I’m not spooked by the offerings of ‘The Gift Shop,’ at least not as immediately spooked as several testimonials suggest I ought to be. Like any gift shop, the items on display are specific enough to mark the occasion for which they are purchased, but not so specifically tailored to individual experience as to be uncanny or even really all that meaningful.

And maybe it’s a quirk of my life that leads to this initial anti-climax. ‘The Gift Shop’ is a Wayside destination and its offerings are souvenirs from roadside diners and shitty public rest stops and strikingly beautiful forests. I can see how it might be strange for someone who has lived a normal life to find postcards addressed from their kitchen and snow globes featuring the building in which they work. That’s the experience most people have, here. My journey has made it redundant. Or maybe this is its truest form. There aren’t many gift shops off the Wayside. Maybe this is how ‘The Gift Shop’ justifies its existence as part of the fragile highway ecosystem.

It’s a comforting thought, actually, because that might mean that I’m the key to aligning it.

‘Have you ever found a slip of paper on the floor of your home? A slip of paper with a series of numbers and a logo for ‘The Gift Shop’ thermally printed on the back? Fear not and keep that receipt on hand. Without it you won’t be able to claim the picture taken of you in your living room, on the toilet, sleeping soundly in your locked room, or doing any number of tasks, private and mundane. The longer you wait to claim it, the longer it sits up there on the screen for any old passerby to see.’

What gets me first is the realization that the cheap, dark-furred rabbit plushies are not dark-furred at all but sun-blackened little Hectors. With that, the uncomfortably intimate picture begins to unfold in all the little details I’ve overlooked. A t-shirt with all of the names of destinations I’ve visited so far. A bottle opener inscribed with the date I sobered up for good. A take-apart toy truck. An angry Stranger doll. A manga series where I am cast as the cynical protagonist and Hector is my wise-cracking pet.

All of the personalized pencils and pocketknives and key chains are in my name. All of the taffy is spun in flavors that I’ve tasted on the trip. Honey. Tree sap. Asphalt. Blood. There is a boardgame in the shape of the all-seeing eye. It looks boring. Everything is overpriced. The cashier is cloying in his salesmanship. I buy a pound of blood taffy so he’ll leave me alone and am off again before he can trick me into buying more.

It occurs to me, late in the evening, that I don’t think I’ve ever tasted asphalt. Not really. The thought drives me to the road which tastes much as I suspected it would.

– traveler

‘‘The Saltlick’ in eastern Wisconsin takes its name from the enriched blocks of salt humans sometimes set out for deer or livestock to see them through the winter. This is despite research that suggests it contains no sodium and ‘research’ that suggests it doesn’t taste salty at all- just nice. In fact, that ‘The Saltlick’ just tastes nice is all that people can seem to agree upon aside from its drab physical characteristics which are as follows:

It is a rough cube, four meters to a side, made smoother for the concave northeastern portion where visitors tend to lick. It is white and rough like a cat’s tongue. It doesn’t smell and is no warmer that the air around it.

It is appealing to look at- that’s something strange to say- and it’s difficult to leave un-licked. Impossible, really. There are signs up near ‘The Saltlick,’ warning visitors before they approach too close and fall under its compulsion. It’s unclear whether these signs have been posted by visitors who have undergone the lick, or those that have somehow resisted. If it’s the former, one might suspect the lickers are aware of some boon to be had by licking and are likewise aware of ‘The Saltlick’s’ massive, but limited, supply. It it’s the latter, well, perhaps the licking changes a person. Perhaps it changes a person in ways only unlicking loved ones can see. And maybe they have a point. Nobody puts up signs encouraging visitors to lick ‘The Saltlick.’ It does fine on its own.

People who have engaged tongue-wise with ‘The Saltlick’ show minor, but lasting health improvements. No miracle cures, of course. Nothing is that simple. It tends to right vitamin deficiencies. It tends to lower blood pressure.

The traditional saltlick is set out by farmers. Ranchers. Deer-leaning nature voyeurs. The most powerful argument against visiting ‘The Saltlick’ can be found on the final sign warning of its proximity. It asks:

‘Who set this out for you?’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Thistle Creek Manor is bordered by a decrepit white picket fence, hardly a few feet off the ground. Still, they use a crane to lower a goat over the fence and into the yard and the woman operating the crane crosses herself as the goat’s hooves meet the earth.

“It’s like Jurassic Park.” Our guide chews the chinstrap of his hat. “But, you know. Ghosts.”

That’s not at all what this is like. He pulls open the bed of his truck and starts handing hula hoops out to the afternoon’s tour group. I take mine, purple sparkles, and am surprised by the weight.

“We fill these with salt. Kosher, just in case that works better.” He nods to a woman that may or may not be Jewish and a few of us shift uncomfortably. “You’re going to be tempted to just carry this around, but that means your fingers cross the salt circle so, instead, we’ll fit you up with a harness.”

The harness is a series of nylon straps, sewn in such a way that they can be looped around the hoop and attached to the neck/shoulder area. After some work, the salt circle hovers at waist-height. Assuming I stand still, anyway. As soon as I move, the hoop starts to bounce back and forth and my feet, at the very least, spend precious seconds outside the arcane protection. Our guide notices my skepticism and steps in:

“Our guys are pretty slow,” he says. “But if you’re worried, it’s best to drop down with the circle until the danger passes.”

