There is a car parked out front of ‘The House for Reclining Dolls’ and there is a child-sized doll buckled into its passenger seat. The owner has posed it such that the doll is reaching for the handle- eager to exit, maybe, or checking the lock. It’s eerie, but I dismiss the scene as good fun on the part of the caretaker. I appreciate an aficionado that doesn’t take their hobby too seriously and I have to believe that, worst case scenario, I would survive an encounter with a haunted doll.
Hector does his business and we step up to the door where a machine frets over my twenty dollar bill for several seconds before an industrial thunk indicates the revolving door has unlocked. The door’s glass has been plastered over with the sort of opaque and peeling plastic one recognizes from adult theaters. It’s done in a white and a message in bold letters reads:
The entrance opens on the fifth rotation.
People don’t read signs like this, though, and I can see where the plastic has aged and where it’s been torn by frantic scrabbling. The entrance slides shut before the first rotation is complete and that slim wedge of space between the door and the wall, which is bearable only for the fact that it’s normally so fleeting, becomes claustrophobic. The sudden activation of lights makes things worse. It illuminates the other four quadrants of the door and reveals, through a particularly large tear, that a doll, identical to the last, has been posed in the opposite wedge such that it seems to pushing the opposite way. It would be funny if not for the general sense of confinement and for the fact that the door is increasingly harder to move with each rotation, leading me to wonder whether I’m straining against the gears of the machine and if I won’t soon find myself stuck. Hector’s blind curiosity regarding the pursuant door further slows the process so it’s with some relief that, on the fifth rotation the inner-entrance has opened as promised. The door locks into place with another definitive thunk and the overheads switch off.
The room we face is echoey and dark except for an illuminated lever set into the floor several yards away. Hector steps in first and I comfort myself, once more, with the assumption that his instincts as a prey animal would alert us to danger even though I’ve had to save him from a slow-moving wall a dozen times in the last few minutes alone.
The machine that makes up ‘The House for Reclining Dolls’ runs on energy gathered by the door. All of that energy is held back by the lever and the lever leaps forward the moment I touch it. The author of Autumn by the Wayside hadn’t done much to prepare me:
‘What can be said about ‘The House for Reclining Dolls’ except that it is questionable taste on perfect display?”
‘The House for Reclining Dolls’ is a long, barn-style building and the walls are lined with dolls in rocking chairs. The venue’s clockwork sets the chairs in motion, tipping the dolls back and forth to demonstrate that each has the sort of sleep-eyes that open and close depending upon their orientation in the world. Larger, life-sized dolls are seated at floor level and smaller dolls in size-appropriate furniture continue up into the rafters where the creaking of their movement and the clicking of their eyes suggest hundreds more rock out of sight. They are synced and, at any given time, the dolls are all either resting or leaned forward with wide-eyed intent.
Hector’s prey instincts finally kick in. He pulls his leash from my hand and bolts across the room at a speed I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of. I take off after him, worried that he may find himself under a mechanical rocker and worried, too, to see that the front door now works in reverse, seemingly pulled backward by the doll that opposed me. It’s no longer a viable exit.
The barn takes a hard, mandatory right into a section where the dolls complete rotisserie spins, fluttering their eyes at the lightning-bolt flash of black that is a blind rabbit and its careless, panting owner. A left takes us through a room where all of the dolls are gathered at floor level and these are the worst of the bunch. They shake in place, their eyes waggling half-open and their hands vaguely clapping.
Hector pauses at a far wall, throws his meager weight against a door, and manages to squeeze out into the sunlight. There’s nothing beyond but desert and Wayside. Nothing safe.
Nevertheless, I stop when one of the dolls near the exit throws itself to the ground and seems to scurry on its face in front of me. The room is loud with wooden clapping. My peripheries twist with the erratic movement of the toys. The air has filled with dust lifting from the disused figures around me. They’re speeding up, I think, or drawing nearer.
The specimen on the floor jerks twice as I approach and a third time as I lay a careful boot on its chest. It offers no other resistance. I open the door and see Hector’s leash has caught the doll’s arm. Hector, himself, is calm. He hardly turns his attention from his nibbling a patch of grass in the sun. I untangle the leash and step over the doll and let the exit close on its wrist. A sign on the outside seems to suggest the tour has ended.
The doll out front hasn’t moved but I give the car a wide berth and jump back on the highway once the hatches are battened down. We take a motel room in the evening, the sound of wind in the trees too much like the creaking of wooden joints.
-traveler
‘There are no laws or standards in place to regulate the word ‘best’ as it applies to a business’ service or product. There are independent accolades, of course, some more reputable than others, but the experience of ‘best’ varies so broadly on an individual level that one can hardly expect the prestige of a city’s finest Mexican restaurant to persuade loyalists of a burrito truck that appears on miracle midnights, when burritos are most needed. Nothing in the world can be said to exist in its best form except for ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza,’ which exists in Wisconsin.
