The ‘National Childproofing Center’ is halfway through rebranding when Hector and I arrive. It’s difficult to tell exactly what it was they were pretending to be, previous. Murals cover the exterior walls, each depicting a photorealistic monkey riding a skateboard through a generic cartoon environment. Each monkey has a thought bubble and each thought is “RAD!” All of the monkeys are holding ice cream and what might be candy or prescription pills. A banner has torn loose on one side and whips about in the wind. It takes me a moment to read it:

“Tell your parents: all of this is FREE!”

The banner catches on the razor wire fence between the parking lot and the ‘Center’ proper. A siren sounds and lights flash. A stern voice blares over the speaker system: NO NO NO.

It all quiets down again after a few moments- someone must realized it was a false alarm. I heave my pack over my shoulder and hold Hector, wriggling, in the other arm. I approach the fence, show my ID, and am let in, no problem.

‘Legally speaking, yes, ‘The National Childproofing Center’ is required to stand by all of their offers but they must be claimed by children and children rarely make it inside without some sort of legally dubious work on the part of adults. The few ‘success stories’ have all settled out of court- some for quite a bit of money but none for ‘real life hoverboards’ or ‘a super sharp flaming ninja sword’ or even ‘infinite ice cream on demand delivered by a talking dog.’

The fact of the matter is that ‘The National Childproofing Center’ is willing to lose some money if it means maintaining their stellar reputation for authenticating the childproofing standards of corporate clients. Parents can rest easy when they see the ‘NCC Guarantee’ seal on a vacuuming robot or an automatic litterbox, knowing neither will grind up, burn, or otherwise consume their curious toddlers. If the occasional mutant talking dog or two escape and breed in the wild around ‘The National Childproofing Center,’ well, that’s a price we pay as a society for the safety of our children.’

The ‘NCC’ is actually paying people to take the dozen or so monkeys they stocked, but I’m not really ready to be a parent to something quite so mobile and intelligent so I turn down the offer of a thousand bucks and a strange new sibling for Hector and eat some cheap ice cream and fall off a skateboard before I decide it’s probably time to go.

I’m approaching the ‘heir lock,’ a stupid pun for a system that’s designed to keep children from rushing the exit as adult visitors leave, when the straps of my pack pull back hard on my shoulders. I lose my balance and send Hector scurrying from my arms as I desperately try to separate myself from whatever has grown sentient inside. Alarms sound as the pack squirms across the floor and nearby screens, which had previously been showing a sneak preview of some new kids movie, flash over to an x-ray livestream of the scene as it’s playing out. From the looks of it, a small skeleton is attempting to escape from my backpack and it’s only until after it finally pushes the clasp open that I realize it’s just a living child.

“I DID IT!” the child screams as it’s surrounded by ‘NCC’ security, “You have to give me my monkey now! You have to give me my monkey!”

A previously inconspicuous woman runs to join the kid and shouts much the same thing as I quietly gather my empty pack and herd Hector back into my arms. I’m scooching backward, trying to decide whether I’m actually liable for anything that’s just happened, when I run into a man standing behind me. He drops a garbage sack on the floor. It’s my stuff- the stuff that was supposed to be where the child was.

I recognize the man and I recognize the woman as well when I give her a harder look,. They talked to me at the diner this morning- friendly, I assumed, but likely just distracting me while their kid climbed into my backpack.

The man puts a hand on my shoulder. He isn’t even looking at me- he’s drinking the chaos in with a growing smile.

“You’ll understand,” he says, “When you have a kid of your own.”

-traveler

‘Speaking of things that should have been retired years ago, the removal of ‘The Deep Face’ in Lake Michigan must represent a real cost/reward conundrum for the state, given that it makes headlines for swallowing someone at least once a year and survives the uproar of concerned citizens that follows each death. Seeing it down there, lying heavy against the dark silt floor, one must admit that dredging it up, even piece by piece, would be an expensive undertaking.

