For all that I prefer being alone, I do reasonably well in crowds. My look is hostile and grungy enough that people don’t want to engage with me, but my frame is small enough that I don’t seem like an open threat. I have a method- one that involves looking directly ahead of me, past the faces of those nearby, and pushing apologetically through as though I have business somewhere ahead and the crowd is just an inconvenience. For the most part, people are happy to let me pass. Nobody wants to be alone in a crowd and nobody wants to be alone with me. 

I try not to think about it too much. 

‘It’s not so much ‘The Library of Forbidden Books’ that is interesting. Outside of a few old and rare tomes in their collection, the books on display are trivial to obtain online or in any number of other libraries or bookstores. No, the real actions takes place in the parking lot and in the sidewalks surrounding ‘The Library.’ This is where ‘The Ongoing Culture War’ is fought- a constant protests and sometimes skirmish that consists of a half-dozen or more factions, each protesting the availability of a book in ‘The Library of Forbidden Books.’ 

For instance, the more conservative parties take umbrage at the inclusion of sexual education books for children, even those that have been roundly approved by doctors and psychologists as age appropriate. The liberal leaning factions counter-protest for these books and, as an aside, have petitioned the library to remove children’s books that champion the so-called traditional family: straight, middle-class, gender-conforming, and (let’s be honest here), white. 

Then there are a number of smaller factions that represent the gray areas that most of us don’t want to acknowledge for complexity’s sake. There are those protesting the impingement of free speech by all parties, arguing that all books should be available and adding, in fine print, that maybe has to include those books that sexualize minors. There is a party devoted to ‘sensible’ age ranges, meaning these books should be available but just leave the kids out of it, right? There are the progressive conservatives that agree family models should be (so-called) traditional but maybe they ease up on the racial stuff and also women can win bread too- in this economy, don’t they have to? Then there are those people that arrive at ‘The Ongoing Culture War’ to, as they say, ‘stir shit.’ One particularly effective shit-stirrer nearly united the fractured parties in an effort to simply burn the library down and be done with it, but was stopped at the last moment by undercover police (who seemed to make up nearly half the crowd). 

A local donut shop has made a name for itself by sponsoring a time-out on Saturday mornings. They deliver free donuts to the center of ‘The Ongoing Culture War,’ the presence of which usually calms the crowd and facilitates a half hour of cautious, but amiable interaction between people who, moments before, were all but threatening violence toward each other. For this half hour, the crowd sets aside the many complicated signs they wave about to really broadcast the nuances of their opinions, and they eat donuts together in near-silence. 

Dan Leder, owner of Ledership Donuts, refuses to speak of this phenomenon and seems, at all times, to be under ulcer-inducing stress to not broadcast any opinions of his own. A step in the wrong direction could prove disastrous.’

It is stressful. Without anything to insinuate my own opinion on the library or on the state of the country, I worry that my nearness to one faction or another may be taken as agreement. Stopping to read a sign seems to signal skepticism. Even my far-looking tactic of navigating the crowd makes it seem like I’m ignoring those near me or endorsing those ahead. 

It isn’t until I turn to leave, though, that the vitriol comes on thick. Something heavy enough to hurt, but dull enough not to count as true assault, bounces off the back of my head and when I turn to see who threw it I find that a few of the fringe factions have registered my leaving as abandonment of their incompatible causes. I make the mistake of apologizing.

“I was just visiting!”

“This isn’t a zoo, man!” Someone shouts. 

“Take a fucking stand.” Someone else says. 

I grimace and do my best sorry, have to go face, dodging several more projectiles which, on closer inspection, are rocks wrapped carefully in cloth so as not to be injurious. Each has the word ‘shame’ sharpied across the surface. 

I return to the camper to find that someone has, rightfully I guess, pointed out that it is a gas-guzzler. A real fossil-fuel hedonist. They’ve pointed this out in spray paint on the side of the van and someone else has, in a different color, rebutted them, suggesting that the camper was very clearly a second-hand buy and a renovation and therefore is helping the earth and that most electricity for cars is generated using a measure of fossil fuels anyway. Someone else has painted a sad face under this. 

A new shame rock bounces lightly off the camper’s side. I pick it up as a souvenir and get on my way. 

-traveler

There’s no avoiding it. The interstate to Deep Dakota invariably cuts through ‘The Drive-Ing’ which is an annoying name for a series of billboards placed so closely and so carefully that driving by them at highway speeds causes something like a flip-book movie to occur up-and-to-the-left of the ideal driver’s actual focus, which is to say, the road. The owner and filmmaker of ‘The Drive-Ing’ changes them out regularly enough that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a repeat, but I’ve driven past enough to expect less of a movie and more of an amateur political ad or, worse, a take on religion. I tap the steering wheel as I wait for the show to begin, trying to decide whether I try to ignore it, which has proven nearly impossible in the past, or if I just watch the thing for full effect. 

