There used to be this toy, this little blue-gray plastic oven, that came with diecast molds and bottles of goop. Squeezed into the molds and baked, the goop would solidify into rubber-like toys. Bugs mostly, but monsters and aliens too. I loved that thing, despite its tendency to overheat and to leave streaking blisters on my hands when I tried to remove the rubber too soon after baking.
It had a smell- a smell like melted plastic and ozone. I haven’t thought about the toy in years but as soon as I take my helmet off, a breeze rolls off ‘The Astroturf Fields’ and the memory comes back clearly.
‘It’s hard to argue with the farmers who run ‘The Astroturf Fields.’ Well, no, it’s easy to argue with them, since there’s just no way they’re doing what they claim to do, which is growing astroturf from the ground like it’s sod. It’s hard to get anywhere in an argument with them, though, because when everyone at the farm does their job, it sure looks a lot like they’re growing plastic grass.
The nearest anyone has come to debunking the enterprise involved a particularly stubborn group of podcasters that caught wind of something shady happening on ‘The Astroturf Fields’ at night. The investigation culminated in the discovery that an absurd amount of pesticide was being applied to the fields and, though many might call any use of pesticide absurd in this case, the quantity in use was also criminal. ‘The Astroturf Fields’ were fined and they issued a boilerplate apology as well as pictures of what they claimed was a recent surge in detrimental pests but was, clearly, images of rubber locusts.’
I kick a rubber ant off my shoe and heave Hector’s kennel out onto the field with me. I don’t trust him outside of it, not here. He chews at questionable grass all the time and there’s no question that whatever rubber or plastic they’ve used in the astroturf will sit in his insides for however long he has left or until it dams up some inner orifice that’s necessary for rabbit life. I can’t help but wonder if I’m not exposing myself to carcinogens just by breathing the air over the field. Much of what I am nostalgic for is cancer-causing in retrospect. I swat a fly away from my face and it lands with a quiet thud on the ground nearby.
A rubber fly.
I’ve mostly given up trying to understand how things happen at Wayside destinations, but this is truly something else. I turn the fly over in my hand- definitely rubber. I glance around and then surreptitiously slide the fly into my pocket. I wish I’d collected the ant but it’s gone when I look for it. I don’t know what I’ll do with them but nostalgia’s a weird motivator.
Hector and I move inward. It’s a Sunday, which means the farm is technically closed, but forums have suggested nobody seems to pay much mind to trespassers who aren’t actively damaging the grounds. Without any real direction, without any sense of what it is to experience ‘The Astroturf Farm,’ I take us toward a scarecrow assuming that if anything freaky is going to happen it will happen near something like that. It’s the first thing around that isn’t made of rubber, that is, in fact, made of the sorts of materials a person might expect a scarecrow would consist of. It’s dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks and it sports a tie-dye bucket hat. It’s stuffed with natural-feeling hay, though three rubber cockroaches shake out from under the cloth as I poke at it.
I hear rough rubber honking as I stoop to collect the bugs. When I look up again I find a rubber crow is now perched on the bucket hat. It holds a translucent rubber beetle in its mouth that’s the kind of green color that suggests it might glow in the dark.
It seems pretty cool so I reach for it.
When I make it back to the motorcycle, and I do eventually, I find that one of the newer editions of Autumn by the Wayside has an addendum regarding ‘The Haunted Scarecrow of the Astroturf Fields:’ a related, but distinct Wayside attraction that happens to exist on top of another.
The scarecrow chases Hector and I back and forth across the fields while rubber crows pelt me from above, bouncing lifelessly off my body and onto the grass. The rubber insects I collected squirm in my pockets. The astroturf shivers in the wind. I become aware of the distant forms of farmers, watching this unfold from the barn. They ignore my calls for help, dipping and swaying on rubber legs, softened by the midday sun.
-traveler
