With all the time I spend on the road, I usually find myself a year or two behind popular culture which means that I’m often out of my element at those Wayside destinations that hold celebrities at their core. Prop museums tend to display a few things from movies I watched as a child, so that’s something, and I appreciate wax museums for their eerie, liminal atmospheres, even if I only recognize a handful of the personas on exhibit.

‘The Divot Gallery’ is something else entirely. The museums tend to split their focus between the curios and the celebrities but ‘The Divot Gallery’ leans hard into the element of worship that is, admittedly, inherent in all of them. I show up unprepared for a rapid-fire series of questions and karaoke-style catalogs of celebrity names, ranked by fame. I go straight to the B-listers, knowing that anyone of historical significance and anyone currently trending will be well above my budget. The cashier must see me react- she hands me the C-listers.

This, I can afford.

‘There is no greater experience of entropy than that which can be purchased at ‘The Divot Gallery.’ It’s a motel, on the surface, consisting of just six rooms rented by the hour and a massive warehouse to store the largest collection of pre-owned couches and beds in the country. This furniture once belonged to the rich and famous, was thrown out bearing the imprints specific to its once-owners. The people at ‘The Divot Gallery’ saw an opportunity in that and, like a witch digging about for spare fingernails, they have built up their inventory from dumpsters, thrift shops, and bribed garbagemen with such efficiency that celebrities have gone on record claiming to obsessively destroy everything they now throw away.

This has not stopped ‘The Divot Gallery’ which has proven time and again that they buy their goods legally and stop just short of libel in their proposed explanations of otherwise mysterious stains.

Visitors might choose to spend the afternoon in the hollow embrace of their celebrity crush, might conceive a child on the bed of a rock star or get high in the recliner of a famous stoner-comedian. There are death beds, of course, but testimonials suggest that ‘The Divot Gallery’ as experienced on any furniture leans depressing. At it’s least existential, most people will find that the celebrities they once held on a pedestal are not much better than they are at keeping crumbs out of the nooks and crannies of a couch- are not so special at all.

At its most existential, customers sometimes recognize themselves in the massive, hierarchal network of modern America. They may realize they exist on a rung far, far lower than they suspected, that there are ways of living beyond their imagining and that lying prone on a used mattress is the closest they will ever get to bridging the truth of their existence with that of even a minor celebrity.”

Hector and I nap on a sort of rounded pad that once belonged to a famous dog. I sleep well enough, but I get the sense that Hector has some difficulty getting comfortable. Maybe it’s the smell of another animal. Maybe he’s just realizing he was never meant for the silver screen.

-traveler

“Well, this is it. Feel free to have a look around. We only ask that you don’t touch any of the exhibits.”

By the look on the man’s face I understand that he’s implying I’ve already touched one of the exhibits- may still be touching it. I step to the right and the man’s face grows pained. I take two steps to the left and he seems to relax. When I squat down, I see a small tag poking out from under the rug I’ve trampled. It was apparently used in several episodes of Dr. Malarkey (1957).

There’s more on the tag but the man behind me clears his throat when I try to pull it out a little more. A small note nearby indicates the tag was added to the rug in 1998 when it appeared in The Museum Maze as an authentic prop prop.

“How long is a self-guided tour supposed to take?” I ask.

“The pamphlet says three hours.” The man cocks his head. “But I recommend five to be on the safe side.”

‘Formerly ‘Maxmillian’s House of Props,’ the institution known as ‘Mad Props’ is a casual traveler’s nightmare. Imagine, for a moment, that you are not traveling alone and are, instead, a part of some version of the American nuclear family and that your squealing children spy a sign in the distance that advertises the largest and most diverse collection of movie props in the nation. Imagine subsequent signs that list all the recent blockbusters for the kiddies and include a handful of titles from your own preferred genre. Seems like a crowd-pleaser. Seems like an easy stop to make.

‘Mad Props’ lives up to all its hype only via technicality. Its curators dig through Hollywood’s dumpsters and have filled a single family home with such a mundane collection of background items that even the most avid film connoisseurs will find themselves yawning. Worse, ‘Mad Props’ refuses to institute any sort of proper signage, relying on a system they call ‘unintrusive’ but which is, frankly, hidden.

