‘Any sane tourist would ignore signage for ‘People Pearls’ based on the name alone but, as though a double-dare will do the trick, the enterprise is fairly transparent in advertisements. “This is a collection of bodily stones,” they say, “Bladder stones. Kidney stones. Tonsil, prostate, pancreas.” More surprising, perhaps, is that ‘People Pearls’ offers no justification, no context, for such a collection. It makes no effort to entice travelers that may be on the fence. It does not meditate on the medical significance of the stones or offer its profits up to any sort of cause. It uses images that are difficult to decipher- grotesque close-ups that might be mistaken for alien landscapes or the warning labels on cigarettes. The only claim made by ‘People Pearls’ is that theirs is the largest collection of its kind and one can’t help but be thankful that this is the worst of it, that nobody else has manifested such a grotesque idea.’

A true mark of the side-of-the-road museum is that there is no real distinction between the collection and the gift shop. By throwing it all into one big room, everything becomes an artifact and everything sprouts a price tag. ‘People Pearls’ is no different. There are bins of jagged little stones set up with scoops and shovels, advertising mix and match prices by the bag. There are so-called precious stones, bought off of celebrity doctors and polished into jewelry. There is a foul smell in the air and, overtop it, something that’s meant to be maskingly pleasant. They combine into a sort of sweet bile potpourri and even the man behind the counter seems sickly for it. I tell him I’m only browsing and he reminds me it’s a museum, as though he’s offended I might mistake is for a store. Capitalist ventures have a way of making good people feel guilty. That or he relies on an educational grant to keep the lights on.

I nod.

For a quarter I’m able to purchase a stone at random from a repurposed gumball machine. It arrives in a clear plastic sphere.

“Lucky,” the man says, seeing what I pulled.

He doesn’t elaborate and I don’t ask for clarification. I will never open the sphere for fear that the stone will somehow work its way inside me. Irrational, maybe, but stranger things have happened.

There is a set of infant rattles near the exit, also for sale. I give one a shake and the man looks as though he’s waiting for me to ask what they could possibly have to do with ‘People Pearls.’

I don’t give him the satisfaction, thinking that the confirmation could work its way inside me the same way the stone might.

-traveler

The known end of ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is attached to a tree in western Wisconsin and it seems to have appeared there without state permission, given the on-again, off-again availability of the experience. It’s taken some research to finally see the thing and it’s initially something of a let down: a square mirror not more than an inch wide, held tightly to a cedar by two lengths of wire. I’m tempted, at first, to check it off the list and to try to get a few more miles in before sundown but a number of very specific conditions led to this success and it seems a shame to waste it. There is a website, for instance, that regularly updates the condition of ‘The Reflection Corridor’ every hour, stating with fair reliability whether it’s open or closed. This is an improvement on the old ways, which required an amount of digging through niche forums for posts about ‘The Reflection Corridor’ and deciding whether those posts were recent enough to warrant risk disappointment at the end of a three-hour hike.

The website relies upon visitor data and, in an effort to contribute, I snap a picture of the mirror and submit it as confirmation: ‘The Corridor’ is still available.

The reliability of the website is a double-edged sword, of course, because it means that any zealous forest ranger with a cellphone can just as easily determine whether or not ‘The Reflection Corridor’ has reappeared and can make the hike out to disassemble it. Early iterations were nailed into the tree which is, admittedly, a little more damage than I care to see done to a forest for the sake of Wayside intrigue. Ranger response has been fairly negative since then, even with the improved methods of attachment.

All this to say that I happened to be nearby in that murky calendar holiday period when rangers are less likely to be on duty while the website showed the green light and the hike out wasn’t complicated by weather, it being autumn, after all.

Hector looks sporting in a raggedy sweater and I’m sweating, myself, to carry him and everything else we own along the way. I check the weather again to make sure none of this unseasonal snow catches us by surprise and, seeing the forecast is clear, decide to set up camp. I keep it minimal, since I haven’t got a permit of any sort, but it’s enough to be cozy. Hector sleeps and I catch up on some reading, trying to decide where we’re off to next.

The sun begins to set an hour later and it’s only then that I notice movement in ‘The Corridor.’ It flashes white, then red, then white again. Could be the sunset itself, right? Against my better judgement, I evict Hector from my lap and stand to investigate.

‘More a passage than a corridor and not really much of either, ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is a complicated and mysterious series of mirrors placed carefully across the continental U.S. so that the landscape on one side will appear clearly reflected on the opposite. Some of these mirrors are straight, others are bent or curved or otherwise out of focus- whatever it takes to keep the image clear on either end. It’s a telescope, really, and not a very useful one.

Nobody can quite agree about what it’s pointed at and the system is long enough, runs through enough private property, that it has never been traced in full. The longest stretch was discovered when a lengthy fogbank sat above the states for three days. Volunteers used high-powered flashlights to illuminate otherwise invisible lengths of ‘The Reflection Corridor’ until it was lost over the eastern seaboard. It could very well be that ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is among the few international Wayside attractions, bouncing between stations far out to sea.’