It always begins the same:

‘PRESENTING’

‘This is the word that signals a traveler has entered ‘The Drive-Ing,’ a poorly named story medium constructed by a wealthy madman. ‘The Drive-Ing’ begins by flashing the name of a fictional and vaguely sarcastic production company- different each time. This, alone, normally requires ten or twenty billboards to accomplish, a show of the man’s dedication and wealth. Things are quickly to business afterward, however, because the man’s property does have its limits and ‘The Drive-Ing’ is hardly so beloved an institution that those locals who have to drive by it every day are willing to donate parcels of their own property. 

What passes for entertainment on ‘The Drive-Ing’ is a five minute scene with the same seven actors, many of whom are members of the man’s family. These scenes mostly play out comic-book style, there being no particular way of working sound into the experience, but the man has occasionally experimented with silent move dialogue slides which are admittedly classier but eat into the overall sign count.

As for the scenes themselves, the actors are often pictured performing exaggerated actions with exaggerated emotion, like a series of youtube thumbnails curated to drive home the moral of the month. These short scenes are catalogued by the sort of fans that get off on embarrassing content, and those archives can be accessed online. Of those that garnered national attention, there have been several anti-porn skits which seemed to run fairly racy themselves. Another insisted that fluoride weighs the soul down in regard to the likelihood of accessing heaven. Another that wireless internet caused most modern cancers and may also be linked to satanic practices. 

No matter how outrageous the content before it, the final slide is always a blessing upon America for its bountiful opportunities and its free speech and this sign in particular seems to win a lot of favor from the local government- enough that only the edgiest of billboards have been censored. The man revels in the occasional attention his system brings, he being a retiree with very little else going on. He can sometimes be seen jogging through ‘The Drive-Ing’ himself, looking up, gape-mouthed and the glory of his creation.’

This month’s story seems to be a PSA about neutering house pets but quickly devolves into an anti-vasectomy or overall anti-sterilization concept in which a man loses his wife to a more handsome and virile actor who, it is strongly suggested, is the first man’s lost masculinity. Several ghost children form a sort of Greek chorus, these being the children the man might have fathered if he had done the right thing and they are revealed to be a future president (boy), priest (boy), and loving housewife (girl). It comes together quickly in the end, the man clearly running out of slides before he could really get into the meat of the story. Finally the blessing shows and I’m free of it. 

Well, if not free, at least I don’t have to look at it.

-traveler

For as much as I rely on my nose- to sense danger or fresh air or food or failing personal hygiene- I’m not sure I’ve experienced or conceived of the smell-version of vertigo, of a aromatic confusion so profound that it becomes dizzying. This is what happens when I step into ‘The New Car Cave,’ where new-car smell is mined and processed and sent around the world. It nearly floors me and I find myself trying to brace on a grab handle that just isn’t there.

‘Exclusive, maybe, and valuable in its exclusivity, the mineral deposits that produce ‘new car smell’ are found only in a single small cavern in northwest Nebraska. ‘The (New) Car Smell Cave’ presents something of a chicken/egg problem in the small communities where car enthusiasts and speleologists mingle. There is no clear record of the cave prior to the rise of enclosed cars- no clear record of the discovery of the cave at all in fact. By the time ‘new car’ had been identified as an olfactory experience, the cave’s powdery crystals were already being used as a paste to polish chrome features of then-modern vehicles. 

Now, car-smell is like an addiction the world cannot shake. A new car without the smell just doesn’t hit right, and though the crystals are next to worthless, even in the scope of modern chrome polishing, the public requires their availability to signal newness in their purchases. 

‘The (New) Car Smell Cave’ is not to confused with ‘The (Old) Car Smell Cave’ in central Idaho (which is, geologically speaking, newer than ‘The (New) Car Smell Cave,’ though both were discovered around the same time). ‘The (Old) Car Smell Cave’ smells like the family that rots inside it and would sell very few cars indeed.’

This is, as far as I can tell, the only reference to ‘The (Old) Car Smell Cave’ in the entire book and a small amount of subsequent research has not identified any caves in Idaho that might smell like a dead family for some reason (except for one article that suggests they all do). Something isn’t right in subterranean Idaho, that much seems clear.

‘The (New) Car Smell Cave’ is technically private property but is barricaded only in the loosest terms by a skirt of chain-link that was practically begging to be crawled under. A sign on the other side advertises very reasonably prices for daytime tours which, had I known about them, would have saved me a great deal of trouble. I briefly consider sneaking back out and returning in the morning, but if I get this over with tonight I can start the long drive up to Deep Dakota early and maybe justify a long lunch somewhere. My stomach grumble and then goes nauseous with the car smell. I put one of several hard-hats hanging on a crude iron bar nearby and step deeper into the cave. 