An art installation gone awry, ‘The Deep Face’ is only a danger when it’s on the move and, yes, it does move about. Made of rebar and cement, it’s flat and wide enough that certain tides and currents can carry it along the floor. Regarding the drownings, the leading hypothesis is that water pulls through ‘The Deep Face’s’ gaping mouth as it shifts, creating a strong, localized, downward current. Once inside, the mass of an average adult body is enough to disrupt the current, causing ‘The Deep Face’ to settle on its unlucky victim. The body’s waterlogging, its decomposition, eventually allows ‘The Deep Face’ to move again. This is why a new body on the shore seems to coincide with the taking of a new victim. A body means the lake will be safe for a while.

The mobility of ‘The Deep Face’ has rendered nearly all warning signs about it obsolete. Its victims are spaced too far apart to instill any sort of lasting fear in deep lake swimmers. Its movement has proven too erratic to track. In 2018, it was revealed that state officials had successfully seeded an urban legend into the surrounding communities, one that suggested ‘The Deep Face’ killed only those who had somehow avoided justice for crimes they ought to pay for. Unfortunately, the man who orchestrated this rumor was taken by ‘The Deep Face’ in 2011, just three years after planting the story. His death only lends credibility to the lie.  

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

–//–

‘The Human Interference Task Force was a short-lived team created by the Department of Energy to brainstorm ways in which the people of the early 1980s could warn the people of, say, the 5080s that they’d been stashing a whole lot of dangerous radioactive waste in the mountains. The difficulty was that the radioactive danger would likely outlive the symbols and languages familiar to 1980s humans. A 5080s’ archaeologist might discover a series of neon skulls on a lead bunker and think that they found the tomb of some psychadelic American pharaoh, not a cancer-causing trash pit.

Among the solutions floated by the Human Interference Task Force were color-changing cats and nuclear religions: pretty cool and all but, surprise surprise, the DOE didn’t jump to fund these ventures and now, in 2022, we still mostly just lump our nuclear waste into the mountains and hope for the best. To be fair, at the rate we’re going, there won’t be humans to worry about in 5080.

It’s a shame, really, that ‘The Dangerous Place Off I-11’ wasn’t discovered until the late nineties. Someone before us really knew what they were doing.’

‘The Dangerous Place’ itself is currently off-limits due to a military quarantine, but a fairly sizeable stretch of road leading to the epicenter remains open to the public simply because it’s good at what it does and cheaper than what would be required for expanding the perimeter. Hector and I brave it, understanding that there is nothing particularly dangerous about the warnings themselves except that, past the military, there are rumors of the cautionary measures becoming so traumatic that the mind reels to consider what they’re acting as wards for.  

The safer stuff is all signs and symbols, carved into rock, mostly, but occasionally made up of warped trees and brush. It’s a pretty eclectic collection under the broad theme of misery. Bipedal figures radiate lines, lose limbs, engorge, and explode. Walking past at a leisurely pace makes it seem as though the carvings squirm and writhe. Running past is known to cause nosebleeds and panic attacks. Driving is restricted on the road to ‘The Dangerous Place,’ for obvious reasons.

The symbols underneath remain untranslated despite a fairly robust effort from amateur and professional codebreakers alike. The only thing everyone can agree on is that it’s written in a way that conveys more violence. It reads as hostile without having to go into the details. I run my finger along one, trying to imagine the civilization that left them. Hector hisses and pees in the brush.

We make camp in an alcove that has been the subject of some fairly heavy modern graffiti- folks trying to add blood and fire and lasers to emphasize the torment of the ancient figures in the rock, or else trying to explain what’s happening in the scenes, or else just trying to hook up with the sort of people that call numbers painted on public property. The wind picks up around sunset and whistles through the rocks in a way that sounds like shrieking. Of animals. Of people. Of something else entirely. ‘The Dangerous Place Off I-11’ pulls no punches.

It’s an uneasy night’s sleep.

