What I remember is the large sombrero, South of the Border. The scraggly pines, sweaty heat. A few hundred people get married there every year, the border between South and North Carolina. You can drive through his shoes, lanky legs that stretch up 100 feet.
What I remember is Garnet, a western ghost town. Abandoned. There was no one there. We walked among the ghosts, took 3 rolls of photographs, before digital film, cell phones, or text messages. We were utterly alone. We drove miles outside of Missoula. The direction was up, the air thin. The pines, Ponderosa. I am a woman destined to be near pines. Unlike Bill Holm, I love trees. I feel safer nested between oaks, ash, or elms, than exposed on the lonesome prairie.
What I remember are the echoes of the past. Miners and the women who serviced them. Saloons, creaking hotels, flat-faced and aged pine. What about the Annie Oakley’s of the boom town? Were there women who mined the precious ore?
And on NPR, Libby, Montana goes to court against Grace. Libby is just outside of Missoula. People are dying. Vermiculite settlement floats down the airstream, the rivers, seeps into the ground. It laces Grandpa’s clothes. He hugs his children and grandchildren. Grandmothers wash the clothes; hang them on the outdoor line to dry. First one lung goes, then the other. The mining company denies it is a problem.
It’s true. In the days of Garnet, the late 1800’s, we did not know the dangers. Now we do. When does a company become accountable. Shouldn’t a 21st century company admit wrongdoing? Libby is dying.
What I remember is how much I love the smell of the ocean, the Georgia Gold Coast, Yamassee, South Carolina where my Granddaddy went to fish and carouse. We visited the Cherokee Nation. I see us standing in a faded Polaroid next to a man in feather headdress, long before I knew about the Trail of Tears. I was just a child.
When I write by hand like this, barely able to read my own writing, I am still a child. Chicken scratch. The sun streams in over my shoulder. The air 10 degrees. Snow covers the cedars in an angel dusting of flakes. I come home from a grueling week of work to see 3 pileated woodpeckers playing in the oaks behind the house. I hear them first, like nails hammering into a hollow coffin. I raise hand to brow, cup the sun away from the pupils — there they are, in stripes of red, white, and black. The female is black.
I stand there silently for a long time. Suddenly a laughing call, swift jagged flight between trunks, a burst of white under wing. I am certain they put on their show just for me. My own roadside attraction — 3 pileated Woody Woodpeckers frolicking in branches of snow.
-15 minute handwrite, posted on red Ravine, Friday, February 27th, 2008
-related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC – ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS
swift jagged flight…I’m struck by how these simple words capture the woodpecker’s flight. And the sound of nails hammered into hollow coffins. So true.
Dee used to be scared of woodpeckers. She called them “da-doos.” She’d bury her face into my neck or Jim’s anytime she heard that sound.
I wanted to ask, QM, why do people get married on the border between North and South Carolina?
LikeLike
ybonesy, it’s a tourist attraction called South of the Border between North and South Carolina. When I was a kid, there were signs all along the roadside for miles and miles before you would get there, advertising the place. It’s actually in Dillon, South Carolina. I’m probably exaggerating the amount of weddings (it is a Writing Practice and I’m sure I don’t have the facts right!).
Here’s more at Roadside America (LINK):
South Of The Border (or SOB, as it’s known to insiders) is a unique amalgam of Dixie and Old Mexico. That man was Alan Schafer, who began his rise to roadside immortality in 1950 with a simple beer stand. When building supplies began being delivered to “Schafer Project: South Of The [North Carolina] Border,” a neon light went on in his head…
Alan Schafer died on July 19th, 2001 (LINK) — Alan Schafer, the man who created one of the greatest tourist traps in history, died on July 19 from leukemia at age 87. Schafer was the promotional genius behind South of the Border, I-95’s most prominent vacation stop. Schafer’s $40 million business started 51 years ago as a tiny beer stand just south of the North Carolina border.
I think the place changed hands after he died. It’s funny because my sister remembered visiting it as a kid as well. And on one of our trips Down South with our mother a few years ago, she wanted to stop there with her kids. So we did. A totally different experience.
It was quite a bit more run down than when we were kids. The big Sombrero Tower was not working. And it was hotter than EVER that summer we stopped there. It’s really different visiting these places as a kid, than it is as an adult.
LikeLike
ybonesy, another thing about tourist traps and roadside attractions that I wanted to mention, particularly those from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, is that they often promote stereotypes of all kinds of cultures and peoples. At that time, the awareness about how offensive stereotypes can be was not at the forefront. I don’t think that awareness even began happening at an institutional scale until the end of the 1980’s and into the 1990’s, what people then called multiculturalism. It’s gone through many incarnations since then. But many of these older tourist traps are a testament to another time in America. Though they are a part of the history of this country, I think we can be glad that things are changing.
LikeLike
Hey, QM, I just read the SOB entries in the roadsideamerica.com link. BTW, I think I mentioned already how much I love that website. I went through all 37 pages on NM and started to go through CO, too, but they had quite a few more pages than NM, so I didn’t make it through.
Yeah, SOB was quite the, um, place. 8) There are certainly a lot of aspects that are culturally insensitive, like how they started calling the two boys from Mexico who the owner brought in to work there “Pedro” and “Pancho.” Then everyone who worked there became “Pedro.” (Like the way you call all the wild rabbits that live around your place “Tawny” 8) .)
But you’re right, these roadside destinations grew up in a time when it was OK to tell Mexican jokes and jokes about different people of every shape and stripe.
And it is amazing how in their heyday, the Roadside Attractions were so popular. They were in some cases THE destination itself, versus a stop along the way. That’s what the owner of SOB seemed to have been so successful at creating, anyway.
I kind of want to stop at a still-thriving official Roadside Attraction some day if we come along one. Staying at the KOA campground outside of the town of Carlsbad was kind of reminiscent…for some reason. I don’t know. It just reminded me of being a kid again.
LikeLike
[…] to post: haiku 2 (one-a-day), PRACTICE – Roadside Attractions — 15min, What Is Your Totem […]
LikeLike
QM, I was especially struck by your creative way of going from one roadside attraction to the next. I love the ending with the Woodpeckers. Those are the best attractions of all. D
LikeLike
QM If I remember correctly, newly weds came to SOB because they could get married in S.C. at that time with either no waiting period or 3 days. I went to S.C. to marry your father in Aiken ,S.C. in the 50’s. Also you only had to be 16 yrs. old.
LikeLike
Mom, thanks for clarifying that. I wouldn’t have thought of the marriage age as a reason why people would flock there to get married. I guess it’s kind of like Las Vegas or something. Don’t lots of people get married there because of legality reasons?
I also didn’t know you went S.C. to marry my father either or went for that purpose. I learned something new about the family. Thanks for commenting!
LikeLike
diddy, thank you. I appreciate your comment. Don’t know how it all wound back around to that. Nature grounds me in my practice. I often come back to it for details when my mind wants to ramble and worry all over the place.
ybonesy, yes, the Pedro and Pancho really got me, too. And all of that would have been perfectly acceptable back then. No one ever thought about things being politically correct or incorrect. It was just the way people lived.
It’s been a slow process to change people’s point of view. I know on my travels out West, I’d often run into Roadside Attractions that had to do with Native American culture and they would often be stereotypical. It’s probably still true in many small towns across the U.S. Yet these places remain open.
It does make me want to pay more attention on the next road trip I take. And see what’s still out there in terms of Roadside Attractions. Of course, the big shoes and coffee pots are harmless. And there are plenty of those to visit!
LikeLike