‘While this author doesn’t disagree with the sentiment in its common context, a traveler is right to be suspicious of any business that takes seriously the adage: ‘It’s about the journey, not the destination.’ In this, the free market, the product must take center stage, or it will be met with suspicion.

Though, there is a loophole.

Sometimes a product can be so bad- a service so grueling- that those who engage with it feel bonded in misery. The camaraderie, the story, becomes the anti-product and the original purchase is relegated to a position of practical necessity, like an egg carton to eggs. That’s why this is a loophole rather than an exception, and it’s why a business like ‘Mazcar’s Magical Mashed Potato Sandwiches,’ which sports ‘The World’s Longest Drive-Thru,’ carries on in even the most hostile economic situations.

Misery begets misery, and the misery that ‘Mazcar’s’ serves up is, at least, the sort we choose to inflict upon ourselves.’

‘Mazcar’s’ is built into an otherwise unoccupied parking garage which was constructed for an exciting new outlet mall and made obsolete by the mall’s failure to materialize. Originally occupying just three rooms, ‘Mazcar’s’ sandwiches were featured in a viral video post and became a ‘whole thing’ overnight.

This, I learn from the woman behind me in line.

Truth be told, I’ve been cutting some corners in my research, favoring the practical for the fanciful. For instance, I know that the average time spent in ‘Mazcar’s Drive-Thru’ is around 10 hours, which is down from 13 when I first passed it a few years ago and represents an all-time low since the precipitating incident (what I now know was a video).

Considering the long wait time, I’ve packed a great deal of food and water for Hector and I and worked out a bathrooming solution for the both of us: a small litter box for him and an uncomfortable in-pants urinal thing for me. I’ve read the few rules that ‘Mazcar’s’ has posted regarding drive-thru etiquette and studied the strategies of those who have come before me. Most agree that the longest one can be out of line before losing their place is not so much a matter of time but of distance, that is, the distance between the front of one’s own vehicle and the back of the vehicle ahead. More than one vehicle length is dangerous. More than about 175% of one’s vehicle length is an endgame most of the time. Everyone seems to agree that the line won’t put up with a two-vehicle gap and there is a lot of frustration in a line so long. It snaps with a great deal of force.

The only other thing I learned about ‘Mazcar’s’ is that I should prepare to be disappointed. The drive-thru spirals up the center of the garage and then back down around the outside, weaving in and out of itself. Microphone sign-boards check and re-check customer orders, sometimes offering false assurances that food is being fast-tracked, other times seeming to flub details in order to test customers of their own preferences. It’s complicated and almost beautiful but the sandwiches are said to be pretty awful. Food should taste good or be easy to eat or healthy, at least, but ‘Mazcar’s’ are none of the above. Reviews say they’ve only gotten worse and a profit data suggests this may be by design. The worse the sandwiches get, the cleaner the catharsis.

I verify with a speaker to my left that my order is still #338 and that I wanted just ‘Mazcar’s Orginal:’ two mashed potato patties in a sort of grilled cheese formation. It’s the cheapest offering and the hardest to screw-up. The woman behind me tries to strike up a conversation but I pretend not to hear her. Someone honks in the distance.

It’s been three hours, now. By midnight I should have my sandwich and then Hector and I will have to risk camping on the outskirts of the garage or driving to the nearest motel, some thirty miles north. Seems like a waste to spend the money on a room I’ll only use for half a night, but then, I’ve gotten sort of used to sleeping on the ground.

-traveler

‘The origin of ‘The Essentialized Americatown’ in the Americatown district of San Francisco (and the subsequent Americatowns within those Americatowns) is commonly misunderstood as a bit of an inside joke. In actuality, ‘The EA’ was formed of such serious intentions that it passes as satire for most of the people that come to understand what it is: an unabashed display of patriotism taken to the extreme.

The first level of Americatown is, what might be termed, the ‘Las Vegas’ version of the country. Most of the nation’s monuments exist in miniature within its bounds and lawlessness is kept to the sort of guilty fun one expects in a shady casino. Americatown II (and here we’ve chosen to assign numbers though the many sub-Americatowns recognize no such tiering) is much more serious, where lawlessness is taken to a near-fascist place, where citizens are expected to obey the rules police and politicians flout. Those same police and politicians turn a blind eye on the antics of Americatown III, which is undergoing a perpetual civil war, the basis of which is both sides claiming ownership of Americatown III, which professes no allegiance whatsoever.

