‘The Twin City Skylight’ is a dark rectangle in an otherwise blue sky. It’s difficult to conceptualize and then it isn’t, really, and a series of instinctual fight-or-flight reactions suddenly vie for control of my body. ‘The Twin City Skylight’ is an open wound, a window into space. It’s windy beneath it and the sound like wind is atmosphere whistling into the vacuum. It blows steadily upward and it feels like falling. I do fall- groundward, thankfully. A bout of nausea washes over me. Hector hops over to paw at the pocket where I keep little bags of salad. He’s oblivious to ‘The Skylight,’ not at all worried by my erratic behavior in what must smell, to him, like a normal field.

My head itches under the rented helmet and thoughts of lice and skin disease and other mundane terrestrial concerns center me. I roll onto my back and try again.

‘Nothing feels quite so dangerous as ‘The Twin City Skylight,’ though it remains among the top five safest destinations recorded in this edition. Had it occurred naturally in the early stages aeronautic development, ‘The Skylight’ may have garnered a Bermuda Triangle-type reputation for the tendency of its uncommon air current to catch unsuspecting pilots off guard. In reality, the area’s quirks are so well documented and pilots in the region are so well-briefed that ‘The Skylight’s’ airspace is safer, by the numbers, than almost anywhere else. No accidents have been reported there since the sky-rending in 1968.

The creation of ‘The Twin City Skylight’ remains something of a mystery. Details regarding the technology involved in maintaining an atmospheric gap are classified and classified alongside is an explanation as to why ‘The Skylight’ was installed in the first place. A common suggestion seems to be that ‘The Skylight’ represents a half-baked idea about venting some of the world’s ‘bad air’ in the same way one might handle a smoking passenger by cracking the car windows.

An equally likely explanation is that Russia was doing it first. ‘The Sochi Skylight’ seems to represent the same technology and appeared on the same timeline as its Minnesotan twin. Interested parties might research ‘The Whistle War,’ which refers to four months in 1971 in which the USA and the USSR would aggressively adjust the sizes of their ‘Skylights’ to create sudden, high-pitched wailing in the middle of the opposition’s night. The fallout is documented in Michelle Lee’s bestselling ‘Mutually Assured Annoyance,’ which can be ordered for $13.99 via the slip at the back of this book.’

I spend an hour in the field- long enough to see at least one other person react to the sight as dramatically as I did. He collapses into his teenage son and Hector startles at the sound of their helmets cracking together. I move as though to offer support without any real intention to help and the son waves me away. He looks up at ‘The Skylight’ and is relatively unfazed.

I lay back on the grass and rest for a while longer and just when I think I’ve wrapped my head around the thing, the moon begins to cross above ‘The Skylight’ and I throw up. I wave the teenage son away and crawl back to the motorcycle. Space is stupid and scary and if the Wayside leaves orbit in my lifetime it will go without me.

-traveler

‘The Welcome Mat’ is conspicuous, to say the least- visible from a long ways away. How long? I haven’t done the work on that and neither has Shitholes, really. Hills crop up to the south, so it’s probably bright as hell for people who live up on the hillsides facing it. Probably mostly obscured for everyone past that. The terrain is otherwise flat and I’d guess ‘The Welcome Mat’ can be seen for as far as the flatness holds, if not as a distinct facility then at least as a neon horizon.  

From space?

‘No, ‘The Welcome Mat’ cannot be seen from space. Not regularly, anyway. There was a week in 2017 during which ‘The Welcome Mat’ powered an array of skyward-facing layers which blipped on and off in a pattern that, according to the owners, indicated proof of humanity’s understanding of fundamental mathematics and, therefore, intelligence. The array itself was the much-delayed product of a moderately successful crowdfunding drive several years prior. It was deactivated a week later following a stern warning from the FAA (though the owner prefers the more ambiguous ‘federal agents’ in recounting the ordeal).

In defense of the owner, visitors have noted the on-and-off presence of ambiguous government official types over the years, sometimes in uniform and other times in half-hearted disguises. In fairness to the government officials, undercover or otherwise, the owner of ‘The Welcome Mat’ is said to activate the laser at random and for such short bursts that the FAA isn’t reliably able to prove anything- not with the current budget anyway.