David Mesner baked ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ in 2004 and was killed in his attempt to ingest ‘The Perfect Slice.’ Investigators believe Mesner’s bite was a necessary, if unintentional, catalyst in ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ transitioning to its pinnacle form- a need for it to have been proven edible at least once. Mesner was unconscious when he was admitted to the hospital on January 19th and was quickly found to have suffered severe internal trauma. Several pieces of ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ were removed from his digestive tract but the damage proved too great. He died the same night without ever re-gaining consciousness.
Police discovered the bulk of ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ in a tray atop Mesner’s oven. ‘The Perfect Slice’ was found on a paper plate in the living room. Both relics remained warm to the touch and exhibited a dull, white glow. Both had also hardened- had, in fact, become indestructible, though this discovery wouldn’t occur for several weeks. The fragments removed from Mesner’s body shared ‘The Pizza’s’ peculiarities. An autopsy suggested that the single bite of pizza Mesner had managed had solidified mid-digestion, causing the fatal damage.
Events escalated. The neighborhood was evacuated for fear of some unknown radiation. Supermarkets issued nationwide recalls of every product Mesner had used in creating ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza.’ ‘The Pizza’ itself was quickly proven benign, however. It issued no radiation but mild heat. It was odorless and without taste (the intrepid intern responsible for ‘taste’ used her experience toward a doctorate in chemical engineering). Its mass remained in line with what one might expect of a mundane pizza, minus a slice. Efforts to dig deeper failed. ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ was determined to be completely unchangeable and static down to the cellular level despite its warmth.
‘The Pizza’s’ missing years remain mysterious. De-classified military documents suggest some interest in re-creating the material for defense purposes. Pizzerias opened on bases across the nation, each with its own indulgent budget. Style variations were attempted- the perfect margarita, the perfect Chicago deep-dish. Culinary science advanced but no product reached the ideal state of ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza.’ Like ‘The Floating Rock National Heritage Site,’ ‘The Pizza’ proved phenomenal in a way that was both impractical and underwhelming. It was auctioned to an anonymous buyer in 2016. ‘The Perfect Slice’ and the fragments taken from Mesner’s body have not resurfaced. Rumor suggests their use in anything from medical research to industrial drill bits.
As of this writing, ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ is back in Wisconsin, on display as part of an independent exhibit off I-43. It wins no accolades.’
I pay a man fifty dollars for the privilege of firing a gun into the ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ from eleven yards away. I only hit it once and only use half the clip because I can tell the noise bothers Hector. The man lets me hold the pizza afterward- still warm, like it’s straight out of the oven.
I ask the man if he gets many visitors and he tells me he doesn’t. I ask if he’s looking to sell and he does. I trade all my money for ‘The Perfect New York-Style Cheese Pizza’ and sleep with it in the foot of my sleeping bag when these autumn nights prove cold.
-traveler
‘The Wayside’s sense of the exclusive is almost always tied to the fleeting nature of time and physicality rather than the healthy foresight of its business owners. Its attractions are exclusive for their failure to capture the sporadic whimsy of roadside travelers- for their failure to survive in unwelcoming terrain. For this reason, there are few truly exclusive destinations in these pages, though most might qualify as fragile or temporary.
Of the truly exclusive, one might consider the inconspicuously named ‘Salutations Sports Bar’ in eastern Washington. Though ‘Salutations’ is open to the public, the core experience is available only by securing a reservation months beforehand. The reservation process is complex in its own right, requiring detailed personal information and access to social media accounts and lifestyle apps. In case a potential visitor uses neither, phone interviews are conducted with members of ‘Salutations’’ research staff to fill informational gaps. They run anywhere from four to eight hours long.
The culmination of this hassle is a pre-determined day, far in the future, on which the applicant can enter ‘Salutations’ and expect to be greeted by staff and regulars as though they are a regular as well. On that evening, everyone will know the patron’s name and will talk or tease about their preferred sports team or political affiliation and refer to the plights and shenanigans of close relatives as though they, too, occasionally frequented the bar. It is the sincerest ‘welcome home’ a person can receive from strangers in a strange place and it is sometimes booked out a year in advance.
How odd it must be to happen upon ‘Salutations’ and stop in for a drink, unaware of the business’ gimmick, to be a customer who learns of the one-night hero through context alone- leaves thinking they’ve brushed shoulders with one of the world’s few important people.’
Back when I still sold Graycards out of the truck I held a decent little stash of money and an inflated sense of financial security. It’s been a long time since I’ve had cash like that but it’s been even longer since I’ve been called by my name. The greeting at ‘Salutations’ is almost too much. The staff, professionals that they are, must read it on my face because they ease up a little and focus in on Hector while I recover.
I spend the evening talking, just talking, until my voice is hoarse.
-traveler
It’s a relief to be visiting a museum again. None of this indie side-of-the-road stuff. None of this interactive bullshit. Let me learn about a thing as though it’s safely in the past. Let me be a little bored as I attempt to recoup the cost of entry. Let me be alone in a place where it feels okay to be alone.