This goes on and on- there are other books that detail the various Americatowns in all there eccentricities. What’s important to this tome is the story of what exists at the very core Americatown (and, here, we are unsure which number to assign). It’s rumored that, in the very center of all Americatowns, there exists a loaded gun that is constitutionally above the law. Six shots with no legal consequence- that is the core of Americatown, America.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘The statue once called ‘The Melty Miser’ of west Alabama didn’t start out melty. In fact, it didn’t even start out a miser. ‘The Melty Miser’ was born into this world as ‘Happy Harold,’ the manic-looking mascot of a local hardware chain. The statue was erected in the style of Texas’ cement cowboys, made to loom over an empty stretch of highway and alert travelers that various power tools were available at unbeatable prices just off the next exit.

What set ‘Harold’ apart initially was his size. It’s said his signature cowlick brought him to nearly 80’ at the outset. The great irony of ‘Happy Harold’ is, of course, that his height was achieved with the use of subpar materials- seemingly some sort of thick, experimental plastic. It was only a few weeks before his features began to droop under the hot, Alabama sun.

Thus, the ‘melty.’

By the next year, ‘Happy Harold’s’ smile had inverted and his brow had taken on the unbridled cruelty of a fairy tale villain. The money bag he once held high (to indicate a celebration of what he had saved on hardware), slowly dropped behind his back, the arm twisting unnaturally, until it settled into a position that looked distinctly like he was attempting to keep the money away from roadside viewers.

Thus, the ‘miser.’

This is all ancient history, of course, because ‘The Melty Miser’ collapsed during a heatwave in 2021, his body sprawled backward in the field off the highway. Was anyone hurt? Well, that’s a good question- and one that seems particularly pointed given how quickly the owner of ‘The Melty Miser’ chose not to dismantle the Miser, or even to just let heat and gravity make a puddle out of him. The man chose to bury the Miser under a mountain of dirt and those hollow parts, kept solid in the cool earth, now form the Wayside attraction known as ‘Melty Miser Caverns.’’

The entrance to ‘Melty Miser Caverns’ doesn’t look like much but the maps I’ve located online all suggest that it roughly represents the anus of the titular Melty Miser. Maybe that’s why I loiter with Hector at the statue’s abandoned base, all shorn bolts and shattered plastic.

Finally, I push down my dignity and pull Hector into the caverns proper. We wander through the unstable stalactite fields of the groin (where visitors customarily use lighters to melt little plastic icicles from the ceiling). We peer into the psychedelic maze of the arms and squeeze through the tight passage formed by the left hand’s middle finger fusing with the money bag sometime post-impact and pre-burial (now heavily graffitied in UV-reactive paints). Finally, we emerge from between the Melty Miser’s lips and into a hollowed out room of natural earth. There, we cast our light on the excavated face of ‘The Melty Miser,’ massive and horrible in the dark.

-traveler

There are two fairly obvious red flags in the presentation of the otherwise very cheery ‘World’s Biggest Snowglobe.’ The first is that it’s walled off entirely- completely hidden from those who neglect to pay. It even sports a sort of gazebo structure that conceals it from satellite cameras, though the official purpose is to ‘prevent the unlikely scenario that light, refracted through the globe, might cause fires in the surrounding area.’ Profit concerns would have been a more convincing lie.

The second red flag is the price of the ticket that allows you to enter into “The Snowglobe” itself. Performed with scuba gear, this ticket is… free.

‘Would we call ‘The World’s Biggest Snowglobe’ a habitat? As much a habitat as any zoo, perhaps, because the people behind the glass live there but they don’t seem to like it much, even if they go through the motions of survival.’

I pay $20 for the regular entry ticket- the one that only allows me to interact with the globe from the outside. It’s the easiest $20 I’ve spent on the Wayside, if I’m honest. It has all the protective implications of a bribe and it comes with a free slushie.

