The trend toward regional mall proliferation - whether on empty cornfields or as replacements for downtown Main Street - is altering the American countryside and restructuring the national retail economy as significantly as mergers and acquisitions are altering the national corporate landscape.

Andrea Meyer's life was changed irrevocably when, on one cold Nebraska morning while practicing emergency landing procedures with her flight instructor, her airplane went into a flat spin before crashing into an empty cornfield.

In the country, they are still piled up outside markets or scattered over empty cornfields, waiting to be picked.

Havlish added that she started playing baseball in an empty cornfield near her home with all the neighborhood boys.

The frosted windowpanes looked out onto the cold plain and dish-shaped, empty cornfields that lay to the south, but the kitchen was smoky and warm.

Jamie was a fine shot, and a patient teacher; Roger had seen him taking the Chisholm boys out after supper, to practice blasting away at rocks and trees in the empty cornfield.

Crows cawed over empty cornfields now a week past the Reap.