Hear the Corn Grow – Hidden Language
Hidden Language
“Hear the Corn Grow” (S1, E2)
Released September 15, 2021
JAY: When he was a boy, my Uncle Dave spent a lot of time on his grandfather’s farm. One still and warm July evening, Uncle Dave and great-grandfather—both exhausted and sore from a hot day’s work baling hay—sat on the front porch of the old farmhouse in Central Pennsylvania.
MUSIC “Autumn Sunset” begins
The thick summer air delivered far-off sounds: the machine-gunning jakebrake slowing a semitruck descending into the nearby town, the low of cattle in some distant pasture, a lonesome locomotive engine crossing the Juniata River.
His grandfather leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and cocked his head.
GRANDFATHER: “Do you hear that?”
JAY: My Uncle Dave narrowed his eyes and listened. He heard birds, of course—the swallows and their watery chirps diving and gliding as they gobbled up bugs. But they did that every evening at that time, hardly remarkable. Crickets? No, too early in the evening. Maybe that frog near the springhouse? No, not out either. He looked back to his grandfather and shook his head.
The old man juked his chin toward the cornfield across the gravel drive.
GRANDFATHER: “The corn. Go on out there and listen. Tell me what you hear.”
JAY: Uncle Dave walked down the porch steps, crossed the gravel, and crouched next to the young corn. The weather had worked in their favor throughout the spring and early summer. By Independence Day, the stalks had already grown well beyond the old country adage of “knee-high by the Fourth of July.” Uncle Dave leaned in closer to the corn and listened.
His grandfather, still watching, rose from the chair.
GRANDFATHER: “Do you hear it?”
JAY: When Uncle Dave now tells this part of the story, he acknowledges that what’s coming will be hard to believe. But he promises that it’s true, that when he knelt next to that corn and listened—when he really listened—he heard… something.
MUSIC ends, we hear a faint SQUEAK, followed by another, then another…
JAY: Every ten or so seconds, seemingly throughout the rows of corn, he listened squeak by squeak.
Uncle Dave rose and walked up the porch steps.
UNCLE DAVE: “I heard something, like little squeaks.”
JAY: His grandfather smiled.
GRANDFATHER: “That’s right, that’s right. What you heard was the corn grow. You can sit right here and listen to the corn grow, you just have to teach yourself how to hear it.”
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