The flashing continues for a full hour, long after the sun has gone down. It is patterned and purposeful. Blinding when I try to look directly in the mirror. I brush up on my morse code. When that fails me, I use my slim bar of internet to look into more esoteric cyphers. None provide any insight into the flashing.

Around one in the morning I happen to look into ‘The Reflection Corridor’ and I see a forest, much like the one in which I stand but bathed in daylight and upside down as though by some quirk in the mirrors. It’s a strain on the eyes to see but I watch for a long time until a man appears in the forest and stares back at me.

He stares and stares until I am convinced to pack my camp and leave. He has been in the mirrors ever since, those on the bike and those in the bathrooms of cheap motels. As long as ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is unbroken, the man is there.

-traveler

‘Another of a handful of government-run Wayside attractions, ‘The OSHA Violation Grounds’ are about the closest we’ll get to a modern wild-west. To say ‘The OVG’ is lawless is to do it something of an injustice. It is a place designed to break workplace safety laws in the most flagrant ways possible, to film them being broken, and to upload the footage to a free database the audience for which, at the moment, seems to be creators of safety videos and snuff enthusiasts. Visitors are required to sign a novel-length consent form before entry, a process that is completed outside of the property (where safety laws still apply). Those who sign are considered employees of ‘The OVG’ and are, therefore, provided the federal minimum wage. No specific duties are specified, visitors are compensated for whatever time they spend on the grounds. It goes without saying that this has created an isolated society of people willing to endure ‘The OVG’s’ hazards for cumulative overtime, a powder-keg of violence and tyranny.’

The woman at the front desk smiles as I finish up the paperwork.

“No problem at all,” she says, looking down at Hector, “All animals are allowed on the premises. We encourage them.”

-traveler

There is no greater measure of the American zeitgeist than the current rumors surrounding ‘The Fifty Year Ball Drop.’ Advertised as any other New Year celebration, though with vague enough wording to hide its true intentions, ‘The Fifty Year Ball Drop’ began on December 31^st, 1964 and continues to this day, counting down to some unknown future event. The ball, flashing lights and blasting the top hits of the early 1960’s, creeps down its post at a rate that can’t be detected by the human eye. It’s movement has been verified by chalk lines and sped-up camera footage. Both suggest that the ball will not land on the New Year at all, but sometime in the afternoon of January 18^th, 2064.

People tend to be of two opinions regarding that date: that it will mark a great new era for humanity, or that it will be a doomsday. Visitors are polled for this- are given those two choices specifically, in fact- and the wording of the poll is vague. Vague enough that the results, posted annually on January 1^st, might be interpreted as a choice as well as a prediction.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

With all the time I spend on the road, I usually find myself a year or two behind popular culture which means that I’m often out of my element at those Wayside destinations that hold celebrities at their core. Prop museums tend to display a few things from movies I watched as a child, so that’s something, and I appreciate wax museums for their eerie, liminal atmospheres, even if I only recognize a handful of the personas on exhibit.

‘The Divot Gallery’ is something else entirely. The museums tend to split their focus between the curios and the celebrities but ‘The Divot Gallery’ leans hard into the element of worship that is, admittedly, inherent in all of them. I show up unprepared for a rapid-fire series of questions and karaoke-style catalogs of celebrity names, ranked by fame. I go straight to the B-listers, knowing that anyone of historical significance and anyone currently trending will be well above my budget. The cashier must see me react- she hands me the C-listers.

This, I can afford.

‘There is no greater experience of entropy than that which can be purchased at ‘The Divot Gallery.’ It’s a motel, on the surface, consisting of just six rooms rented by the hour and a massive warehouse to store the largest collection of pre-owned couches and beds in the country. This furniture once belonged to the rich and famous, was thrown out bearing the imprints specific to its once-owners. The people at ‘The Divot Gallery’ saw an opportunity in that and, like a witch digging about for spare fingernails, they have built up their inventory from dumpsters, thrift shops, and bribed garbagemen with such efficiency that celebrities have gone on record claiming to obsessively destroy everything they now throw away.

This has not stopped ‘The Divot Gallery’ which has proven time and again that they buy their goods legally and stop just short of libel in their proposed explanations of otherwise mysterious stains.

Visitors might choose to spend the afternoon in the hollow embrace of their celebrity crush, might conceive a child on the bed of a rock star or get high in the recliner of a famous stoner-comedian. There are death beds, of course, but testimonials suggest that ‘The Divot Gallery’ as experienced on any furniture leans depressing. At it’s least existential, most people will find that the celebrities they once held on a pedestal are not much better than they are at keeping crumbs out of the nooks and crannies of a couch- are not so special at all.

At its most existential, customers sometimes recognize themselves in the massive, hierarchal network of modern America. They may realize they exist on a rung far, far lower than they suspected, that there are ways of living beyond their imagining and that lying prone on a used mattress is the closest they will ever get to bridging the truth of their existence with that of even a minor celebrity.”

Hector and I nap on a sort of rounded pad that once belonged to a famous dog. I sleep well enough, but I get the sense that Hector has some difficulty getting comfortable. Maybe it’s the smell of another animal. Maybe he’s just realizing he was never meant for the silver screen.

-traveler