Here we go again. Those mysterious crop circles are creeping back into the news.

Every summer, someone discovers flattened spots in fields of wheat, oats or barley and concludes they were caused by spacecraft or electromagnetic forces.

A few years ago, two old geezers in England confessed to making these circles – using a board with a rope tied to each end. These fellows said they had trouble sleeping, so they would go out in the middle of the night and mash down wheat with a board.

Then, when they were tired enough to go to sleep, they would go home and tell their wives they’d been lawn bowling or something.
To prove these guys might be legitimate, the publisher of an English newspaper asked them to go out and stomp a circle. Then a reporter took a crop circle expert out to the field to see what he thought.

The circle expert was as baffled as ever. He began mumbling about space ships and electromagnetic forces.

I’ve noticed that farmers aren’t making any big deal out of these circle episodes. Farmers know what causes crop circles. It’s the kids.

My dad knew all about crop circles, rectangles, squares – you name it. He’d be cutting a strip next to the fence and find a mashed patch of grain. “Must have been a foul ball,” he’d say. Another patch further out, “Looks like a home run … or a ground-rule double?”

Those were the days when you got a baseball for Christmas, and that might be the last one you saw until next Christmas. We hunted them hard.

The crop would be swirled as if someone lay down and rolled in it, which is exactly what we did. When we felt a lump, we would stand up and stomp until we found the ball.

Probably the oddest formation my dad ever saw occurred in a corn field. My older brothers were supposed to be cultivating corn one day in June, but instead, they got into an argument about which tractor was more powerful, the old Oliver or the Allis Chalmers.

One thing led to another, and they decided to settle it right there in the corn field. Brother Jim took the Oliver and Kenny drove the Allis.

Brother Dick was smart enough to stay out of the whole thing. He was the referee.

Jim and Kenny backed the tractors together and hooked them up with a chain. (Do not try this at home!) There was a lot of noise, wheels spun and smoke and dust hung in the air for 20 minutes after the event was over.

Nobody won. But there were two huge holes in the corn field to commemorate the big tractor pull.

No one told this story for nearly 50 years. When they finally told me, I asked, “What did Dad say when he found those holes with the corn picker?”

“How should we know?” they said. “We surely weren’t going to ask him.”

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.