‘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