You don’t read as much about the satisfaction one feels when leaving ‘The Dangerous Place.’ The warnings work in reverse, soothing the travelers as they put distance between themselves and whatever lies a few miles off I-11. I wish more of the world operated on such clear terms. I’ve always been something of a scab-picker myself.

-traveler

‘Speaking of things that should have been retired years ago, the removal of ‘The Deep Face’ in Lake Michigan must represent a real cost/reward conundrum for the state, given that it makes headlines for swallowing someone at least once a year and survives the uproar of concerned citizens that follows each death. Seeing it down there, lying heavy against the dark silt floor, one must admit that dredging it up, even piece by piece, would be an expensive undertaking.

An art installation gone awry, ‘The Deep Face’ is only a danger when it’s on the move and, yes, it does move about. Made of rebar and cement, it’s flat and wide enough that certain tides and currents can carry it along the floor. Regarding the drownings, the leading hypothesis is that water pulls through ‘The Deep Face’s’ gaping mouth as it shifts, creating a strong, localized, downward current. Once inside, the mass of an average adult body is enough to disrupt the current, causing ‘The Deep Face’ to settle on its unlucky victim. The body’s waterlogging, its decomposition, eventually allows ‘The Deep Face’ to move again. This is why a new body on the shore seems to coincide with the taking of a new victim. A body means the lake will be safe for a while.

The mobility of ‘The Deep Face’ has rendered nearly all warning signs about it obsolete. Its victims are spaced too far apart to instill any sort of lasting fear in deep lake swimmers. Its movement has proven too erratic to track. In 2018, it was revealed that state officials had successfully seeded an urban legend into the surrounding communities, one that suggested ‘The Deep Face’ killed only those who had somehow avoided justice for crimes they ought to pay for. Unfortunately, the man who orchestrated this rumor was taken by ‘The Deep Face’ in 2011, just three years after planting the story. His death only lends credibility to the lie.  

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Take one of those fancy libraries, the ones with the rolling ladder for reaching high shelves. Then, take out all the books and all the warm lighting. The shelves are now washers and dryers. The lighting is buzzing and sterile. The fireplace is a decrepit coin machine and the air is crowded with detergent and half-concealed sweat. That’s ‘The Nation’s Largest Coin Laundry’ for you- nothing at all like a fancy library except for those rolling ladders which, in the chemical atmosphere of ‘The Laundry,’ seems more hazard than luxury.

There’s a lot hazardous about ‘The Laundry,’ actually. It’s been the cause of several fires, both internally due to shorting machines and externally due to its tendency to emit smoldering balls of lint from long-neglected exhausts. People have fallen from the ladders onto the tile floors and there has been at least one recorded case of a customer slipping in blood from a fall and falling themselves. Then, of course, there’s the shocks. ‘The Laundry’ has so many dryers churning so many tons of clothes that a deadly electrostatic phenomenon tends to build in odd places and stop the hearts of unlucky patrons who happen to press the wrong vending machine button or brush their hand against a bolt in the plastic-seated waiting area. It seems like the sort of place that should have been shut down years ago.

An even stranger secondary phenomenon keeps ‘The Laundry’ alive: it’s a place where things come together. Much has been hypothesized about the effects of ‘The Laundry’s’ latent electrical fields on the human brain- that they act as some sort of neurological boost. Just as much has been written about ‘The Laundry’ as an archetype- something that triggers human behavior from the shadowy back brain, either because laundromats have long been portrayed as liminal enough to stir wisdom, or because ‘The Laundry’ has been granting quiet revelations for so long that the idea has worked its way from the individual subconscious to the collective.’

So, I have a sort-of affair at ‘The Laundry.’ Sort-of in the sense that I know it won’t last on the outside. Maybe that’s the nature of affairs. I don’t know. I’ve never had one before.

So I have this sort-of affair in ‘The Laundry,’ sleeping on piles of warm clothes and wandering the complex without any goal but to see the thing and to hold another person’s hand. We get lost and find our way back and get lost again. A laundromat brings people together, whether they want it to or not.

