‘Though increasingly difficult to experience, ‘The Marilyn Vent’ is a small piece of the Wayside wedged right in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. ‘The Marilyn Vent’ is a subterranean infrastructural orifice that looks like any other but that garnered an amount of social media fame following a post that illustrated a consistent ability to lift skirts and dresses from the legs of those people who chose to wear them. Scripted videos soon followed- people of all genders wearing billowy bottoms and acting surprised when the air from below struck them. It featured as an entry on a fashion vloggers YouTube series. It received a very small mention in Vogue as a local fashion-related oddity. 

The trouble was that the vent was located along a fairy busy thoroughfare and the increasingly large crowds of influencers were becoming a nuisance to those business people who had been walking over the vent for years on the way to work and had never so much as blushed or blinked an eye. Soon, videos of ‘The Marilyn Vent’ took on a pointed turn- men in suits walking through a careful social media setup, brushing past would-be celebrities in a way that seemed decidedly un-accidental. 

A woman was hit by a car after stepping backward and away from one of these incidents and, mindful of litigation, the city attempted to block and reroute the vent. That same day, a room full of office workers in a neighboring building were found passed out in their chairs and the vent was quickly reopened. Plans for the city’s infrastructure surfaced, looking for all the world like the blueprints of a spaceship from a movie series with deep lore. Nobody could make any sense of them and nobody could quite tell why the vent existed or why bad things happened when it was blocked or even mildly diffused.

Finally, the city came to an out-of-the-box solution: they made the vent smell bad. When that didn’t work at first, they made it smell worse, and by the time they came to the sweet spot, the vent’s stench was so powerful that walking over it risks ruining a person’s clothes. 

‘The Marilyn Vent’s’ last claim to fame was the video of a woman determined to remake the first, only to throw up halfway through the process and to have her vomit blown back up at her and into the unlucky people who happen to be around. People don’t visit ‘The Marilyn Vent’ anymore.’

–an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

There are certain destinations on this journey that make me wonder whether the Wayside is aware of people like me, people who plan to see as much of it as possible, and I wonder if the Wayside, which is more of a concept that a place and much more of a place than an actual thinking entity, is mean. 

Take ‘The Cactus Maze,’ for example. Why would it ever need to exist except as a punishment for those of us who choose to explore the dusty corners of the nation? And why is it that the hardest or most painful attractions are the cheapest and easiest to access? I’ve driven past ‘The Cactus Maze’ a dozen times and I’ve always found a reason to avoid it- that it looked too busy or that it was too cold for something outdoors or that I had a small, fragile rabbit traveling along that would do poorly in such a pointed environment. 

This time as I approached, on my way to somewhere else entirely, I saw that the old, sun-word billboards carried a fresh addendum: the cacti are blooming it said. 

Well, now I have no choice.

‘When most people think of a maze, they think of it mainly in two dimensions. It’s a matter of moving forward, and sometimes backward, and making left-or-right sort of choices until our simple logic is rewarded with an escape from a trap we set for ourselves. ‘The Cactus Maze’ adds a third dimension of play with the addition of carefully placed, ground-lingering cacti and bonsaied cacti that jut their arms into the paths one is expected to navigate in order to succeed. ‘The Cactus Maze’ expects a bit of up-and-down thinking, and it rewards those visitors who are willing to get a little hurt by making the experience that much shorter. Those who choose to draw the maze out will find their paths narrowing.’

The maze is beautiful, I will give it that. Regardless of the flowers, ‘The Cactus Maze’ incorporates a variety of species that I have only ever noted on their own. And the sheer density of cactus is something new for me as well. I’m used to considering the lone cactus out of the corner of my eye, stepping over as I traipse through some desert trail or avoiding as I veer off to piss in a bush. 

In ‘The Cactus Maze,’ I begin to hear the cacti. They bristle against each other in the wind. They scritch and scrape as lizards drag their scales between the spines. The cacti at the entrance have been vandalized, their skins thick with names and slurs. Past a turn or two, however, there is no sign that anybody has been through in a while. It’s an intimidating place, dark and near-silent in a way that makes a corn maze seem jovial. 

I come to a path made hopscotch by the growth of little cacti pups and navigate it with relative ease. I find the same pattern around the next bend, only a large cactus lays sideways across like a fallen log. I’d assume it was an accident, but I know better, and I make it across with a few small snags in my pants. I regret bringing my backpack with me. I worry I might not have enough water. 

I crawl through a narrow cactus tunnel. I clamber over a massive cactus, carefully placing my hands where its spines have been pruned away. I pass through a hall of cacti that look like men. People have clothed them: a doctor, a santa claus, a marine. I lend a bandana to the cowboy and things get a little easier after that. The blooming cacti are dazzling in the low sun. I find myself standing to admire them, not something I’ve allowed myself to do at a place like this in a while. 

