Dobbs clopped slowly past cornfields and cottages, bees and cream-coloured butterflies.

We chugged slowly past cornfields, past men and women line-fishing from flat boats, past makeshift fishing villages - huts of reed and palm frond built beside the shrunken river.

As the drivers went past cornfields and through small towns, some crafty maneuvering went on.

It reminded him of sitting in his father's truck as they drove past cornfields when he was a kid.

Later, I pondered this paradox as I drove past cornfields, peanut companies and farmhouses on my way home to Chattanooga, Tenn.

"I can't believe this is happening again," said Marty Bahamonde, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, driving past cornfields flooded anew by the Mississippi River.

From Amenia it was just eight miles, past cornfields and farmlands to Millbrook Vineyards and Winery, where we had the best, most professional wine tasting of our trip.

At first, it was academic fascination that led Ms. Wagner-Martin to drive past cornfields to poke through the 3,324 items, ranging from school yearbooks to unpublished poems.

Turn down a dusty dirt road, go a mile or two past small cornfields and round peasant huts, and you come to a group of brick buildings set about with shade trees.

They were riding past cornfields.