This proved to be important in a 2020 lawsuit in which the defense (representing a man whose child engaged with a prop toilet) subpoenaed ‘Mad Props’s’ income documents and found that their profitability is entirely dependent upon their tendency to sue costumers for damages. The 2020 rebranding also added a very specific clause to the customer agreement, indicating in complex legalese what constitutes reasonable damage and what is in store for a traveler that unsuspectingly causes it. ‘Mad Props’ remains a tedious maze of an attraction. To make it more interesting to the traveler is to make it less fruitful for the owner and that sort of split only ever breaks one way.’

-traveler

‘Locals would have you believe that the concept of paisley itself came from ‘The Paisley Prickles’ but that’s the sort of re-writing of history that Americans sometimes try to slip under the radar for the sake of tourism. The reality is that paisley prickles thrived under other names in several parts of the world before the pattern was utilized in South Asia, eventually popularized in the west, and that the link between said pattern and the North American paisley prickle fields was a connection made entirely in retrospect.

All this to say that ‘The Paisley Prickles’ field in Arizona is just one of many global sites but the only known to exist in the states. Beyond their little white lie, locals are frank about the plant’s disconcerting properties. A light touch induces a painful paisley rash that lasts for a week, at least. ‘The Paisley Prickles’ are hyper-resilient but the field is self-contained. An eighties-era attempt to destroy the patch was met with failure and several contemporary attempts to grow it in a lab or derive some mystery cure from its essence have resulted in poisonings. A single groundskeeper remains on staff for the field and his job consists entirely of clearing weeds from the visitor path. ‘The Paisley Prickles’ have not, in his thirty years, attempted to cross the fence he installed in 1992.

The meta leaf-on-leaf pattern suggests, to some, that ‘The Paisley Prickles’ are a product of intelligent design. The going theory is that the patches indicate, in the style of ray cats and atomic priesthood, something dangerous at their epicenters- that they represent a message left behind by something that preceded humanity and overestimated humanity’s ability to perceive cryptic warnings.’

I’ve been wary of plant-specific destinations since the trouble with fairy ferns all those years ago, but for all that ‘The Paisley Prickles’ seem dangerous, it would take cross the fence and walking several more minutes before contact with one would be possible.

This is exactly what Hector does the first chance he gets, slipping from my hands as I attempt to harness him and jettisoning himself into the patch at its thickest. I clamber over the fence but can’t bring myself to get any closer than that myself and soon enough I see Hector hoofing it back in my direction, already showing signs of the rash on his bare skin.

Hector spends a week looking like a high-end purse, his thick hide raised in paisley. It doesn’t seem to bother him much.

-traveler

Hector and I camp at ‘The Memphis Goatee’ despite warnings about the sickly, disoriented birds that nest there. It doesn’t seem like a mistake until the mistake is obvious. The birds return to roost around sunset and, because the forest has warped their sense of direction, they aren’t at all prepared for our tent being in the way.

Most of them zip by, well above us, but the flock arrives so thickly that the low-flyers whip into the tent fabric and bounce back onto the ground, chirping angrily. It happens a couple times before I grab Hector and huddle down against the opposite side of the tent, which works until the fallen birds realize we’re there and attack us, taking little pin-prick bites of our clothes and skin as retribution. The tent goes down but, by then, we’ve ducked and dodged our way behind a tree- far enough away that the birds aren’t willing to chase us. It’s over in five minutes but it feels like much longer and then it’s dark and the tent is torn to shreds.

There are no clouds but the world never passes up a chance to rain on an unprotected camper.

‘Looking for a frivolous use of money and land? Already seen Mt. Rushmore? Try, then, ‘The Memphis Goatee,’ a massive swirl of transplanted woodland an hour east of the city itself. It’s a Seussian forest, by design, made up by trees that have been taken far from their lands of origin and twisted by inbreeding and, some say, genetic or chemical interference. The altered trees grow taller and thinner the nearer they are to the center and, in order to maintain form, they’ve begun to curl and spiral and entwine, each relying on another for support.

A goatee was the literal intended result of this project- a goatee that could be seen from space. Archives suggest a rogue committee at the county level reached out to equally deranged politicians in Australia and South Africa (antipodes to either side) and came to some sort of clandestine agreement that each would create a forest to simulate the hairstyle of a balding man with a goatee on the earth itself. The pieces of the project that made it onto paper are heavy with phrases like ‘global unity’ and ‘shared sense of human delight’ and ‘breaking down borders (figurative only).’ Needless to say, only Memphis kept up their end of this deal.