After an hour, I recognize the sound of the interstate. The difficulty has eased and the forks have dropped off entirely. Finally, I turn a corner and find myself at a dead end, blocked by brutal, unblooming cacti. They hold a toy skeleton between them and it, in turn, holds a sign:

Sorry, pardner. Best head back the way you came.

-traveler

Where else would ‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ be but outside Vegas, in the desert where nothing else will grow? It is an oasis, of sorts, the sort of place a man might crawl toward if he had been lost, wandering for weeks on end, desperate enough to topple cacti for their scant liquid, suffering the pinprick wounds of its needles. It is lush green and perfectly manicured: a bonsai of short grass and carefully placed flowers. 

The perfection conceals a raging war between man and plant and insect and desert. 

The plants are not allowed to breed with one another, for starters. Perfect specimens are bred elsewhere and transplanted only when ready. In order to inhibit breeding, local insect populations are killed and repelled by a cocktail of aerosol poisons so potent that visitors must wear a mask if they wish to trod the stone pass that bisects the greenery- so potent, that a mesh is drawn over ‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ to prevent birds passing overhead from dying and splattering themselves on this pristine and captive nature (that is, it doesn’t prevent the birds from dying- it only catches their bodies before they land). 

The land is dry and unforgiving, salted in the formation of the Earth. For this, a massive industrial plant works day and night nearby, pulling water from the next state over, purifying and then re-poisoning it with a specialty mix of weedkiller. 

‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ has no attached house, no living space whatsoever, though it is home to a motley collection of lawn ornaments, each fashioned by the sort of artist who is inexplicably rich and successful and completely unknown except to those who devote their lives not to art, but to the artists themselves. The result is a series of pink ceramic triangles that its creator describes as ‘a flamingo, deconstructed.’ Horrible gnomes peer out from sculpted bushes, each an homage to the artists highly abusive family. In December ‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ sports a nativity scene compromised of living children in expensive costumes, these children being trained at great expense to remain still for extended periods of time and to ignore the gawking tourists, each of whom paid more for entry than these children will see for their work.  

‘The Nation’s Perfect Yard’ is more a mirage than an oasis. A man crawling toward the grass would be shot before he was allowed to drink the chemical water that sustains it.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘There is a special sort of sadness present in ‘The Layaway Vault’s’ of western Illinois. The items there represent sadness on an individual level, of course, having been long abandoned by the families that hope, someday to afford them. This is compounded by the much more judgmental sadness that arises when an American pledges, but is unable to, complete a purchase.

This is not to be confused with the noble tragedy of a failed enterprise- it’s very noble to gamble and even to lose on money-making schemes, but to commit to buying something, say a comfortable armchair, and to fail to have the funds when the prescribed time has arrived is a pitiable thing. It represents not a failure of the individual, but a failure of the system which should, at least, have offered the would-be purchaser a high-interest loan or even a direct, parasitic siphoning of their monthly salary. ‘The Layaway Vault’ represents opportunities lost and the owners are determined to preserve them in this state, unwilling to open the packages or to contact the original layaway-ers or to consider the willingness of visitors to purchase said packages and have them delivered, belatedly, to said layaway-ers. 

There is a lot of shame wrapped up in the whole thing.’

Soft, quality bedding. Thick jackets. Kitchen sets. Toys. The items tucked away in ‘The Layaway Vault’ are all little luxuries- things that could likely be replaced with cheaper versions, that could be thrifted or done without entirely. They represent the then-dreams of the families that chose them. That comfort has hardened into something really quite sad in its abandonment. ‘The Layaway Vault’ has pledged that, for posterity, these goals will never be met. It’s a cruelty I imagine most of the families don’t even realize. 

I’ve seen a lot of sadness on this trip, but these goals, left dust-laden in the dark, fill me with dread. I’ve shelved so much in my life. I’ve left things behind me for longer than I intended. I’m not sure how much of it is still waiting for me. 

-traveler

‘Biologists agree: ‘The Fruiting Bramble’ is worse than its previous manifestation, and they have roundly apologized if their questions about the once ‘Fruitless Bramble’ have somehow, in a display of irony, prompted ‘The Bramble’ into this new phase of life.

“We much preferred ‘The Bramble’ when it was inert, a spokesperson said, “And, on behalf of the scientific community, we’re sorry for ever asking.”

