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

‘The Fake Tree Arboretum’ has been an entry in the guide for a while. I know this because I’ve done some of the little research I tend to do before I visit a place and when I search the notes on my phone, there is evidence of my attempting to work it into the travel over the years. It hasn’t quite come together for a variety of reasons. Mostly I just miss it- it’s on a stretch of highway that hasn’t proven particularly useful in my bouncing commute. It gets pushed to the back burner. A few times I was snowed out or otherwise distracted by some personal disaster. If it had happened a few more times, I’d make the argument that the fates were keeping me from ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum,’ but this time, there’s every reason to think I’ll make it. 

But now the entry is changed. 

‘The Wayside’s decay is not frozen, reader. Those teetering monuments, those failing businesses, those rotting floorboards- they are symptoms of the end of a place and, like distant relatives, we who visit the Wayside arrive in time to make our peace and leave before death occurs. It is easy to become detached on the Wayside, but consider that detachment is a symptom like the others. Consider that you may already be claimed by death, and flee. 

And as you flee, consider visiting ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum,’ which was once a thriving Wayside attraction but has since shuttered its doors and had its shuttered doors kicked open. ‘The Abandoned Fake Tree Arboretum’ carries on like a corpse and we, still distant relatives, now arrive just in time to say a few words at its funeral.’

Sometimes it feels like the guide may be passing judgement on me. Should I have come to ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum’ earlier? And would the money I spent there have kept it afloat? That seems doubtful. Is it wrong to visit the corpse? If the author thought so, maybe he wouldn’t have kept the entry. 

Still, it doesn’t feel good, taking up space in the parking lot and looking out over a dream someone once had- a dream of displaying fake trees. Old forum discussions indicate that ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum’ was the holiday stop for a while, that they would do up the whole forest in lights and hire a santa and make cocoa. It’s a long way from any city, but people would make the trek. Some wax nostalgic about a haunted Halloween forest they did as a one-off that didn’t sell quite so well. Some say that was the beginning of the end. 

‘The Abandoned Fake Tree Arboretum’ is situated in one of those warehouse buildings, roughly the shape and size of a Home Depot. A previous visitor has done me the favor of breaking the glass doors at the front and I step through to find the place largely taken over by spiders, by what is, perhaps, the largest spider colony on earth. The webs are strewn between the brittle plastic branches of the trees, so clotted in some places as to appear completely white. Cloudlike. The spiders themselves rest on the webs, still in the way a thing can be still but ready to pounce. I get the distinct sense that they know I am here. I get the simultaneous sense that they are not particularly afraid. 

I take the long way around the trees, afraid that attempting the forest itself will end in broken webs. The spiders twitch as a I walk by and their tiny eyes glow in my flashlight. This constellation of lights draws my attention to the center of the warehouse, where a massive display tree stands, now a white monolith quivering with caught insects. The droning makes my head hurt and I don’t recognize that it’s getting louder until the windows- those remaining in their frames- begin to shake.

I wake up outside the camper an hour later. A web has been drawn across the frame of the door leading to ‘The Abandoned Fake Tree Arboretum.’ The spiders have claimed it, and I imagine it will soon fade from the Wayside entirely.

-traveler

As a rule, I tend not to engage in any of the interactive costume-wearing portions of the attractions I visit. This comes across as being a bit of a spoil-sport somehow, and despite my travelling mostly alone all these years, there is a tendency for other visitors to sense my hesitation and to take it as an opportunity to offer to hold my phone and take my picture or otherwise call me out on my perceived unwillingness to dress up for a photo-op. 

The thing is: travelers are dirty. Grime is unavoidable on the road and I say this as a usually-filthy person myself. I sweat, sometimes, my back sticking to the driver’s seat of the camper when the sun shines through the windshield and heats up the cab. I drop crumbs on myself and spill drinks and sometimes wear the same shirt for a day or two on end. I rarely change my pants. I wear the same shoes every day- their reeking inners plugged up by my feet.

I do change my socks. 

My point, in all this, is that I wouldn’t want to wear a costume after somebody like me has worn it. There are parasites out there. And communicable skin diseases. Bad vibes, even- they could permeate the clothes and make for a rough day. I avoid costumes where I can but, as I pull into the parking lot of ‘Dress Like Me,’ I get the distinct sense I won’t get out of it this time.

‘The general consensus on ‘Dress Like Me’ is that it is one man’s fetish put on display in such honest terms that there is something almost wholesome about it. The owner, Freddie Lawson, does not agree. He claims that there is nothing sexual about his business, has chosen, instead, to think about it as a sort of art project. This, he explains to interviewers who are dressed in his clothes- they must be in order to secure the interview. Lawson does not speak to women who aren’t dressed like him and rarely speaks to men unless they do the same. He’s quick to end any interview that suggests there is a deviance in this hobby of his. Sometimes he posts rambling political tirades online. Reading them, you wouldn’t think he’d be so hung up on clothes. 

Lawson doesn’t have much in terms of style. This is not to say his clothes are out of fashion, though some certainly are. It’s just that his wardrobe is, at once, eclectic and run-of-the-mill. The wildest items he owns tend to be t-shirts from dive bars and old shirts featuring the patterns of yesteryear. His weirdness leans vintage, which makes it a little hip, even, but not any more interesting than one might find at the local thrift store. If one were to dress as Lawson for the day, the costume would be unlikely to raise the eyebrows of the general public, which brings us back to the question: why?

We know, of course. We just want Lawson to admit it.’

“Well a fine welcome to you, young man.” Lawson is older than I’d imagined, likely in his late seventies. He’s built like an old farmer gone soft and he walks with a frailness that he doesn’t seem entirely used to. He’s the sort of man that slaps a stranger on the back when he greets them. He meets me in the parking lot, “Just you, eh? That makes it easy. And you’re round about the right size. Come on in and we’ll see what we’ve got for you.”

The ‘Dress Like Me’ experience costs five dollars. The payment is comforting, somehow, placing this in the sterile realm of business transactions rather than whatever else it might be construed as. Less comforting is that there is no ticket- that Lawson simply tosses the bill loose on a table in his excitement to get me to the bedroom.

“Had some people in to do up the closet.” Lawson takes the stairs slowly. “Everything hanging and in order now. Kneeling over those old plastic boxes were aggravating my knees and everything came out creased. Now you and me get to enjoy it all hung and ironed.”

He opens the door with a flourish and, indeed, I see that he’s got several closets and that each is packed tight with clothes hanging on reinforced bars. In the center of it all is one of those full-length, multi-angle mirror situations one tends to see in stores.

There’s a camera and he sees me see it. “No worries about that one. Just some security.” Lawson walks over and produces a small piece of paper with a strip of painter’s tape already adhered to the upper side. He uses this to block the camera.

“You’re not worried about me?” I ask. They may be the first words I’ve spoken to him, and they produce a belly laugh. 

“Let’s get you dressed.”

-traveler