For a mining operation, I’m surprised to find how little the natural cave has been modified. The floor is uneven and the ceiling drops close enough several times that I’m grateful for the helmet. I spy the first vein of ‘new car’ after about fifteen minutes and I pause to pull on a gardening glove that, as far as I’m concerned, just appeared in the camper one day. I drag my finger along the vein to break up the crystals and catch the powder in a little baggie as a souvenir. 

I’m taking my long lunch the next day when the server, a woman in her forties, stops to observe my work.

“That’s a tree?”

I look down at the rough, stenciled cardboard in front of me and nod. 

“And you’re going to cut it out with that knife?”

I nod again and look down at the hunter’s knife in my hand and then, for the first time, maybe, around the restaurant where several other people are watching me with what might be called interest but is, in some cases, fear.

“How about I get you some scissors?” She’s gone before I can answer. 

“Making an air freshener,” I tell the man in the booth ahead of me. I say it loud enough so that everyone can hear. “Just making an air freshener.”

-traveler

There are a number of would-be Wayside attractions that are strange in name alone. Mystery sites tend to be the worst offenders and I am a perpetual victim, not because I find the tricks particularly difficult to situate in my knowledge of physics and perspective, but because each site tends to throw its own bent on the why of the mystery. I’ve been to a place that claimed and alien ship had touched down on the spot and changed the very nature of the ground it briefly rested upon. I’ve been to any number of places that claim to be burial grounds- of local celebrities, of native peoples, and of family members. More modern sites will sometimes skew a little sci-fi, offering a technobabble monologue for the strangeness that almost, but doesn’t quite, actually explain anything. 

Most of all, I like these places because they are safe. Each is a known quantity and I can let my guard down and enjoy the bored teenage workers and the gaudy, aging sets, and the dramatic reactions of children and adults who lose themselves more fully to whatever flavor of mystery is on the menu. 

‘The Living Statuary’ is not a mystery area. It isn’t advertised as such. It attempts no explanation as to its name nor purpose. Even the guide is tight-lipped:

‘Signs at the gate indicate that ‘The Living Statuary’ opens well after sunrise and closes before twilight. Like a public park, there is no particular enforcement of the hours and unlike a public park, there is very little understanding as to what threatens an afterhours visitor.’

Unfortunately, I arrive at sunset and because ‘The Living Statuary’ is far from just about anything else, I determine it would be a massive waste of time to not enter and, without thinking about it too hard, acknowledge that I’m willing to put my life on the line to avoid such a waste. I do pack my ‘danger bag’ which, over the years, has come to include several flashlights, extra water, a secondhand and often-wrong GPS system, a whistle, and a handgun I retrieved from the top of a pillar that has not been cleaned or fired since coming under my ownership but nevertheless signifies to certain dangerous persons that I might mean business. 

I look at the handgun, thrown loosely in the bag with the other items, and wonder if I actually do mean business. 

Probably not.

The statues cast long shadows in the fading sun, their arrangement in such precise rows that the pattern is dizzying. They are eerie, the way any statue is in the dark, but none sport the red flags of immediate danger, such as holding weapons or leaking fluid or posing in such a way that suggests they were once people, turned to stone against their will. I turn away once and turn back again, checking the statues against the careful mental photograph I hold in my head. None seem to have moved. 

That’s that.

I pass through ‘The Living Statuary’ unbothered and, finding it goes on much further than I expected, determine to make it to the end and back, at least. The rows are straight enough that I can still spy the dull brown of the camper behind me and, though we have entered twilight, truly, now, the light isn’t such that it’s hard to navigate. By the time I reach the end and turn around, I’m beginning to think that ‘The Statuary’ may even be a pleasant destination. I quiet the part of me that worries this may be some magic worked on me, that the ground itself may be convincing me to stay and accept peace and become a statue myself. It does raise the question, though. 

Why is this as pleasant as it is?

The answer, I quickly realize, is heat. It’s a crisp autumn night and the wind, when it touches my face, is cold. But, in an open jacket and flannel beneath, I’m warm and comfortable. I’m warmed by the statues which, as I move my hand toward the nearest, a woman in a half-kneel, as though looking at a child, give off the heat of a living human.

I don’t touch the woman and I try to remember whether I’ve touched any of the statues. It seems impossible that I haven’t brushed up against them. Even less possible to make it to the camper without doing so again. Somewhere nearby, someone starts to cry. A voice only. 

I run. 

The voices come at once, either triggered by my clumsy retreat or by the final dying of the daylight. Gleeful cheers. Bursts of anger. Weeping. The statues begin to project the sounds of a crowd and their heat becomes sweltering. By the time I make it to the camper, the door is nearly too hot too handle. I wrench it open anyway and hope the heat hasn’t made it into the engine. I’m not sure the camper has ever driven outside autumn. I’m not sure how it reacts to warmth. 

The camper starts on the third try, a dramatic habit is has even in the best of times. I accelerate and leave ‘The Living Statuary’ to bake under the moonlight. 

-traveler