After a while, though, the detergent starts to irritate Hector’s nose and I start to think about how Autumn by the Wayside has an epilogue, already- that no amount of stalling will keep me from it. The book seems to grow in the middle but it has an ending. There’s no point in drawing things out.

So, the affair ends and I find myself back in the autumn cold, kicking gravel across the parking lot and slowly ruining my sneakers. ‘The Laundry’ belches fire in the dark. It radiates heat and humidity to such an extent that the ecosystem is changed for a mile around it. Hector and I camp in that weird nature and hurry away in the morning before anything can wake up before us.

-traveler

There is a mandatory sort of costume to be worn at ‘The Big Boy Saturday Morning Surprise,’ a destination that qualifies as a bed and breakfast, I suppose, but is really something else entirely. The costume consists of thick adult-sized pajamas with the childish ‘BBSMS’ logo printed in rainbow colors across the surface. It’s available in one and two pieces- I choose the latter in order to preserve what little dignity I feel I’m owed at this stage in life.

“And what about your little bun-bun?” The man at the counter speaks in baby-gibberish so thick I can hardly understand him.

I shrug my shoulders. “Can I leave him in the kennel here and come back to walk him?”

“Hmm- you’ve been a good little guy so far. I think it’s okay if he sleeps in your bed just this once okaaay?”

I grit my teeth while the man snips the toe off a ‘BBSMS’ sock and watches me stuff Hector through it. He’s used to wearing little jackets and takes to the process without a fuss. As I stand, I realize why I’ve been intimidated by the man at the counter. He’s higher off the ground than he should be. The desk and everything behind it is slightly large than life-sized. Confronted with it, I feel small.

The man taps his computer and hands me a room key. “Don’t lose this,” he chides, and then his voice grows more adult, “And I have to remind you that ‘The Big Boy Saturday Morning Surprise’ is a non-sexual experience. Please keep it clean in there, young man.”

He’s said this all three times already, which means they get a lot of fetishists or they get a few and they all look like me. I try not to take it personally and drag my pack and my rabbit down a hallway that grows in size as I walk. By the time I reach my room, the door knob is level with my chest and takes two hands to open.

‘Regression is never a good look and ‘The Big Boy Saturday Morning Surprise’ does its customers the courtesy of frosting all outward-facing windows. This, paradoxically, does make it seem a lot more like a sex thing than it is and police will sometimes raid the place and prudes will sometimes protest it and none of them ever seem to know why they’re there or what they’re working to stop.’

From the outside, the ‘BBSMS’ looks like some sort of factory or storage facility- all industrial-sized warehouses painted in sickly pastels. The room explains it- everything inside is sized to make me feel like an eight year old. I have to hoist Hector over my head onto the bed. By the time I’ve clambered up after him, he’s already cozied up against a teddy bear that’s at least as tall as I am.

Seeing him settled, I decide explore the room. There’s a chest of children’s toys in one corner. A closet in the far wall that rattles and groans at odd times but doesn’t open. I’ve been assured by multiple internet reviews that this is a ‘monster simulation’ and presents no real danger, but I keep my distance anyway. I check under the bed to make sure I haven’t gotten one of the nightmare rooms and, finding the coast is clear, I pull myself back up onto the mattress and settle in for an early night.

I wake to the sound of a vacuum somewhere. It’s morning, earlier than I would have liked to be up and I know most of the noises in the ‘BBSMS-’ an excited puppy, a creaking stair, a stormy night, parents arguing- are manufactured and piped in through subtle speakers. I climb down and carry Hector like a baby doll through a winding hallway until I come to the living room where people like me gather around a massive screen, mocked up to look like one of those old boxy TV sets. Cartoons are playing and shortly after I sit down a woman brings me a bowl of cereal and a cup of juice and she ruffles my hair as she turns. It’s all very condescending but the longer I sit the more pleasant it becomes.

Another woman, dressed in a onesie, sits down next to me and starts in on a bowl of cornflakes. An episode of some nineties super kid show ends and I see her push a note toward my leg. It says: WANNA PLAY DOCTOR?

