The Inadvertent Gardener

On Friday night, I watched Field of Dreams in the actual Field of Dreams. This is Part III of the story, which began with Part I and Part II.  

Kelly mentioned a couple of times during the event, offhandedly, that she figured a lot of people would leave once Kevin Costner stopped singing. I laughed it off — I couldn’t imagine people would have just come for the free concert.  

Kelly was right.

Sure enough, at the end of the concert, after Kevin and his entourage wound their way through the crowd back to the Rolling Roadshow crew parking lot, people began to pack up their things. “I cannot believe this,” I said. ”Why would they just come to hear Kevin Costner sing?”

Kelly shrugged.

Up on the stage, an emcee reminded the majority of the crowd, those of us sticking around for the movie, that this would be the first-ever screening of the actual movie on the actual field. “This is like church,” he said. “Please–no talking.”

The sky, throughout all this, had turned violet, and faded to black as the opening credits of the movie began to roll. As disgusted as I was with the whole concert portion of the experience, James Horner’s soundtrack always brings tears to my eyes. There I was, sitting on the actual Field of Dreams, watching what might be my favorite movie in the whole world.

Kelly grabbed my package of tissues and handed me one.

As the night fell deeper, it became more like magic and less like a strange brush with musical mediocrity in the middle of a cornfield. As Ray Kinsella called out from the cornfield to his wife, Annie, and daughter, Karen, on the porch swing of the farmhouse, and as Annie told him that, in fact, she didn’t hear any voices, the sound of their calling echoed back and forth, off the cornfield, off the house, and out into the cornfield. Stars began as pinpricks, but by midway through the movie, Cassiopeia’s W-shaped constellation hung brightly over the screen, and the Big and Little Dipper dangled overhead.

At one point toward the end of his concert, Costner paid tribute to Burt Lancaster, who played Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham in the movie. “I still remember working with him right over there,” Costner said, gesturing with his guitar toward the bleachers down the first base line. “He acted with his hands. I miss him terribly.”

And, as if in tribute, a deep orange, waning Green Corn moon rose over the projection truck and lifted itself up next to the house just as Moonlight took the mythical field for his one and only major league hit. The moon stayed right there awhile, as if it wanted to watch the movie, too.

A few minutes later, I slipped my feet out of my sandals and let them sink down into the thick, thick grass of the field. It’s softer than carpet, and even though the temperatures had dropped into the upper 60s, felt as warm as a summer afternoon. I kept them there, unwilling to break the connection with the grass, until the credits rolled and I’d managed to stop crying. The final scene gets me every time.

As Kelly and I walked back to my car, I looked back over my shoulder at the field. “This was a really strange event,” I said. “Cool, but strange.”

We followed a dark gravel road between cornfields back to Dyersville, still giggling about some of Kevin Costner’s most priceless comments (”As you may remember from Waterworld…”).

As we passed the same video store on the way out of town, we noticed the other side of the sign: “Heaven will miss you, Kevin. Come back soon.”

On Friday night, I watched Field of Dreams in the actual Field of Dreams. This is Part II of the story, which begins here.

Keanu Reeves. Bruce Willis. Jared Leto. The roster of actors who have decided their “next career move” ought to be out of Hollywood and into the hot lights of rock and roll stardom is peppered with disaster. Do they not realize that people come to see them play not for their elevated level of musicianship but just because it’s more fulfilling than driving by an accident on the highway?

We walked across a rickety bridge onto the field and into the Concert Zone. Thousands of people—at least five thousand, according to organizers—sat in haphazard rows of camp chairs and blankets, spread from the rope that divided the field in half all the way to the left field corn where the Ghost Players in the movie appear from and into which they disappear.

Some of the Ghost Players themselves were on hand to mug for the camera with members of the crowd. Most of them are local guys, as were a lot of the people in the movie. One thing I’ll say for Hollywood—they came to Dyersville and put people to work. The Ghost Players still put on a campy show each month at Left and Center field and have taken that show on the road around the country and even internationally.

But most people’s attention focused on the half-shaven man of the hour. Kevin, a guitar around his neck but not really put to much use, had surrounded himself with a decent five-piece band: lead and rhythm guitar, bass, fiddle and drums. Apparently, the lead guitar player, who Kevin described as “my spiritual leader, my good friend, the guy who wrote most of these songs,” is the driving force behind such intense lyrics as “And a tall girl talking/in a long blue dress/on her cellphone.”

“This next song could be about me,” said the disingenuous Kevin before “Love Among The Ruins (When Good Times Go Bad).” “White trash, living in a trailer park.”

Kevin. My God. First of all, you’re worth millions of dollars. Second of all, some of the people in the audience most likely did live in trailer parks and probably didn’t appreciate being referred to, even obliquely, as “white trash.”