‘The World’s Biggest Snowglobe’ is bigger than any building in the town I grew up. The shade from the gazebo is offset by lights within ‘The Globe’ itself. Street lights. Headlights. Bedroom lights, one has to assume. There is a village submerged in the glass and, though the cars and trees are fixed and decorative, the residences are clearly resided in. Two men swim past me, blown out of proportion by the curvature of their enclosure. I vigorously tap the glass, as signs all around the base of ‘The Globe’ suggest I do, and one of the men takes the time press his face up close. I assume this is necessary for him to get a good look at me, but it also allows him to flash a piece of bare skin, on which a message has been crudely tattooed:

Help. We are prisoners.

The men hurry on their way, and I take a sip of my slushie. Blue raspberry.

The only revelation, here, is that the people inside ‘The World’s Biggest Snowglobe’ assume the only thing stopping people from helping them escape is ignorance. They can’t know that, even from the outside, their situation is clear as day.

-traveler

“METAL MAN, METAL MAN!”

The screaming robot of ‘Metal Man National Park’ waves his arms in my direction. I am the only visitor, currently, and thus the sole object of his attention. The Metal Man is… fused in the rock. Or is part of the rock. I approach a sign nearby and find that the question of fused-with/spawning-from/imprisoned-in the rock is still debated, with angry academics on each side attempting to out-talk each other while simultaneously blocking the research of critical peers. It would mean a lot of weird things if the metal man were spawning from the rock. Some less weird things if he were simply fused with it. Nothing weird at all if he were imprisoned in it, given the country’s incarceration statistics.

‘Pity the Metal Man who, for many years, was mistaken for a prank and who we now know is as sentient and as miserable as the rest of us. The oldest visual proof of the Metal Man is dated 1949. He flails next to three cowboys, each standing a cautious yard or so from his blurry limbs. Behind them, ‘Metal Man National Park’ stretches into a desert not yet blighted by the highways that divvy it now. Though these men were perhaps not the first to sight the Metal Man, this picture heralds decades of playful torment at the hands of curious tourists before the installation of a low metal railing in 1994 discouraged visitors from physically interacting with him.

The Metal Man has an uncanny ability to predict thunderstorms, an attribute he showcases by extending a steel rod from behind his neck and into the air above him in order to capture lightning. Some go as far as to suggest he calls the storms.’

I step over the metal railing, as many have before me, and follow a well-worn trail until it stops a few feet from the Metal Man. He’s pauses, arms slack, and then extends a hand my direction.

Here’s the thing about the Metal Man: he looks strong. Metal is just generally stronger than flesh, right? So, even though I haven’t read any cases of the Metal Man pulling someone apart limb from limb despite the many people that stand closer than I am to take selfies with his frantic form, I don’t really feel safe giving him my hand either. This seems to register with the Metal Man. He tries the same thing with Hector and is snubbed again.

He shouts: “Metal man!” This time at the sky.

He kicks at the rock around him, a motion that has broken off much of the stone and thoroughly dented his foot. He powers down suddenly, arms clattering to his sides. The Metal Man’s inside whir and buzz: an established indication of his idle state. The lightning rod begins to extend from his neck.

There isn’t a cloud in the sky when I leave ‘Metal Man National Park’ but I don’t doubt the Metal Man himself and gamble on a southward retreat. The storm gathers behind Hector and I and soon engulfs the park, leaving the Metal Man to the rain.

-traveler

‘‘The Unnamed Monument’ is described, in most literature, as a brutal obelisk that just doesn’t sit right and that’s really about all there is to it. It’s made of gray cement and weatherworn to such an extent that the only visible markings indicate the year of its installation: 1787. Plenty happened that year, both good and bad, but none of it quite warrants a monument erected on the edge of the Dakota Badlands. There was a lot of New America stuff happening at the time. One might think that monument makers had their hands full elsewhere.

The early internet saw the rise of a ‘Money Pit’ style rumor regarding the monument, namely that it indicated the site of some lost treasure. This led to a great deal of digging in the area and, in 1998, a man had to be airlifted from the site after ‘The Unnamed Monument’ lost its grip in the earth and crushed his lower half. The monument was righted, shortly after, and the rumor was nearly forgotten. Nearly, because a new rumor now circulates regarding a blurry picture of the fallen obelisk that indicates there may be something carved into the bottom. It’s this author’s opinion that a social media challenge or a ‘copypasta’ will have the ‘The Unnamed Obelisk’ on its side again by the end of the decade.’