-traveler

‘Every county has a ‘Snow Day Stick,’ though it’s not always a stick and it’s not always for snow days. A ‘Snow Day Stick’ can be anything, really, and it’s often disguised as something mundane, to keep attention at a minimum, or dangerous, to keep people away. A ‘Snow Day Stick’ is more of a concept, than an actual physical object, though its physicality is integral. A ‘Snow Day Stick’ is the item a county uses to measure weather conditions and precipitation.

I suppose we could have led with that.

As the name suggests, most ‘Snow Day Sticks’ used to be some variation of a yardstick standing in a bowl or cup made to capture rain and snow. In the pre-wireless days it was the job of some unlucky gofer to trek out to the thing at regular intervals to take the measurement and they did so with little to no training. It was the perfect example of an ‘it ain’t broke’ system right up until the early internet emerged with its dangerously unmoderated chatrooms and a kid in North Dakota described how he could make snow days by piling the snow just right against the ‘Snow Day Stick.’ The ineptitude or indifference of the county’s gofer and the failure of anybody at the news station to question hard data formed the perfect storm.

As luck would have it, conditions were primed for a storm across the country.

With this pre-lifehack lifehack unleashed on dial-up, the fictional storm ‘Balthazar’ seemed to rage across the nation, cancelling schools in the north for snow and in the south for the likelihood of flash floods though nobody seemed to be experiencing conditions outside of the norm. It was two full days before meteorologists and civilians who had previously convinced themselves that they had just ‘gotten lucky’ started talking to each other and discovered the foul play. ‘Balthazar’ had only ever been the meddling of a couple hundred kids who found their local ‘Snow Day Stick’ in tandem.

The initial reaction to this short-lived phenomenon was the right one. Gofers were trained and some went on to become the meteorologists we know and love today. The story doesn’t end there, however.

The original ‘Snow Day Stick’ story made the rounds again in 2013, drudged up from the depths of the internet and made into a sort of meme-legend. The new generation of troublemakers quickly discovered that the well-trained gofers had been done away with and that most ‘Snow Day Sticks’ had become wireless measuring tools and were, therefore, even easier to fool than humans. ‘Balthazar’ was reborn for a short, 24 hours of meteorological confusion.

These trans-generational shenanigans are why, today, a ‘Snow Day Stick’ may be a statue in town square with subtly marked inches and a graceful pool for collection rainfall. It may be a hollow false tree that hums with electricity under its bark and kills birds unlucky enough to roost there. It may be the foundation of a house, marked inconspicuously with coded graffiti- kept that way: pristine and unfinished. It may be a bird bath that appears in your lawn one day with a menacing chickadee and a thick cord of wires that disappears into the ground nearby. These are the desperate measures that weather stations have taken to fool the youth and to keep ‘Balthazar’ from waking again. They will tell you there is no such thing as a ‘Snow Day Stick-‘ that these measurements are taken by a diverse series of complex tools with multiple redundancies.

Don’t be fooled, young readers. Every county has a ‘Snow Day Stick.’ All you have to do is find it.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘The ‘Hallshead’ chain of highway motels is largely confined to the Midwest, with something of a tail that works its way southeast as far as New Mexico. Like its many cousins, ‘Hallshead’ was at its peak in the days of the nuclear family, catering specifically to the road-weary traveling salesman who, after a day of hauling encyclopedias, would want nothing more than to slide into a warm bath shaped exactly like their own body.

Yes- exactly.

It is the ultimate validation of the masculine ego, the form-fitting bath. This is not the opinion of the author but a sample taken directly from ‘Hallshead’s’ fairly intense advertising campaign, one that centered on the bathtubs and largely ignored any other amenities, including the rooms. Billboards featured illustrations of a man perfectly encased in porcelain, his eyes wide and his genitals graciously censored by a cloud of soap bubbles. The man did not look relaxed. He looked as though he was having a revelation.’