The author hesitates to argue against any project that promotes or preserves nature, but ‘The World’s Goatee’ is not a healthy place. It is bloated on water that is needed elsewhere and crawling with invasive species. Its brittle trees break unpredictably and those animals that choose to live there behave just as erratically, torn between what evolutionary instinct tells them should be true, and what Memphis has made the truth.’

Trees have collapsed over the road we came in on. Signs suggest this happens all the time and encourage visitors to enter the woods with several days of food. Luckily, the forest floor is so starved for light that little grows there and I’m able to maneuver the bike around the blockage. Night is darker inside ‘The Memphis Goatee.’ Leaving it early is a relief.

-traveler

‘Say you were passing a car on a dark stretch of highway and, noticing the driver neglected to turn their brights down, you flashed a polite message with your own. Say the passing car has whipped across the lanes in a dramatic U-turn and now pursues you close behind, flashing their own headlights and swerving side to side.

What is that car trying to convey?

The answer may surprise you and, assuming you survive the encounter, the answer can be found at ‘Headlight History,’ a museum of sorts that deals with headlight-related trivia. Though much of ‘Headlight History’ is devoted to wall-space for the many code-like light configurations that supposedly have significance to the asphalt underground, its central attraction is a series of interactive exhibits that allow a visitor to drive a simulated car along the same highway several times over. There, they are presented with various coded headlight signals and asked to respond by indicating with their own lights or swerving to escape.

Having been open to the public for five years as of this edition, it’s more or less common knowledge that, no matter what decisions the driver makes, all of ‘Headlight History’s’ simulations end gruesomely. Those that don’t finish with some sort of quick collision introduce a colorful variety of serial killers that press the driver from the road, pop-up from the backseat, or leap dramatically through the windshield to stab the driver to death.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Officially called ‘The Afterlife: A Spiritual Retirement Center,’ the facility off the I-70 and just outside Baltimore is more commonly referred to as ‘The Ghost Hotel-’ a misnomer for many reasons. Residents of ‘The Ghost Hotel’ are permanent, for instance, and it’s currently impossible to pay for a room. It is a strictly non-profit enterprise, held together by sparse government funds and sizable, if less reliable, private donations. Most of these donations come from families who are able to recognize a resident within ‘The Ghost Hotel’ and feel the facility is doing good work.

‘The Ghost Hotel’ is a place for the dead rather than the living. Occasionally the source of a haunting can be isolated to a single object or a room and, when this happens, those totems can be shifted to ‘The Ghost Hotel’ for the benefit of the haunted party and the haunter alike.

There are rooms for the relatively self-reliant ghosts, say, your translucent rocking-chair grandma or your window-waver. There are rooms for poltergeists, filled to the brim with small, tidy objects for thrashing about or intricate stacking. Employees take turns stepping into said rooms to act surprised and to ultimately put everything back where it’s supposed to go. For the outright murderous ghosts? Well, that’s how a traveler gets a cheap room for the night.’

There’s a long waitlist for volunteering at ‘The Ghost Hotel.’ Hector and I are halfway across the country when we get the call but we turn around anyway and make it just in time. I sign a whole sheaf of papers at the desk, most of which attest to my cardiac and metal health history. The woman hands me the keys without any real ceremony and points me to the sort of sliding-gate elevator a person expects at an establishment called ‘The Ghost Hotel.’

I hesitate. “Anything I should know about room, uh, 14?”

“You much of an actor?”

“Not really.”

“Then the less details you get, the better. They know when you’re faking it. Best advice is to pretend to die early.”

There is a small guide to being haunted on the bedside table that says much the same.

A resident is assigned a weapon tailored to their historical preference. These items are harmless. Theatrical deaths among volunteers are discouraged. Most residents resorting to would-be fatal attacks are signaling exhaustion. It is best to let them finish.

Room 14 is a taxidermy room. None of the decorations have horns or teeth of significant size but there are several stuffed rabbits on display. I think about calling downstairs to complain, to see if we can switch, maybe, but Hector doesn’t seem to mind so much. I put the rabbits up on a high shelf just in case.

When I come out of the bathroom a few minutes later, the rabbits have been placed on the bed. All of the taxidermied heads have turned to glare at the toilet. The lights flicker.

This won’t be a restful night.

Hector and I are plagued by animal noises well into the evening. Shadows crawl in and out of our peripheries. The rabbits won’t stay still- the resident ghost honed in on that discomfort right away. They’re never where I leave them. They move stop-motion when I blink. It’s admittedly pretty creepy. I wonder what makes this ghost so mean. Was it a murderer or something? Does it hate animals? I try to write messages in fog on the mirror but it just shows up as a dark shadow behind me before blinking away. The guide suggests this is pretty normal. Ghosts get set in their ways. They don’t want to talk.

