I find myself in my car, driving around in a rural area.  I’m looking for a field that is supposed to be holding a farmers/flea market.  I see a sign telling me to turn off at the next left. I turn onto a dirt road that leads into a giant hedge maze.  I drive the car through this looking for booths.

I finally find a vegetable booth set up on the side of the road through the maze.  There seems to be a little hedged off area for the booth. I park and go to see what they have. Everything is picture perfect.  In fact, the farmer tells me the photographer is there to take pictures of all the vegetables for the Farmers Marketeer magazine.  He asks me for help picking one of each vegetable. So, I start to wander from each different kind of vegetable, picking the one I think is the most perfect from each group.

I put each one into this sack that the farmer had given me.  It’s about 12” by 12” but it seems to hold an unlimited amount. Finally, I go in back and give the farmer the sack.  He takes out one pepper that is every hue imaginable and sighs. It says it’s the loveliest salad he’s ever seen.

When he puts the pepper down on a white canvas where the photographer has set up, it suddenly becomes a bounty of vegetables.  The photographer starts to take pictures and the farmer leads me back to the booth and starts telling me what he needs done. I wind up working there, putting vegetables into boxes for about an hour.  

The farmer then asks me to drive the boxes of produce to the next booth.  I’m left to load 50 boxes into this little La Car that I had driven in. Somehow, it all fits.  It’s like a vegetable clown car, I think to myself.

After driving through the maze for a few turns, I come to another booth.  This one is a T-Shirt booth, though and she doesn’t want most of the vegetables.  She does take some red, green and yellow peppers because she says they dye the best.  Then she puts me to work silk-screening the T-Shirts with the peppers. She shows me that I have to set the shirt into a frame, then I close a cover that has a pattern cut into it.  She then picks a pepper and rubs it over the screen cover. After hanging the shirt, she moves on to the next one and repeats the process until the pepper is gone

I do this for her for a while and then she comes in and tells me to bring a box of shirts to the next booth down the way.  She tells me she’s already packed me up and upgraded my car. The La Car now has those mega wheels, like on a monster truck and it suddenly has a back end like an el camino. In the back is a giant box marked TSHITS.  I point at the box and ask about the typo. She shrugs and writes the tiniest R above the word with a line to where it should go. Good enough, she says then starts to push me towards the car. It’s so high now, she has to give me a lift up.  She tells me to wait and runs back into the shop. She comes out and gives me a drop ladder to help me get in and out

I drive along and find the next booth.  This booth sells toys and the booth’s owner also doesn’t want the vegetables, or the t-shirts, for that matter.  He shows me around his booth then sets me to work testing the toys in the back. He leaves me a carton of menthols, a glass of lemonade and a bottle of coca cola along with a pile of toys.  Some are cars, some are figures, some are drones, some are dolls. There are all kinds of toys. And my job is to try and break them. I had a great time biting them, trying to tear them apart.  I tried stomping on them and found a pair of scissors that I used to try and destroy them. They all seemed pretty indestructible. While I was zoned right into trying to eradicate one toy, the booth owner comes back and tells me it’s time to move on to the next booth.  He, too, has loaded my car with some toys for the next booth. He’s also added a cab to the back of the el camino and a level above the cab for more storage.

I open the door and the ladder drops down.  I climb in and move on through the maze to the next booth.  

This booth turns out to be a corn booth.  Thankfully, the lady who runs the booth is happy for the vegetables.  She is even happy to take the toys. But she doesn’t like the way the tshirts smell, so she doesn’t want them.  But in order for her to take them, she needs me to sell some corn for her. I look around and ask to whom I should sell the corn to.  She says to just get out front and I would see the people as they came.

As soon as I got out front and stood next to this monstrous pile of unhusked corn, a few people coming walking out of a passage in the maze.  I was surprised and asked if there were many people paths in the hedge. They said sure, they’re all over and that it’s so much quicker than driving.  That figures, I thought. I could have roamed the maze and enjoyed it instead of working everywhere.

They start to fill their bags with corn then they ask me why they should buy it.  I looked at them, perplexed and said What? Sell us the corn, one of them says. Oh, ok, I start.  I look at the corn and pick one up. Well, it’s um, corn. You can eat it (I put it up to my mouth and pretend to take bites out of it, while the people just look bored).  Well, you can admire it (I hold it out in front of me and scrutinize it, they still looked uninterested). Ok, ok, then. You know, you can undress it! (Here, I hold it out in front of me like it was about to do a magic dance for them or something.  Everyone suddenly looks intrigued and wait for more). I slowly start to peel the husk away and say, See, it’s all soft and silky and the most delicious corn is hiding within. You just need to find it! Then I start throwing ears of corn at people, every which way and they greedily grab it and start to rip off the husks, or pull them off slow, and some of them even seemed to be smelling it as they pulled the outer layer off.  It was weird, but they were happy.

I stayed here most of the day.  And by the time the corn lady came to tell me that it was time to move to the next booth, I was prepared.  I had talked most of the corn fanatics here into moving onto the next booth. I explained how much fun it was to work at each both and they all created a caravan.  I even gave them my car.

After they left, I went to have a meal with the corn lady and her 73 cats.  It took her over a half hour to tell me all their names. But she let me eat while she named them, so at least I could just nod and pretend to be interested in a horde of Overlords. However, as she started naming them, I became invested in each cat.  They were adorable, even if there was no way I would ever remember all their names. Just as I finish eating, she tells me that my room is ready. I follow her to a little RV in the back and as I step in I wake up.