‘The Bakersville Museum of Busking’ is in the middle of nowhere, not far at all from the center of the nation itself and therefore a ways from any place one might find a busker on the job. Winter is not kind to the lifestyle, nor are the long miles of forested highway. It seems reasonable to agree with Shitholes, then, when it says that ‘The Bakersville Museum of Busking’ is meant to provide a pure education on the subject for an audience that may be entirely uninitiated. It lacks the intent with which a beach town may host lazy exhibitions meant to press sight-seers onward, to more expensive offerings- the way a city zoo may have a collection of farm animals.
I’m startled by a man slumped over near the entrance, a sign on cardboard offering marvels for change. He is a statue, dusted over. A bad example to start, I think.
‘Why not? That seems to be the guiding question of those who serve the Wayside. Why not a plexiglass cowboy? Why not a dinosaur made of cow pies? Why not a library of motel bibles?
Why not a museum for busking?
For an answer, it’s necessary to remember a time before the internet, before streaming video- a time when ‘The Bakersville Museum of Busking’ provided the vicarious living that social media monopolizes now. ‘The Museum’ reached the height of its popularity in the late-nineties as new episodes of ‘Friends’ romanticized New York. Bored teens would visit the museum for a taste of city life and, finding it lackluster, would create personas and act out complex domestic scenarios of their own creation, relying on the exhibitions for their backdrop. By 2000 the community had manifested LARPing in a form that was somehow more tedious and dull than the original- a game so forcibly mundane that local news channels mistook it for satire.
The owners of ‘The Bakersville Museum of Busking’ are on record as failing to really understand the fad but operating intelligently enough to take advantage of it. ‘The Museum’ extended hours into the evening, offered coffees and microwaved casseroles, and provided expensive annual passes for the truly dedicated. A few members of the game would graduate to community theater but few breached Hollywood. More often than not, they had become experts in a single character rather and not in acting as an overall discipline.
September 11th marked the sudden end of this community. Attempts to respectfully incorporate the attack left a bad taste in the mouths of participants and audiences alike. Ignoring the attack pressed the parallel New York further and further into the realm of fiction. The owners attempted to re-brand some of the sets as representative of California but interest waned before ‘The OC’s’ 2003 premiere. By mid-2002, ‘The Bakersville Museum of Busking’ had returned to a state of perpetual vacancy.
Annual passes are still available to those who while away time in the corn belt but the heydays have gone and left, in their place, a dusty city as it stood before the new millennium. Go for the bathroom break and stay for the eerie nostalgia.’
True of most places, I don’t mention the hairless creature I lead about on a leash and the man at the front desk doesn’t ask. It’s a simple arrangement between people who want nothing to do with each other. Hector is happy to be warm without a sweater in the long halls of ‘The Museum,’ happy to sniff at the feet of waxy street magicians and bucket-drummers. A small corner has been devoted to the fleeting imaginary New York that once played out in the building. Strange to think that such a place could come and go from nothing. The connected world has inflated my sense of what’s permanent but some things do die, don’t they? Some things move past memory and research.
I worry a great deal about the end to all this, to this trip. It never seems to get any closer. I feel no real comfort in thinking about what life on the other side will be like. What settling down will mean.
It’s quiet in ‘The Museum,’ and peaceful until someone coughs in the hall of living statues. The instinctual fear of eyes on my back, late as it may be, will not let me rest there any longer. Hector and I press ourselves into sweaters once more and flee toward a warmer autumn in the west.
-traveler
‘Every city has one obvious path to the underground, be it an open drain or a manhole-cover askew. Every entry bears signs of trespass- enough to goad the onlooker. The allure of these places only just outpaces their foreboding, so that a rain storm or a particularly dark night or the smell of something decomposing nearby is enough to turn the curious away. Entry requires determination or desperation or an unlikely alignment of circumstances: the perfect day and the perfect fool, willing to risk themselves in the realization of a journey with no apparent destination.
The unapparent destination is ‘The Drain Place’ and no city’s ‘Drain Place’ is like another. It is as likely to be a black market as it is to be the residence of a single, otherwise uninteresting denizen. It is often the studio for eccentric artists, sometimes a museum for dangerous collections, and rarely the dumping grounds for top secret government material. It is sometimes a zoo- a safari more often than that. ‘The Drain Place’ is never a maze, though a maze commonly precedes it. ‘The Drain Place’ is dangerous, nine times out of ten, but the danger is more likely a result of the environment or the allure than the place itself. The environment, because ‘The Drain Place’ can be dark and prone to flooding. The allure because ‘The Drain Place’ is commonly guarded by those who have nothing in the world but for their knowledge of ‘The Place’ itself.
A comprehensive guide to the nation’s ‘Drain Places’ would represent obsession in several volumes. The loss of money and life and time: it is not in the purview of this undertaking.’
-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside