‘It may be too late to study the extinction of the American quarter marked 1964 as it’s related to ‘The Vending Machine at Stop #35,’ but correlation seems to be the general consensus. ‘The Machine’ eats these quarters and does not return them, not even when ‘The Machine’ has been opened by force. ‘The Vending Machine at Stop #35’ is only ever opened by force because nobody is known to have a key. Like other, but not all, Wayside vending machines, the model at Stop #35 receives no visible servicing. It usually works to dispense the advertised sodas. It always works to dispense a can of ‘Mocktail 64 (New).’
Mocktail 64 (New) emerges from the machine only after two 1964-marked quarters are used as payment toward any of alternate-brand fares offered by the machine. The can is faded chrome and the liquid inside is still but cold. It’s said to taste like nothing else- a nothing else that is so distinct from everything that anyone has ever tasted as to be notable and sometimes even scary, giving its tasters the feeling of discovering an abyss at the edge.
Cans of Mocktail 64 (New) are difficult to come by now, and only a few quarters from 1964 remain in circulation. The old Wayside is largely analogue and it is withering.
The new Wayside will be digital, at least in part. Some see that as a dilution, the strange lost in the strange. Others recognize the danger of the Wayside shifting into the home. They see the same process that allows interstates to sometimes decimate neighborhoods played out in rooms: the Wayside on a screen, as real as if it were there, creating corners and closets where weird realities take root and thrive.
We may see the end of Mocktail 64 (New) in our lifetime and it will be the loss of something that cannot fully be explained or remembered. Perhaps ‘The Vending Machine at Stop #35’ will follow.’
I’ve been carrying one of my 1964 quarters for nearly a decade now and it’s so pocketworn I sometimes worry that the year will fade and ‘The Machine’ will reject it. I spent it once, accidentally, in a regular machine and was nearly arrested trying to get it back out.
But it was worth it.
Today I received my second and wouldn’t you know what’s on the way to my next destination.
Time to try something new for maybe the last time.
-traveler
Recent Comments