Or maybe they didn’t mind. I don’t know. No matter how outrageous the lyrics and how off-key the singing, the audience kept giving Kevin ovation after ovation. Lighters appeared during slower numbers.

“It’s like a buffet,” I said to Kelly, as I scribbled notes onto index cards. “I can’t even get it all down.”

At one point, Kevin invited a “very special young lady” to the stage. Until then, I had forgotten that Netflix’s promotional material indicated that Lisa Loeb, the hipster-glasses-wearing darling of the indie pop scene in the mid-1990s, was mistress of ceremonies for the event. We’d arrived too late to catch her introduction, but no worries—here she was, pigtailed and smiling, swinging her hips back and forth in a gingham skirt atop a crinoline petticoat.

“This next song is called ‘Fabulous,’” Kevin said as Lisa joined him. “It’s about women who are fabulous.”

I would make this up if I could.

“Fabulous” included a chorus featuring “Suh-weet” sung at a high decibel level, as well as “Fabulous” sung over and over again. Lisa and Kevin shared a mic, their heads tilted toward each other, best friends sharing a moment of utter career freefall.

“That was pretty brave of her,” Kevin said as Lisa left the stage.

I’ll say.

Stay tuned for Part III…

On Friday night, I watched Field of Dreams in the actual Field of Dreams. The story’s too long for a one-day telling. This is just Part I.

The sign outside the video store welcomed Dyersville, Iowa’s favorite adopted son: “Welcome back to heaven, Kevin Costner!”

My co-worker, Kelly, and I passed the sign after determining that the satellite parking lot at the Dyersville high school was at capacity. “They opened up another field for parking out at the Field of Dreams,” the parking attendant told us. “Do you know how to get out there?”

We knew. But we asked for a refresher set of directions anyway, because it had been awhile since Kelly and I had been to Dyersville, the site of the filming of 1989’s Field of Dreams.

We came to see the movie in the field itself, thanks to Netflix and its Rolling Roadshow of movies shown at their original filming locations across the country. From a Martha’s Vineyard showing of Jaws to Escape from Alcatraz in San Francisco, Netflix had movie memories covered.

According to the organizers, this was the first time Field of Dreams had been screened at the eponymous baseball diamond. Be there? No doubt about it.

I have a long history with the movie that stretches back to seeing it in the theater when it first came out. It’s the movie that, for me, most embodies the sentimentality and near-religion of baseball and the father-child relationship. I cry at the same places every single time I watch it. I’d be embarrassed, but hey, I’m not ashamed to admit I love my Dad and the National Pastime.

But this event promised more than just a screening of the movie. Kevin Costner, a.k.a. Ray Kinsella, The Man Himself was bringing his newly-formed band and coming to play and sing as the opening act for this extravaganza. I’d like to be kidding about this.

Kelly and I wound through the cornfields at the edge of Dyersville, finally hitting a traffic jam just before the Field of Dreams’ driveway. We rolled down the window. Kevin’s voice drifted in.

“He’s awful,” I said, as he rhymed “industrial park” with “question mark.”

“Do you think he could try any harder to be John Mellencamp?” Kelly asked.

We drove on, heading toward the mythical Field of Parking, which appeared about a mile down the road. This was the point at which I became most sorry that I had worn girlie shoes.

We parked, took requisite pictures of a monster truck, large Harley and sign declaring “Not responsible for any accidents,” and headed past the long line of people waiting for the shuttle to the field toward the open, gravel road.

Girlie shoes, people. Girlie shoes. And we were skipping the line for the shuttle. Some days I’m smart, other days, not so much.

Less than a tenth of a mile into the Sandal Death March, a woman pulled over next to us in a beat-up Plymouth K Car. “You girls need a ride to the Field?” she yelled.

We peered in at her baby strapped into a carseat in the back. I looked down at my shoes. “Absolutely,” I hollered. “Thank you!”

As we rolled down the dusty road past lines of people walking with camp chairs, the woman said she was from Dyersville. “Everyone’s from out of town,” she said. “No one from Dyersville’s going to this.”

But then we passed another group of pilgrims. “Oh, there’s someone from Dyersville,” she said. “And there’s someone else.”

She dropped us off at the field, where we stopped to take pictures of the strange divide. For those of you who aren’t versed in the Field Feud, here’s the summary version: one property owner owns the house, the bleachers where Ray and Annie and Karen watched the ghost games, and right field and the infield. The other property owner owned Left and Center Field, which is now owned by an international conglomerate and the more commercial stepchild of the operation.

This event, folks, was on Left and Center Field. Like I said. More commercial.

Which meant that, by the time we arrived, there was a rope line up dividing the field in two, with everyone sitting on the Left and Center side. On the other side of the rope, things were idyllic, quiet, spacious. On the Left and Center side, it was a friggin’ madhouse.

Tomorrow…Part II…