I wake up in the middle of the night when one of the stuffed rabbits clatters to the floor. It’s pretty clearly baiting me. I take the blanket off and step across the creaking floor. I bend over and hear the taxidermied animals all creaking, each moving a leg or a jaw or a neck. The shadow flicks across the glass as my fingers graze the rabbit’s fur and I look over in time to watch it coalesce into the figure of a man. It drives a knife down into my back and I feel the blade click into the handle.

I hesitate, probably too long for any real sort of believability, and then slump over on the floor. The stage knife drops near my face and I see, reflected in the rabbit’s glass eye, the shadow receding into the darkness. After a moment I stand up and brush myself off. I set the knife and the rabbit back up on the shelf and sleep the rest of the night, undisturbed.

-traveler

‘Perhaps best described as a novelty pod hotel, ‘The Backseat Bed and Breakfast’ has taken a motley fleet of vehicles otherwise destined for the junkyard and repurposed them as strange little rooms within rooms. Stripped of their engines, the cars and trucks sit in tight garages and on custom hydraulic frames. Though one might pay a premium for finer upholstery or wider cars, the core experience of ‘The BBB’ is that of hucking one’s belongings into the trunk and curling into the backseat while the proprietary hydraulics gently rock the car from below and a simple light show mimics the headlights of an occasional passing car or the overhead streetlights of a quiet suburban neighborhood. Engine noises can be toggled and custom ambience, based upon preferred locales, is available upon request. One is welcome to consider what other backseat experiences might be relived at ‘The BBB,’ though the owners insist it is strictly a family friendly establishment.

Breakfast includes burned coffee and copycat items from popular fast food menus that taste so alike their inspiring dishes one must assume ‘The BBB’ employs a fast driver rather than an ingenious chef.’

My family had a boxy old sedan of some sort- I’ve never been much for makes and models. Business is slow enough at ‘The BBB’ that I get a little tour of the available rooms and find something similar at the lowest price tier. It isn’t a nice car- I didn’t expect it to be.

Hector spends the night in the passenger seat, sniffing at all the cracks and crevices before settling into sleep. I do some reading and click the overhead light off around nine. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open. The backseat is as I remember- only just wide enough. The precipice threatens each time I shift against the belt buckle of the middle seat. The plastic door creaks each time I try to find the room to stretch. It isn’t comfortable but I sleep anyway, smelling cigarettes and coffee in the fabric under a rolled up hoodie ‘The BBB’ provided as a pillow.

The car lurches and tosses me to the floor at seven sharp: the wakeup call I asked for in the form of a simulated speedbump. Hector hops onto my body from the front and tries to settle in for sleep again before I push him off and extricate myself. We eat our egg sandwich and hit the road, feeling as though we never really stopped.

-traveler

The Imp of the Perverse resides in Manhattan, of all places. Its den or its hovel, whatever you want to call it, is the only thing of interest in an unnamed stretch of grass just south of Central Park. There may be other imps like it- there surely are- but ‘America’s Imp’ resides in Manhattan and it’s Halloween again, meaning that it’s time to learn whether we’ll have six more weeks of dread.

I don’t like New York City. It’s cramped and difficult to navigate. Hector likes it for the diversity of scents. I wonder if he would appreciate the rodent population as much as he seemed to enjoy ‘The Prairie Dog Capital City,’ or if he’d find himself an outsider, like I do. I am somehow both too polite and too rough around the edges for New York. I can’t quite blend, no matter which way I lean.

‘America’s Imp’ is historically late to its own shadow-seeing but I arrive on time anyway, storing the motorcycle in a grossly overpriced lot nearly a mile away. We wait for hours.

‘Every once in a while a new bout of satanic panic spurs the government to perform research on ‘America’s Imp:’ setting out traps, mobilizing units with penetrating radar, and digging up the little park it calls home. They never find anything. The burrow from which it emerges inevitably terminates just below the earth and the burrow returns no matter how many times it is cemented over, rising up through cracks like the roots of an absent tree. Satanists have no better luck. ‘America’s Imp’ is neither intimidated nor impressed by summons and rituals.