Research suggests that the ‘Hallshead’ franchise went under sometime after this copy of Autumn by the Wayside was published, but a little digging churns up an address in western Minnesota: the ‘Hallshead Motel’ that held out the longest.

Hector and I drive by a few times before I realize what the problem is: the building is gone, or else its so fallen into disrepair that it can no longer be seen from the highway. Once that’s clear, I take a chance on the likeliest exit and, sure enough, find a sun-bleached sign still pointing the way to an old foundation, thick with weeds and rebar.

We’re far enough off the beaten path, by then, that I give Hector the run of the place and he gets to work, chewing down some dandelions that have lasted into autumn and I get to work scouting the place for anything of interest. Near the back, I find a place where a wall has collapsed and I spy one of the motel’s famous tubs underneath. The wood is rotted and light. I’m able to clear it after a few minutes.

The bath is too clean to have been exposed to the elements, though nothing else around me suggests that the collapsed wall was some sort of clever camouflage. It’s a strange make, too, consisting not only of the signature silhouette-style tub for a man about my size, but also a small, oval-shaped basin to the side. I circle the tub and lean forward, trying to align my arm with the arm-shaped indention. My hand slides into it and I feel the ceramic tightening comfortable along my fingers- a perfect fit. It hasn’t occurred to me that I might want to climb into the tub until now.

Something tugs at my jeans an I jump. Hector has found me again and he sniffs curiously at the old wallpaper. I pick him up before he can eat any and have nearly turned away when it hits me. I lower Hector into the basin and his eyes go wide. A perfect fit.

I don’t know if you’re supposed to bathe rabbits. I’ve never given Hector a bath but it seems a shame not to take the opportunity now. A small creek runs behind the foundation- runoff from rain in the mountains, I think. Its cold but Hector doesn’t mind and he emerges from the bath cleaner and calmer than I’ve ever seen him.

-traveler

Among Autumn by the Wayside’s myriad appendices is a section that sets destinations aside and considers, instead, the agencies that try to bring order to the Wayside and the factions that frustrate them. I’ve memorized this section to the best of my ability because if somebody is going to give me trouble, it is inevitably a member of some loose organization that claims a moral authority in the realm of traveler behavior.

And, look. I’m not opposed to following rules- even arbitrary ones. I just need to know what they are ahead of time.

This brings me to ‘The CBA’ or ‘The Cleanest Bathroom in America,’ in name if not in title.

‘The Wayside is generous in it’s use of the word ‘best’ and, for the most part, the American traveler is not so bothered by a little roadside hyperbole if it means cutting to the heart of what a business believes is its finest quality. Those who do take umbrage might be members of the fringe group ‘Actual Best’ which, like any standard-setting agency, is respected or reviled depending upon how closely one’s own tastes align with theirs.

‘Actual Best,’ is something of a mystery, having no digital presence whatsoever and a scant trail of physical records, mostly in the form of the ‘Actual Best’ award certificates. Unlike most standardizations, the certificates are not annual. When a restaurant advertising the best cheeseburger in America starts to cut corners, an agent of ‘Actual Best’ will appear to remove the certificate by any means necessary. The swiftness with which these agents appear after a colleague is arrested or killed has led some to believe ‘Actual Best’ is more a possessing spirit than an organization of actual people but, like most crack-pot theories, very little can be done to verify or debunk the notion.’

‘The CBA’ exists in the back of a large, but otherwise unassuming gas station. It’s certified by ‘Actual Best-‘ a fact that’s hard to miss given an ad campaign that crosses the borders of two states and leans hard into bathroom cleanliness where, really, they must do most of their business in gas and esoteric jerky meats. It all makes a little more sense when one realizes that internal signs for ‘The CBA’ forgo a straight shot to meander through the aisles. The gas station, unnamed as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a lot else going for it.

Hector and I follow the signs for full immersion in the experience and also to work up the need to pee which, I suppose, amounts to the same thing. I gather a candy bar here and a small jar of pickled eggs there and find a basket holding system near the restrooms for people like me who might, otherwise, remember that they came to use the restroom and put everything back.