‘The Fruiting Bramble’ now oozes a thick sap from its branches. The sap attracts and traps nearby wildlife and ‘The Brambles’ wet the ground with their blood. The sap does not prevent decay, not really, but it does seem to draw it out, creating a loose sinkhole of rotting insects and small mammals. It smells for miles around and has been known to kill birds who fly overhead. 

The fruits that have appeared are soft and white and plump. ‘The Brambles’ tear at their skin, revealing deep red innards, riddled with thick seeds. Nobody has tasted the fruit, which says a lot about ‘The Brambles.’ People taste anything- this is a universal constant. Nobody wants to go near enough to ‘The Fruiting Brambles’ to try it. 

Those brave and foolish travelers who have consumed the side-of-the-road bramble tea have largely been hospitalized since the fruiting. Nothing so dramatic as the growth of new brambles in their bodies, just a stubborn and wasting sickness of the bowels and a weakness of the limbs. The tea left something behind and it is killing them. 

Flowers of ‘The Fruiting Bramble’ are small and temporary and largely nocturnal, as pale as the fruit and impossible to smell over the rotten soil. Their petals glow faintly in the evenings and attract moths, half of which are shredded by the incessance violence of ‘The Brambles’ thorns and half of which escape, somehow, carrying a wicked pollen to parts unknown.

Local governments have reached the conclusion that ‘The Fruiting Brambles’ may be dangerous, that it may be time to take action. To do the right thing and see ‘The Brambles’ uprooted for good. The process is slow, though. Money is short. 

It has become a game for local children to cover their faces with their shirts and look out over ‘The Brambles’ as though stargazing. They identify violent constellations in the flowers and return home with strange ideas. They dare each other to eat the fruit, but nobody will.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

What is most uncomfortable for me about ‘The Museum of Urinating Statues’ is that they are not displayed as one expects- outside as part of one large or many various fountains. The owners of ‘The Museum’ have instead organized them in separate stalls, all situated in a fairly enclosed, almost tunnel-like hall, so that each can (and must) be viewed separately from the others. Signs on the outside of each door describe the statue inside in some details and, where known, include the date of its creation, its original location(s), and its manufacturing process.

This is all good information, I suppose, and the door system does mean that nobody has to see anything they don’t want to (nudity being mostly necessary in this statue genre) but the result is very much like entering a massive public toilet and moving between occupied, but unlocked, stalls. The urge to knock is overwhelming and finding the actual bathroom is impossible.

‘Is it possible that the owners of ‘The Museum of Urinating Statues’ are run-of-the-mill art collectors who interests leaned innocently niche as the years went on? Yes. Is it much more likely that there is some sort of fetish involved, that it is the owners themselves staring down into the monitors of their unnecessarily robust CCTV system and watching visitors watch, in turn, these statues as they attempt to do their business in the privacy of their protective stalls? Yes, also, to that. 

It’s recommended that one avoid the 43^rd stall, which is kept empty for some reason but is also consistently occupied by a disgruntled man who, mid-urination, will turn to hapless travelers (they having opened this door like all the others, curious about the lack of sign and assuming that no person in their right mind would put themselves in the position of being caught pants-down) and be both angry and embarrassed and give just a small view of his genitals before shooing they, the also-embarrassed but also mildly-violated and suspicious traveler on.

On the other hand, it is recommended that travelers do not skip the 44^th stall, as they so often do in their reflexive attempt to place some distance between themselves and the urinating man. The 44^th stall contains the statue of a rather majestic horse and rider, hair swept back as though by the wind and both of whom are urinating into the same pot, mid-giddyup.

Not another one like it in the states.’

I waffle a little at the 43^rd stall and finally push it open with my foot, just wide enough that the man inside can grunt his annoyance and show me his dick and I can say ‘oops, sorry about that.’ I suppose it’s the perfectionist in me, wanting to see these places on full display, even when their fullness is… tainted. 

The horse and rider are absolutely worth the stop. 

-traveler

‘It’s said, or assumed anyway, that every part of nature has its place. The predators keep populations of prey in check. Prey consume and distribute seeds. The lowliest forms of life, those that feed on the dead, churn out fertile earth. Everything depends on everything else, this is a lesson we’ve seen realized again and again.

Everything except for ‘The Fruitless Bramble.’

There is nothing quite so frustrating to biologists than ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ which covers a few acres in southern California and seems to do… nothing. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ is so nearly inert that most people assumed it’s dead. The thick, brittle vines ribbed with stinging thorns are green only for about a day as they squeeze out new growth. Following that, they fade into a brownish gray and move no longer, hardly twitching under even the strongest winds. 