‘America’s Imp’ emerges on Halloween as a puff of smoke. Violet means six more weeks of trouble. Black means a modicum of peace. Skeptics point out the many ways ‘America’s Imp’ is always wrong, no matter what it chooses. Believers say that’s just ‘America’s Imp’ doing what comes naturally.’

Hector and I are joined in the park by only a handful of spectators. Most Americans have made up their own mind about what the next few months will look like. A photographer asks if he can take a picture of the two of us and I decline as politely as possible, thinking of all the people I’m trying to avoid. The man doesn’t seem to mind too much. He tells me he’s come every year for a decade and has snagged a picture of the imp’s decision each time.

“We’re in a blue slump.” He tells me. “Fingers crossed for something better this year.”

“Fuck.” I tell him. “Fingers fucking crossed.”

-traveler

‘It goes without saying that one should do their best to ignore signs about ‘The Ramp.’ It isn’t easy, though. The signs are frequent and large and sometimes illuminated. Sometimes they move, a goading cowboy’s arm pointing the way or waggling his finger, warning you not to try the ramp and somehow daring you to try it in the process.

‘It wouldn’t be smart to try THE RAMP,’ the signs say, ‘No matter how cool it seems like it would be.’

‘Nobody has survived taking THE RAMP. Maybe you could- but probably not. Maybe, though. Nothing is impossible.’

‘Warning! THE RAMP’s gate is under repair. The entrance is open and free. This does not mean you should attempt to take THE RAMP, but nothing would stop you if you tried…’

‘THE RAMP is not for cowards. Are you a coward? Then do not take THE RAMP.’

‘The Ramp’ exists on a southern stretch of highway in Michigan. This will not be the book that tells you exactly where. It’s easy enough to find without invoking that sort of liability. ‘The Ramp’ appears well-made and seasonally maintained, constructed of rebar and concrete and silky smooth asphalt. The entrance slopes gently, at first, and ends with a steep little flourish. There is that deadly gap before the downward ramp rises from the other side to catch the would-be driver. It all seems reasonable from the road, as though any vehicle could cover the distance. As though any competent driver could leave ‘The Ramp’ with a rattled suspension and a story to tell their grandchildren.

No driver has yet claimed that story. Maybe you could- but probably not.

Maybe, though.

Nothing is impossible.

(entry sponsored by THE RAMP)

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Hanging like some dread spider in the sky above Bartlett Forest is New Hampshire’s ‘Mitten Tree,’ a long dead elm that has been the subject of local yarn bombing for nearly a decade now. Once a cozy-seeming installation, its brittle branches have begun to bend and crack under the weight of decaying wool. Scarves and mittens unravel until their entrails, caught up in the wind, go looping back into the vast moldering network or slap wetly at distracted visitors. It smells of a drowned dog and that alone has been enough to dissuade the once fanatic crochet vandals. It is an abandoned place and, as of publication, is likely to slough off the Wayside within a year.’

It’s late evening by the time Hector and I make it out to the ‘Mitten Tree’ but the hiking isn’t so unpleasant. The trail is wide enough that the moon, just waning from full, provides plenty of light to walk by. Hector busies himself in piles of dry leaves, hopping between them, thrashing about, seeming to search for the perfect specimen. I’ve done a lot of research on rabbit nutrition since acquiring him from ‘The Sunburn Experience.’ The forums would disapprove of his eating wild grasses and leaves, but it seems cruel to stop him. Isn’t this what a wild rabbit would do?

The ‘Mitten Tree’ does stink and it has certainly taken on something of a sinister shape in decline. Only a few of its titular garments have maintained any semblance to the human hand and those that have wave eerily in the wind, silhouetted by moonlight. I sit and let Hector roll about in the leaves a little while longer. I wonder whether I have it in me to knit him a rabbit-sized sweater- whether instructions for that sort of thing exist on the internet somewhere. Surely I’m not the first person to worry about the temperature of a hairless rabbit.

Hector and I both leap when, apropos of nothing, the ‘Mitten Tree’ suddenly illuminates. Somebody has laced it with string lights and connected them all to a small solar battery and a timer. The lights play off several ornaments in delicate glass. In technicolor, the ‘Mitten Tree’ almost looks almost merry, again.

Hector is enraptured by the sight. I have to hold him back, afraid he’ll chew through a wire somewhere and electrocute himself. I’m impressed too and a little baffled. Haven’t we been on the edge of the winter for months now? I can’t remember the last time I noticed the holidays. It must have been Halloween five times since the last Christmas.

How long has it been autumn?

-traveler