‘The Welcome Mat’ is outwardly a 24/7 laundromat. Its machines are overpriced and the business does little to conceal that its passion lies elsewhere. The clothes-cleaning is merely ‘The Welcome Mat’s’ strategy for keeping the lights on- and there are many, many lights to power. Visible from miles around (and, intermittently, from space) one might assume that alien visitors sophisticated enough to travel between galaxies would have the sense to avoid a place as welcoming as ‘The Welcome Mat’ seems to be. Any civilization sufficiently advanced will recognize and avoid a try-hard.’

‘Try-hard’ doesn’t begin to describe ‘The Welcome Mat,’ unfortunately. The sheer wanting in it is difficult to convey There are the lights, of course, which might be forgiven for all that they attract tourists. The building is trimmed in that shade of neon blue that’s difficult to look at directly. The windows are framed in bright red. Plasticky human statues crowd the roof, holding lanterns or reaching up to the sky in welcome. Searchlights whirl and crisscross at ‘The Welcome Mat’s’ corners. Their pattern terminates on the landing strip nearby- beckoning.

The landing strip is an uncanny slice of daylight past dark. It radiates heat and gathers smoking insect corpses. The asphalt is painted with a scrolling, upside-down message.

‘WE WELCOME YOU TO EARTH! PLEASE FORGIVE US OUR WARS AND CRIMES WE ARE LEARNING STILL. WE ARE NOT LIKE YOU BUT WE ARE PEACEFUL. LAND HERE AND YOU WILL BE SAFE. NO GOVERNMENT, HUMAN OR ALIEN, WILL REACH YOU HERE.’

There is evidence that the message glows in the dark, in case the lights fail.

The inside of ‘The Welcome Mat’ is humid and thick enough with the smell of detergent that Hector mostly chooses to remain in his kennel, nestled head-first into the blankets there. Framed headlines regarding alien abductions are tacked along the walls and many are accompanied by shelves with objects that, presumably, have been recovered from these incidents. The owners of ‘The Welcome Mat’ have cast a wide net, collecting everything from mildly radiated glass cookware to pieces of decommissioned war planes. There is a collection of hair, taken from willing abductees. There is a small library, free to peruse while one’s clothes dry. I want to look more closely at all of this but get the sense that every one of the six other customers is analyzing me when my back is turned, trying to decide whether I’m for the cause or against it- whether I’m alien-friendly or a government plant.

The catalyst for this paranoia is a sign posted at the door. It’s a list of weapons, mostly guns, and it begins with the words: ‘To whom it may concern.’ A not-so-concealed threat, controversial online for its ambiguity. Some die-hard ufologists believe the actual intent of ‘The Welcome Mat’ is not at all peaceful and that the sign is subtle indication of the owner’s arsenal, to be counted upon in case a hostile alien lifeform took the facility up on its seeming naivety. Others insist it is a warning to the agents- an indication of what they might expect to face were they to attempt anything more than a quick wash of their all-black wardrobes.

The tension is thick enough that I try to find some means of speeding up the wash and, failing that, likely seem more suspicious for all of my pacing and for the frantic way in which I take in ‘The Welcome Mat’s’ abduction paraphernalia, switching between approving nods and disbelieving frowns based on the nearness of other patrons and my own amateurish read of their potential affiliations. They mostly keep their distance, though I catch one man waving some sort of beeping instrument near Hector’s kennel. Noticing my notice, the man walks out the door and leaves his churning washer of black suits to mildew at the end of the cycle.

I’ll say this about ‘The Welcome Mat:’ it’s reasonably easy to tell we’re followed on the way out- a parade of black sedans that switch off their headlights each time I pull the bike over to let them pass and disappear into the Wayside via indistinct service roads as soon as it’s clear I won’t be coming back.

-traveler

‘There is a stretch of I-90 that narrows and slows, narrows and slows, until the billboards are leaning in from all sides and a tunnel forms. Day becomes a neon sort of light and, just like that, you are lost. ‘The Billboard Corridor’ is more hurdle than hotspot, roughly equivalent to a crowded forest floor in that it is a symptom of unchecked growth and for the fact that it regularly burns to the ground.

Property along the interstate is tricky, as one might expect. The shoulder belongs to the state but much of the area just beyond is private and many private parties are willing to host a sign or two as a means by which to subsidize farmland and empty lots. It’s not so difficult to imagine how a competitive market might fail to regulate the frequency of signs. It’s not so difficult to imagine that the signs might become larger both in regards to square footage and in regards to height, until massive walls tilt inward from the sky and blot out the sun- a psychedelic tunnel: advertising that is both subliminal and supraliminal.