‘The Fruitless Bramble’ kills everything that enters. Mice and birds have not yet evolved to survive there and have difficulty avoiding the thorns. Their bodies litter ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ rotting in the sun because the ground is so hardened by bramble roots that no natural decomposition can take place. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ seems to forgo any of the nutrients it might receive from these kills. It needs next to nothing because it exhibits no seasonal change- no flowers, no berries, no leaves. 

‘The Fruitless Bramble’ has proven to be resistant to nearly every type of destruction. It has survived fires set by disgruntled landowners with adjacent property. It has been struck by lightning more times than seems right. It doesn’t respond to any form of weed killer or pesticide and the one time someone attempted to drive a bulldozer straight into the field, ‘The Bramble’ was able to work its way into the wheels and disable the attack before local authorities could respond. 

Sometimes nature turns out an evolutionary dead end and ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ appears to be one of these lost causes. It serves no purpose, makes no attempt to spread, but it persists all the same, baking angrily under the sun and howling in the wind and sometimes cracking, randomly, when one spiral of the bramble has become too heavy for bramble underneath. 

Avoid those stalls selling ‘Fruitless Bramble Tea.’ It isn’t good, or good for you.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

What they don’t say about ‘A Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ is that ‘The Room’ is massive but cramped and chaotic with the sort of things one might expect to find in a grandpa’s basement. It’s clean, though. Dust-free. Information at the front desk suggested that this for the health of the spider and because cobwebs would make the game unfair for the human participants. 

‘Fair to call this another simulation destination, ‘The Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ advertises itself, also, as a skill-building experience and a nature-exploration center. The latter aspect tends to take center stage in its most recent advertising campaigns, leaning on an almost insufferable insistence that there are whole realms of nature that have been neglected because people flock immediately to the lush green of the actual outdoors, ignoring the varied and valid life that lives in basements and attics and sometimes ventures forth to appear in a cupboard or drawer when least expected. How has it that this noble corner of the world has gone unilluminated for so long? This question, it clarifies, is rhetorical. Spiders don’t like much light. 

So, turn your back on that natural park or that world-renowned zoo and travel to ‘The Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ or risk being, and this is a quote, a ‘nature-normie’ like the rest of the schlubs who read billboards about ‘The Room’ and drive on by.’

Comforting, at least a little, is that ‘The Room’ does seem to operate on a set of thin rules. The first rule is that the spider shouldn’t be killed, which I suppose is kind. The second is that winning the simulation involves finding the spider without killing it or being bitten, and here the bold is to represent that the actual text is presented in that dramatic, dripping blood font usually reserved for Halloween decorations, making it difficult to know whether the spider in the room is legitimately venomous or if it’s a dramatic reference. 

The last rule, and probably the dealbreaker for most, is that participants can only dress in one of the robes ‘The Room’ provides, which are, it turns out, pretty short in all dimensions. It certainly adds a layer of vulnerability to the experience- I acknowledge as much as I carefully turn over a chipped mug and, finding it empty, pull open a filing cabinet drawer.

Something brushes over my bare toes and I reflexively kick, cringing as something insectile knocks against the wall and slides to the base. When I get closer look, I see that it’s a centipede, now quite dead. 

“Does this mean I lose?” I ask, assuming someone is observing all this. 

The centipede twitches.

There is a pause and then an intercom cracks to life. “Nah, that’s all right. Keep looking.”

-traveler

‘In the southwest corner of Alabama there is a museum dedicated entirely to the geefer, an imaginary organ in the human body that material there suggests is sometimes also called the Magda Gland. ‘The Geefer Museum’ is one of those destinations that stands out for the sheer amount of thought and money that must have gone into its creation. The complex stands five stories tall and its central chamber boasts a massive, walk-through model of a human’s lower torso where the geefer and its adjacent organs are supposedly arranged. 

Doctors, or people who claim to be doctors online, have pointed out several inaccuracies with the display- not just the inclusion of the non-existent geefer, but also the overall arrangement of the represented organs. The museum’s informational booths and pamphlets cite very, very old sources, some that date back to the dark ages and here, historians (or people who claim to be historians on the internet) have also pointed out that many of its ancient sources simply do not exist either. Residents of the dark ages got a lot wrong, it would appear, but even they cannot be blamed for the imaginary geefer.

Notable, too, is the clinic in the back of the museum which offers a service called ‘Geefer Restoration,’ for which they ask a $1000 donation but will begrudgingly be performed for free if a visitor is of a lower income bracket and is in desperate need of their geefer.’

I suspect ‘The Geefer Museum’ has seen better times and that those times were before the internet made it fairly easy to debunk much of what the museum insists is true about the human body. It is wildly built, that’s certain, but its fiberglass models are beginning to chip and crack and its placards are dusty in a way that suggests long neglect. Someone still cares enough about ‘The Geefer Museum’ to keep the lights on, but it appears they employ just one man and his job includes ticketing, maintenance, and guide. He performs these duties with no enthusiasm and I am left to wander the museum on my own. 