A man- a fellow traveler, scoffs behind me. He’s scoffed a few times already, skeptical for an entirely different reason.

“That goat seems fine,” the scoffing man says. He points and I see the goat is, in fact, standing patiently by the gate, waiting to be let back out into the world. The goat recognizes our attention and tilts its head. Then it tilts its head further, into a slow, but undeniably complete, rotation.

The scoffing man shuts up.

‘‘Thistle Creek Manor’ picked up a few poltergeists after a murder/suicide led to a bit of a death cycle. The ghosts of the first incident instigated a few more murders and on and on it went for four decades until the internet really kicked in and real estate agents were no longer capable of skimming over the manor’s ugly past. As is the case with spirits and sea monkeys, the bigger ones eventually consumed the smaller and they remain their still, aware, and unhappy, that they have been monetized.

There have been some human rights complaints about this last point but the owners of ‘Thistle Creek Manor’ insist that the poltergeists are demons in the Christian tradition rather than actual human spirits. This statement has raised other concerns but, with no legal basis to pursue them, ‘Thistle Creek’ turns a neat little profit with next to no overhead.’

The tour of ‘Thistle Creek Manor’ is off-putting, mostly because the tour guide vacillates between horrific anecdotes and what seems like a blatant disregard for our safety. He tells us a story about a visitor that, crossing his salt circle, vomited so much that they could see the bottom of his stomach crowning from his throat. He tells us about a woman that fell through the floorboards and had her salt-hoop shucked off her like corn. They found her three months later, catatonic and forty pounds heavier for reasons that could not be scientifically explained. The guide says they worried, for a while, that the floor incident was the poltergeists getting creative but that it hasn’t happened since, so…

The tour is off-putting as well because the goat follows closely behind, leering and spinning its head if we watch for too long.

We spend an hour in ‘Thistle Creek Manor,’ waiting for something to happen and nothing ever does.

“It’s a little like whale watching, that way,” the guide says, though it’s certainly not. “To make up for it, you can stick around to watch me exorcise the goat.”

I’m the only one to take him up on the offer which, had I realized, I probably would have bailed like everyone else. There’s a shed out back for exorcisms where the man straps the goat down and chants some words and waves a stick.

The goat dies.

-traveler

‘North Carolina’s ‘U-Pick’ is described as both a museum and a farm in its myriad digital and physical listings. Neither descriptor quite tells the whole story. Like many of the destinations on the Wayside, ‘U-Pick’ is more an experience than anything else. We might call it an interactive exhibit. We might liken it to ASMR, albeit a little more hands-on. Many people claim it’s therapeutic. They call it a release.

North Carolina’s ‘U-Pick’ is a hall where people are paid to sit in swimsuits and wear masks- to bare skin and to maintain a semblance of anonymity. Paying clientele arrive to empty the pores of these masked bodies and to peel away whatever scabs they might have. This lasts until the discomfort is too much or they have nothing left to pick at (or until a four-hour shift is complete). Visitors are given gloves and masks and aprons if they prefer them. There are some rules about bleeding and some signs that act as a sort of safe word. Otherwise, it’s a first come, first serve affair and so there is generally a line out the door as each shift turns over.

The rule most in conflict with the traditional u-pick model is that visitors are forbidden to take their discoveries with them. Too many fetishists. Too many witches. Too many men in lab coats, looking for anonymous donations of excrement and DNA.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Nobody knows who posts the signs for ‘FREE COFFEE,’ and nobody is entirely sure whether they’re advertising the liquid or the site itself. Government authorities have recommended against ingesting anything taken from ‘FREE COFFEE’ but then, the government has always been reluctant to give anything away for free.’

What the guide fails to mention about ‘FREE COFFEE’s’ signage is that it varies wildly. There are cardboard signs everywhere, stapled to trees and lampposts, littering the ground. The letters are marked in a dozen different styles. ‘Coffee’ is sometimes- is often- misspelled. Sometimes I find pieces of paper that just say ‘free’ or ‘coffee’ and I have to wonder whether it’s long-term advertising or just pieces of a single sign that have been separated.

During the news, yesterday, between weather and sports there was a commercial advertisement. Just the words ‘FREE COFFEE’ on a blue background for three straight minutes. I’ve seen a billboard or two. The phrase comes up on coasters and once there was a voice on the radio: ‘FREEEE COFFEE!’ ‘FREEEE COFFEE!’ It’s everywhere and has been for some time.

So I finally make my way to ‘FREE COFFEE,’ which is in Colorado (and none of the advertisements mention that). It’s late autumn and cold and there’s some snow on the ground, mixed with mud and maybe coffee. There’s an old metal pump in the ground, there, and a spigot. Both blazingly hot to the touch, I find out just a little too late. Paper cups litter the area, crisp and uncrumpled. I take one from the ground and shake a pine needle from the bottom. I make sure Hector is out of range and I pull on gloves to work the pump. The lever resists, gives, and resists again, like I’m pulling rubber from the ground. After I struggle through three pulls, hot, brown liquid erupts from the spigot, fills and knocks over the cup, and melts the snow around it.

I grab another cup and brace it with rocks. This time, when the spigot vomits ‘coffee,’ the cup stays upright.

I wait a few minutes for the coffee to cool and then quickly transfer it to a third, less melted cup for tasting. It’s pretty good.

The advertising peters off after that, which is a concern in and of itself, but I try to put it behind me. Granted, there’s a lot already back there.

-traveler