Well, we are in Iowa.
The Field of Dreams movie site is a little off the beaten track but well worth the trip if you are a baseball fan or a movie fan. It’s just a few kilometres outside Dyersville, Iowa (home of the National Farm Toy Museum!). Iowa is a beautiful state, often overlooked (it is part of “flyover country”). Think corn fields. Great swaths of them. But the land gently rolls, is spotted with neat and tidy farms, the roadways are great and the vistas beautiful. That being said . . . there are a lot of miles of corn fields!
We arrived on a picture-perfect September 1st: sunshine, lush green grass, corn high and thriving. For Jo it was a trip down memory lane – a previous visit with her family in the late 1990s; both boys are big baseball fans and both have found successful careers working in athletics.
The family that owns the spot (corn farm, farmhouse, baseball diamond) have stayed true to their commitment to keep commercialization to a minimum. They see approximately 55,000 visitors a year from all over the world. Admission is free and there is a modest gift stand. Visitors come to play a little pick up on the field, walk out from the rows of corn, sit on the bleachers or have a picnic lunch. They want people to revel in “the magic” of the place.
The scene is supernaturally serene. A combination of dads and daughters or sons playing catch on the field, the absolute quiet, the unaltered landscape.
A few fun facts:
- The film is based on the book Shoeless Joe by Canadian writer W.P. Kinsella (born in Edmonton).
- Filming took 15 weeks in the summer of 1988. Cast included Kevin Costner, Burt Lancaster, James Earl Jones and Timothy Busfield.
- Kevin Costner (who played Ray Kinsella) carved a heart with “Ray loves Annie” into the top wooden bleacher. It’s still there.
- The corn was an issue during the film shoot schedule. The scenes were filmed in late June and the corn needed to be high but it was much too early in the season. So, water was taken from the creek to irrigate the crops and the corn grew taller than needed. For the scenes where Ray walks through the field of corn, a 12”-high wooden platform was built for the actor to walk along so he’d be above the tall stalks.
