so hard that the exhibitionist toilet immediately became the first shared memory of our thirty-minute friendship.

We continued toward New Braunfels, surrounded by endless cornfields. She had never been there before, so I was giving her the scenic agricultural tour while we got to know each other.

That was when she told me that her boyfriend and one of his friends had once Robin Hooded corn from a field outside Dallas.

They worked their way around the outer edges, filled their trunks, kept some for themselves, and drove around distributing the rest to people who sold corn on the street.

It was theft, but with community outreach.

Funny how life works: one of the men they generously donated the stolen corn to turned out to be the owner of the very cornfield they had stolen it from.

They had unknowingly returned part of the harvest to its original source.

As we continued along the back roads, surrounded by rows and rows of corn, I looked over at her.

“Do you notice something or maybe something you don’t notice?”

“What?”

“There aren’t any scarecrows.”

She looked out the window.

“You’re right. There aren’t.”

It was strange. Miles of cornfields, but not a single scarecrow standing guard.

“You know what?” I said. “Now I really want to know why there aren’t any scarecrows.”

Out of excitement, I immediately spotted a farmer standing near one of the fields and violently swung the car to the right.

The farmer immediately ran to the left.

He thought I was going to hit him.

I was not trying to hit him. My excitement had simply taken control of the accelerator.

The car went slightly into the cornfield.

I parked, got out, and began removing pieces of corn husk from my windshield while the farmer stood there at a distance staring at me.

This was not the entrance I had planned.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Farmer. I’ll pay for all the corn I just ran over.”

“If you want to keep driving around like this is a NASCAR circuit, you’re welcome to,” he said. “I’ll bill you after your last lap.”

Then he began walking toward us.

“We’re armed,” I warned him.

“So am I!” he yelled back.

“What are two pretty ladies doing out here?” he asked. “Shouldn’t y’all be somewhere braiding a pony’s hair?”

“Farmer, we have so many questions we’re dying to ask you. We were hoping you could help us.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Well”

“You only get three.”

“First question: Are you a genie?”

“No.”

“That sounds exactly like something a genie would say. Although I was hoping you’d say, ‘I’ll grant you three wishes.’”

“Anyway, we want to know why there’s an exhibitionist toilet sitting beside a busy road and why none of these cornfields have scarecrows.”

“Well,” the farmer said, “the toilet is how the construction company keeps tabs on its employees.”

“Through the toilet?”

“It’s so windy here that they only have a few seconds before the door bursts open. That keeps them productive. They have to finish their business and get back to work before the entire highway sees their business.”

It was an outdoor employee-monitoring system.

“And the scarecrows?” I asked. “Why aren’t there even any of the mechanical Halloween kind?”

“Jeepers Creepers gave scarecrows a bad reputation,” he explained. “People became afraid they might actually be possessed, so the farmers stopped using them.”

Apparently, the agricultural industry had responded by replacing scarecrows with real human beings who clocked in, stood in the fields, and received a fifteen-minute break every few hours.

Then the union became involved.

It became too expensive, there were concerns about working conditions, and the farmers had to start respecting the constitutional rights of the people hired to frighten birds.

Eventually, it became far too much trouble.

“So now,” the farmer said, “we genetically modify the corn until the crows stay away on their own.”

The corn had apparently become so genetically modified that even the birds could smell the toxicity.

“I don’t really care about the corn around the edges,” the farmer said. “That’s the poisonous corn.”

“The poisonous corn?”

“That’s the corn people usually steal. Sometimes it takes years for the poison to kick in and do its job.”

My potential new friend’s eyes widened. The color drained from her face.

“Mr. Farmer, do I still have to pay for all that slow-acting poisonous corn I just ran over?

“Of course you do,” he said. “Somebody has to pay for all that karma.”

“So,” the farmer said, looking between us, “a Yankee and a foreigner.”

“You’re very observant for someone with only half an eye,” I replied.

“How long have y’all known each other?” he asked.

“About thirty minutes.”

“Aha! You got yourself a hitchhiker.”

“No…”

“Great,” he said. “A hitchhiker and a foreigner.”

“But she was born in this state,” I said. “She’s native to the land.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Native?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it. Tell me the three-word code.”

“Whataburger. H-E-B. Buc-ee’s,” she said, annoyed.

The farmer seemed pleased.

Before we left, I told him, “Listen, I’m preparing to move out of Texas. Would you be interested in adopting a chicken?”

“I could use another worker,” he said. “What are his qualifications?”

“Well, he sings, he dances, and he knows his way around town.”

“An entertainer could raise morale among the other animals,” he said. “Then again, it might create jealousy. They could all start competing to outshine one another in their assigned fields.”

“It could lead to a farm civil war.”

He looked thoughtfully across the corn, as though reminiscing about the old South.

“Let me think about it.”