Things go wrong fairly quickly after that.

My first clue should have been the separation of ‘The CBA’ from other clean-looking but mostly mundane restrooms. I assumed this was for those who wanted to skip the line and were okay with a restroom that was slightly less than the cleanest in the nation. My second clue should have been the speed at which the line moved through ‘The CBA.’ No bathroom line moves that quickly. The third, fourth, and all clues after that were likely included in the guidelines posted outside the door, which I failed to read because a spritz of pine-scented bathroom deodorant spooks Hector such that he becomes an undulating leather sack of rabbit bones, trying to work his way from my hands. I have good intentions going in, thinking that of all the rules, unwritten or otherwise, those who curated ‘The CBA’ probably wouldn’t want stray animals milling about on their immaculate ceramic.

Hector calms a bit inside ‘The CBA.’ It’s hard not to. ‘The CBA’s’ cleanliness presents like a tangible static. It’s difficult to look at- bright and overwhelming and smelling of aerosol and asthma inhaler. Air purifiers hum quietly in the corners. Calm music plays overhead. The door closes behind me with a sharp click and the exit sign beside it lights, pressing me to act or get a move on.

I stumble forward.

The water in the toilet sparkles cleaner, no doubt, than the mildewy sludge I have sloshing about in my bottle. That maybe should have been my final clue. ‘The CBA’ is too clean to have seen regular use.

Something crashes outside, startling me mid-pee. I crane my neck and press harder, having read somewhere that it wasn’t healthy to stop- not for anything. A second crash aligns with an impact on the entry door. Frantic knocking follows. Someone is shouting on the other side, their voice muffled.

Operating on sheer habit, I shout “Occupied!” and zip up and then, probably unwisely, check my hair in the mirror.

The hair check ends up being in my favor for, at that same moment, both doors collapse inward with a press of bodies. I end up behind the exit as gas station employees attempt to wrestle the ‘Actual Best’ certificate from a woman that I have to assume is an agent of the titular group. As soon as they have her pinned, a huge man flings himself inside, dogpiling the woman and the employees alike and snatching the frame from all of them. He’s grabbed from below before he can retreat and the fight carries on.

Hector and I slip out before any more ‘Actual Best’ agents materialize and it’s then that I notice the fairly large ‘For Display Purposes Only’ warning above ‘The CBA.’

So… my bad, I guess. Undoubtedly my bad.

-traveler

‘Though each has its curiosities, none of the nation’s ‘Little Italys’ are so curious as to warrant inclusion in this humble guide. Also absent are the handful of ‘Tiny Italys’ which, while certainly being strange as a concept, are all fairly mundane in practice and safe, overall. The northwest’s ‘Truly Miniscule Italy’ comes close, it being both very strange and mildly dangerous, but what danger does exist faces entirely inward. It’s just so small that a visitor could topple the place with an uncareful brush of their fingers.

The only Italian variant to be featured here is ‘Particulate Italy’ which, at the time of publication, hangs in a cloud outside of Springfield, Missouri and seems to be floating west on a leisurely breeze. ‘Particulate Italy’ is a destination that visits you and it’s worth adding any one of the many websites or apps that track ‘Particulate Italy’ to your rotation of electronic devices for it tends to be an unwelcome guest. Why? Well, that involves a short history.

‘Particulate Italy’ was created in the early 2000s, a product of the ‘everything must be smaller’ trend that prevailed at the time. Vancouver’s ‘Microscopic Italy’ (since lost), had held the record for the world’s smallest ‘Italy’ for nearly a decade by then and, daunted by the undertaking that would be involved in challenging Greenland’s ‘Gargantuan Italy,’ bored American scientists decided to create the smallest ‘Italy’ possible with the technology available at the time, hoping to score a much-needed ‘win’ for the States. After some trial and error, and using methods since classified, these scientists produced a fine dust that, on very, very close inspection, turned out to be ‘Particulate Italy.’ A short time later, these scientists died, their lungs filling with blood.  