Stand outs include the central chamber, where someone with a great deal of talent was once employed to recreate a skewed version of our inner workings. Red liquid sloshes through clean pipes while various organs squelch and gurgle and react to the occasional thrumming of the massive geefer, the unlikely shape of which is a near-perfect pyramid. 

There is a room that spends a lot of time detailing the cultural impact of the geefer with circumstantial evidence like the pyramids in Egypt and on the back of the dollar and that, somehow, the Masons are involved in its cover up or potentially its harvesting. The theories become convoluted by the end. 

Finally, there is a formaldehyde-smelling room near the end that is lined with jars that seem to contain reclaimed geefers. The signage there never quite explains how the museum was able to collect and display so many human organs, but it does finally make some claims about what the geefer is meant to do and, here, the museum debuts a third name: the fear-heart. If ‘The Geefer Museum’ can be said to have a thesis, it’s something like ‘humans are born with an organ that makes them afraid but a vast conspiracy suppresses or removes that organ in order to control the masses.’

It all approaches but never quite uses the word ‘sheeple’ in its explanation. I leave ‘The Museum of the Geefer’ enlightened, maybe, but not overly concerned. 

-traveler

‘The Body Bog’ is the essence of a side-of-the-road attraction because there’s not much for a person to safely do while visiting. The parking lot reflects the relative tightness of the presentation, allowing for, at most, four cars or, in my experience, one very old camper. A short path branches from the parking lot, winds for ten minutes through some tree, and then ends in a sort of boardwalk over the wet bog grounds that give the place its name. 

A sign there says only: ‘Body Bog’ (Coming Soon). 

The guide says more:

‘It’s a threat, yes. Maybe not to any one individual but certainly to humanity as a whole. There are no bodies in ‘The Body Bog’ but it’s clear that its curators hope there will be soon. In previous years, more detailed signs included theoretical instructions for ‘ceremoniously’ sinking human bodies into the bog so that they would likely be preserved for years past their expiry in regular old dirt. The sign went on to include examples of the sorts of bodies one might expect to eventually find in ‘The Body Bog:’ cheating spouses, two-faced friends, annoying children, and neighbors’ pets. ‘Just to name a few,’ the sign was quick to say, ‘Just throwing ideas at the wall, you know,’ it continued. 

Shortly after this sign was removed, visitors began to report hearing a voice in the bog, calling out about something called ‘Bog Cake.’ ‘Come on over this way,’ the voice said, ‘We’re celebrating ‘The Body Bog’ with cake! Totally safe to just walk on over!’ Local Rangers became involved in investigating the voice and it soon quieted.

These gimmicks quashed, ‘The Body Bog’ has sense settled on a patient silence that some describe as ‘pressured waiting.’ There is something expectant about ‘The Body Bog’ that is difficult to describe, and far be it from this author to discourage travelers from aiding the Wayside in its growth. 

‘The Body Bog’ needs bodies, and someday it will have them.’

“Is someone there?”

Someone begins to shout just as I turn to leave the boardwalk and head back to the camper. I scan the surrounding woods but make out no movement.

“I need help!”

It seems impossible to me that anybody would fall for ‘The Bog’s’ weak lures and more impossible still that they would make it so far into ‘The Bog’ before becoming stuck. My first guess is that this is some new recording, which is why I’m concerned when it continues:

“I’m not a recording! I’m just a man with limited telepathic ability who has become… stuck, here. There was a bog spirit, I think… somebody calling about cake.”

I take another step back toward the camper and the boardwalk creaks loudly underfoot. The man quits screaming, for a moment. 

“I heard that,” he says. 

“I’m just going to call the Rangers,” I say, “Or the fire fighters or whoever is nearby. I’m not really in, uh, bog-wear.”

“There’s not time!” He coughs and chokes as though he’s swallowed some of the bog water. “I’m sinking!”

“Won’t be a minute…” I say, finding that every board on the path back seems to creak. 

The man screams for me the whole way back, but it’s quieter after the first turn. I worry, a little, when I reach the camper and find I have no service, but it only makes me more determined to call for help as soon as possible. I hop in and drive toward civilization, checking my phone until a notification pushes through with new information about the next stop- some museum for an organ that doesn’t exist in the human body. Then, I see my old hometown is in the news again. I get a phone call about the camper’s warranty. 

A few days later I remember the voice in the bog with a sudden shock. I wonder if I should call someone now, but I don’t.

-traveler