What doesn’t sit right to me, is that there are a few dozen obelisks like the one Autumn by the Wayside describes, crooked in the ground like teeth in the jaw. They are each foreboding in their own way and each has a number on one side, indicating that they may be counting down very slowly, I guess. Slowly enough that it’s the least of my worries, really, because I could name half a dozen ways for the world to be ending in 1700 days if that’s the sort of pace we’re setting.

‘The Unnamed Obelisk’ still manages to stand out as wronger than the others. It’s clear even from a distance which one is the oldest, and when I’m close enough to touch it, I feel the tingling ache of mild electricity- like blood pooling in my fingers. And my fingers are bleeding when I pull my hand away. Not from any clear point- just from the pores, I guess, which seems worse in theory than it seems to be in practice. I hand-sanitize, which just spreads the blood around, and then I wipe the blood/alcohol mess on my jeans.

It’s been said before, but ‘The Unnamed Obelisk’ does seem to sit at the heart of the future-proofing problem, which is to say, there’s a lot about the site that suggests it’s more of a warning than a monument. Someone must have thought people in the future would be smart enough to stay away from evil-looking, blood-sucking obelisks on those bases alone and that the year would be explanation enough as to why one might think to install one as a marker.

Maybe just make it really boring next time.

-traveler

There is a man having some sort of lonely mental crisis at the central point of ‘Compelled Echo State Park.’ A Ranger is stretched across a bench nearby, looking at his phone. He hears me approaching and shifts as though he might lend the weeping man some assistance, fulfilling what, I have to assume, is his duty at this particular posting. He shrugs, instead, and goes back to ignoring us both.

To be fair to the man-in-crisis, ‘Compelled Echo Cave’ is a lot to wrap your head around. The nearer I get, the clearer it is that the man’s outbursts are being prompted by the cave itself. The distant sounds of his own hysterics emanate from the dark, there, and hearing them elicits a fresh bout of wailing. Though, that’s not really what’s happening, is it? In reality, the man is being compelled to echo the wailing- his crisis playing out in the cave before it manifests on the surface. I feel a twinge of existentialist discomfort, myself, and before I can find the words to comfort the man, I hear my own voice echo out of the cave: You okay, man?

It’s exactly the sort of low-bar discomfort I have to offer in any situation: reluctant and almost judgmental. I try to think of something else to say but the words form in my mouth anyway.

“You okay man?”

No. The cave says.

“No,” the man answers.

To be fair to the Ranger, this seems like the sort of thing a person has to work out on their own.

‘There is no better way to upset your already less-than-stable understanding of the universe than to visit ‘Compelled Echo State Park,’ where the cave seems to anticipate noises at its mouth just before they happen. Researchers of the compelled echo phenomenon fits neatly into the established understandings of natural science, but the papers they produce utilize a great deal of technical jargon to beat around the bush and to eventually suggest other avenues of study to be explored at a later date.

Some find the pre-mimicking of ‘Compelled Echo Cave’ to be difficult, but ultimately therapeutic. Others insist alien wordings and intonations are insinuated into what they are forced to say at the mouth. Still others assume the whole thing is a scam. Suffice to say: nobody likes the sound of their own voice.’

The cave speaks again: Look, I’ve never been good at this sort of thing under normal circumstances. I’m not going to make you feel better.

It pauses so I can catch up. The words tumble from my lips.

But this thing has always been here and seeing it for yourself doesn’t change anything.

I say all of that, too, and then I hear Hector sneeze in the darkness. A few seconds later, the Hector at my feet sneezes and seems legitimately surprised by the cave, as though it’s the first strange thing he’s noticed in all this traveling.

I hear the sneeze because the cave, and therefore the man, has quit crying. In fact, when I listen closely, I can hear the unexercised grunt of me pulling him to his feet.

The man opens his mouth to speak and I stop him, afraid we’ll end up back where we started. It must work, because the cave stays quiet and, soon, I hear the man’s footsteps fading into the dark. Soon after that he leaves.

Thanks! The cave shouts, and I turn in time to see the Ranger say the same thing. He follows the man down the trail and toward the parking lot.