The absolute lowest bar to qualify for an Italy variant is the inclusion of an identifiable landmark and ‘Particulate Italy’s’ claim is staked on an extrusion that looks a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This ‘Particulate Pisa’ has led to a great deal of trouble since ‘Particulate Italy’ was released from the lab and the problem is twofold:

When ‘Particulate Italy’ is inhaled, the ‘Particulate Pisa’ has a tendency to hook into the lungs and sort of wobble about with each attempted breath, tearing thousands of little holes in the delicate tissue meant for transferring oxygen to the bloodstream. The secondary issue has to do with the way ‘Particulate Italy’ moves through the air which is, in a word, erratically. ‘Particulate Italy’ floats across the nation like an American football rolls across a field, making sudden, unexpected turns for reasons that cannot always be calculated in time to adjust predictions. Those website and apps that track ‘Particulate Italy’ do their best to pinpoint its location, but their primary purpose is to highlight fairly large zones where ‘Particulate Italy’ mightbe, so that the residents of those areas can be evacuated in time.

It’s recommended that travelers avoid ‘Particulate Italy’ when possible and that proper respiratory gear be donned if a visit proves unavoidable.’

-traveler

‘In 2007, Edmond Bell discovered the entrance to a cave network on his land and, despite a lot of good advice from a number of reasonable people, he decided to map the cave with nothing but a flashlight, a daypack, and enough rope that he could tie it off at the surface and find his way back as necessary. This worked for a week or so, by which time he was able to report that the cave moved gradually downward without branching for as far as his rope would take him. Bell paused for a week to order more rope and to devise a reel-like system to release it so that he could ‘safely’ carry on past his current dead end. He entered the cave on June 23^rd and has not resurfaced. The cave system has been gated. Stern signage recounts an abridged version of this same story, using it as a case study for adventurous stupidity. Edmond Bell is most likely dead, after all.

But.

But the thing is, Bell’s reel is still turning at the same slow pace that might indicate a determined man’s trudging steadily forward into the dark. It stops at night, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a full eight, but it always picks up again, churning rope into the cave. You’re asking, couldn’t it be a quirk of nature? A body dragged along by some underground river? A trick of heat and wind? A hoax, even- a separate reel deep inside that eats up the slack?

Could be. Sure.

You’re asking now about this seemingly infinite supply of rope. That’s the special draw of this destination. Visitors bring rope to add to the reel so that Edmond Bell, whatever’s left of him, doesn’t get stuck on his journey into the earth.’

Hector and I arrive at ‘Edmond’s Reel’ around three in the afternoon with a length of rope I picked up special from a hardware store half an hour down the road. The woman there asked if I was going out to ‘Edmond’s Reel’ and gave me a skeptical look when I told her I was. I haven’t decided, yet, whether the skepticism was in response to my buying the cheapest length of rope that could support the weight of an adult man, or a broad skepticism regarding the whole enterprise.

These things still nag at me, even this far down the road.

‘Edmond’s Reel’ isn’t turning when I arrive but it groans to life after a few moments, as though whatever tugged the rope had been taking a breather. A sign nearby, likely placed there by the Rangers, details the use of the additional reel, which has been erected anonymously and allows for visitors to add line without interrupting the feed from ‘Edmond’s.’ The instructions are simple but I’ve never been very good with rope, so it takes me a while to get everything tied together and spun.

When I turn back around I see that ‘Edmond’s Reel’ has halted again and it’s a full minute before I realize his line has disappeared between the bars, severed from the creaking contraption that kept him anchored for over a decade. I rush to the entrance of the cave and watch the rope pull into the thick shadows beyond the gate. It disappears without a sound.

When I turn, I find Hector nibbling idly at the length of rope now drooping from ‘Edmond’s Reel.’ He stares back, daring me to point a finger, claiming, with innocent rabbit eyes, that the rope pulled loose on its own and he’s only making the best of a difficult situation.

I wonder, though. These things nag at me, even this far down the road.

-traveler