It’s not so difficult to imagine how one might get lost, there, for all that it remains an unbroken stretch of road.’

It occurs to me that, for all my complaining about Autumn by the Wayside’s tendency to disregard its genre’s tradition of providing practical, fact-based trivia in its entries, my own writing doesn’t exactly fill in the gaps. For anyone searching for insight in the conversation between the book and this blog, let me say this:

When ‘The Billboard Corridor’ burns, it burns from outside, in. Which is to say that it’s very possible to be a long ways into ‘The Corridor’ before one sees any indication of danger and, if my experience is anything like the average, the first sign will be an unseasonable, but undeniably pleasant, late-autumn warmth. Note, also, that the sign-posters have caught on to the burning, that the burning has been incorporated into the spectacle. If one thinks they see the name of a popular fast-food restaurant formed of three-story flames in the places between billboards, one should believe their eyes.

‘The Billboard Corridor’ burning is a sight to see- a great, flaming worm that sheds its skin and billows dusk. What I would pay for footage of Hector and I streaking from its mouth on the motorcycle, singed and sooty and alive all the same.

-traveler

I’ve clambered to the top of water towers before. My visit to ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ is detailed previously but, in all honesty, there have been at least a dozen occasions on which I have found my legs jutted out past the edge of some rusty walkway, smoking or drinking or staring, disconsolate, at the setting sun. ‘The Westbrook Municipal Backwash Chamber’ marks the first time I’ve climbed a water tower with permission- with a team, no less.  

‘Once every five years, or so, Westbrook County, South Dakota sets about the arduous task of cleaning their ‘Municipal Backwash Chamber’ which, over the course of that time, filters the region’s saliva from the drainage system rather than allow it to return to the sewer. The source of this saliva? The last 10% of any poured-out glass, of course. Or the dregs of coffee. Or the base of a soda bottle.

Though there is little rigor to the statistic, it’s common knowledge that the ratio of spit-to-water in the final sips of a beverage favors the former, sometimes by a large margin. It was with this intuitive sort of science that Ben Mallard, a small-town mayor in the nineties, convinced the local government to construct a sophisticated spit filtration system- a million dollar enterprise. The installation was controversial and plagued by catastrophe, but the state has moved on and ‘The Westbrook Municipal Backwash Chamber’ has become something of a morale booster for the people of Westbrook County, who have little to be proud of but for the purity of their water. As other states and counties progress, Westbrook rests easy with the knowledge that, even in the dry summer months, that floundering watershed is 10% full of water and nothing thicker.’

‘The Westbrook Municipal Backwash Chamber’ makes a sound like a man drinking syrup with a straw. At the end of a five-year term ‘The Chamber’ positively rocks with the force of the saliva inside, churning because:

“You don’t want it building up on the bottom.”

The team that provides these insights and performs the saliva removal has been the same for decades. It’s considered a position of honor – a well-paid, mostly dormant sort of career. Every member is old but they tell me the process is less arduous, less disgusting than one might expect. They’re right- a series of pipes networked, a series of levers are pulled. We don’t have to see the contents of the tower, though there is a crowd gathered to witness the job getting done.

Every five years, Westbrook calls for a group of civilians to sign off on seeing the process occur. I score a spot at the last minute and rush up from Colorado, where I had been preparing to enter ‘The Billboard Labyrinth.’ ‘The Labyrinth’ will be there next week- I can’t say where I’ll be five years from now.

After an hour, the tower stops swaying. The pipes begin to shudder with air bubbles and the process is complete. The saliva is taken away in trucks with the same sort of machinery that powers cement mixers. Most people agree that their cargo is dumped out north- the North Dakotans don’t know or they don’t mind.

We celebrate with a round of waters, straight from the tap. It’s good- good mountain water, I assume, but then I would assume it comes from a spring, high up in a place where the world’s saliva wouldn’t taint it in the first place. I have another glass and drink it to the bottom.

That night, I climb ‘The Westbrook Municipal Backwash Chamber’ and watch the moon rise over the prairie. There is already liquid sloshing around in the base- I hear its tide waxing and waning in a quick, insular cycle. I try to spit but mostly dribble on my chin for all that I’m out of practice spitting. A few drops hit the ground, at least. I wonder how long before it makes it up into the tower- whether any of those molecules will ever make their way back to me and where I’ll be when it happens.

-traveler