I sit at the entrance of the cave for a long time, waiting to hear what I’ll say next.

But no words come.

-traveler

‘Likely the most miserable creature on earth, ‘The Angry, Impotent Cat of Bank County, Arizona’ is homeless by choice and, thus, is somewhat difficult to pin down, geographically, in a medium that cannot effectively utilize GPS. There are websites and social media accounts dedicated to tracking the direction of its wanderings. That direction is inevitably ‘away from the people who are trying to interact with it’ so most photos of ‘The Angry, Impotent Cat’ are of its butthole, likely the only aspect of its fame the cat would approve of.

Not to be confused with ‘The Angry, Important Cat of Bank County, Arizona,’ an elected official.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

There’s a lot to be said about the walled-off border of ‘The 51^st State,’ but what stands out most to me is just how flat it seems despite, according to maps, being a massive, perfect circle. The credibility of the map is questionable, sure. That’s true of any map that reveals the shape and location of the secret ‘51^st State.’ Holding a map like that is a misdemeanor at least. Creating maps- distributing them- is unquestionably felonious and maybe also the sort of thing that gets you thrown into the sort of prisons that don’t show up on maps either. Irony at its most cruel.

They can’t throw you in jail for finding the wall, though. That would be tough. It’s huge, towering hundreds of feet in the air. It reeks of misplaced tax money, the quality with which it’s been built and the care with which it’s maintained. People find this wall all the time, I’m sure, and without knowing the context, they must wonder the same thing we all do: keeping us out or something else in?

‘Rumor has it that official maps of the continental United States disguise the location of ‘The 51^st State’ by widening borders and shaving off little latitudinal degrees where the average non-cartographer won’t miss them. Situated as it is, where Midwestern prairies drag on for miles in every direction, it’s the sort of discrepancy that most will overlook without a second thought. The wall itself serves much the same purpose, it being the color of sandstone and curved so subtly as to blend in with landscapes and horizons when viewed from the highway. It is so bland- so unseeable- that certain stretches of interstate have been forced to draw some attention to the wall in order to keep vehicles from colliding with it as drivers pull to the shoulder to relieve themselves.

Of course, once the wall is seen, it can’t be unseen. It is the single largest construction on American soil. Unofficial estimates put ‘The 51^st State’ as the tenth largest in the nation but that sort of math is wholly unnecessary when faced with the truth of the thing. It breathes enormity and it has the allure of a dead insect- grotesque and dangerous for all that it’s still.

As for what’s behind it, collecting the ideas about ‘The 51^st State’ and its daunting wall has proven a difficult task. There are just so many theories and the people that ask about them just keep disappearing.’

-traveler

It takes about three days before I admit to Hector, and to myself, that I may have gotten us lost. It doesn’t really sink in until that evening, when I’ve finished rolling strips of old billboard vinyl into tight logs for a fire we can’t enjoy too closely without inhaling psychedelic adhesive fumes. This is what being lost is: assuming everything will sort itself out around one too many bends. More specifically, being lost in ‘Billboard Hell’ is allowing one too many signs to guide you in the wrong direction. It’s second-guessing the intent of an advertisement for a burger joint that should just be five minutes away left- going right because you suspect some sort of guerilla reverse psychology is at work. It’s tearing through a billboard to find yourself facing a second, smaller sign for the same company, congratulating you for ‘thinking outside the box’ and offering its services in sign repair.

We have another couple days of food. Probably a day’s worth of water unless it rains.

There is an engine running, somewhere, and we head that direction in the morning. There’s nowhere else to go.

‘It stands to reason that, because Vermont maintains a state-wide ban on billboards, there must exist a concentration of billboards somewhere else in the country to offset the deficit. This is the less-than-scientific explanation for ‘Billboard Hell,’ which stretches over several states but seems to be confined mainly to the rust belt. Where it exists exactly is hard to say because there are a lot of places in the US that might qualify as a billboard hell and the ‘Billboard Hell’ is always shedding old roots and branching ever forward.

The Rangers suggest travelers wishing to avoid ‘Billboard Hell’ remain within the boundaries of Vermont and ignore any signs that might be trying to coax them across the border.’

­-traveler