‘A small, mid-western university, Prairie College, is renowned for two things: producing well-equipped students of agriculture and a growing monument to failure that spreads across its expansive campus dubbed ‘Academic Rigor Mortis’ (or, sometimes, the ARM). In practice, the ARM restates a situation made relatively clear in the institution’s public documents- that the success of their small number of graduates is achieved at the cost of the large percentage of students that fail or drop-out. The academic targets of Prairie College are impossibly demanding and students are expected to fulfill physical farming duties in addition to coursework. The administration has leaned into this trend, creating something that shares more aspects with an obstacle course than it does with any other accredited educational program in the country. Its workload has been deemed psychologically damaging by several local psychiatrists who describe failed students as ‘irrevocably broken.’

‘Academic Rigor Mortis’ is the result of a particularly cruel policy, one that states that ‘Prairie College’ will not release documents for transfer before a student buries her completed physical coursework on campus, erecting a small headstone that displays their proposed (and unfinished) thesis to mark the lot. The ARM, then, is a field sown with failure and failure grows there, the paper and ink leaching into the earth and creating a dark chemical shadow.

‘Prairie College’s’ founding documents famously refer to its ideal graduates as ‘enlightened farmers’ and famously digress into something like a summons for a singular being: ‘The Enlightened Farmer.’ The school’s tightening filter, it’s suggested, will someday result in its final graduating class- a class of one. This student will end the ARM’s decay and, perhaps, the punishing educational cycle of the institution from which it extends.’

There was a time when I thought I may have wanted to be a farmer. I would tend the garden in the backyard and read books about the end of the world. Looking out over the ‘ARM,’ I wonder how long we’ve been preparing for disaster. Humanity is bracing itself for an apocalypse and the end-times are crowded with prophecies. The longer we draw this out, the stranger the world will become.

-traveler

‘‘The Thistle Garden’ has grown at the center of Bellstaff, Wisconsin for three decades and it has made the small town miserable for all those years. The thistle there (all North American varieties of the species as well as several prize-winning, experimental strains) is not bound by the garden walls. It runs rampant, having infiltrated the urban sprawl in the same way it seems to infest forests elsewhere in the country. It rises from split asphalt and twists itself into ivy. It lies dry and dormant under snowfall until a careless foot breaks through the frost. It grows like mold in backpacks and in the collars of old shirts. The air of Bellstaff itches with thistle and so thick does it grow that ‘The Garden’ may well be the town itself.

But, officially, it is not.

‘The Thistle Garden’ is an acre of tastefully shaped weeds and, because contemporary landscaping favors a wilder look than years previous, the thistle is allowed to grow until it leans just over the boundary of the walkway, creating an unwinnable maze. Few would think to enter ‘The Thistle Garden’ in shorts, but even jeans-sporting visitors report that the plants linger on their denim, an evolutionary long-con with no obvious purpose but to cause discomfort.

Nature’s senseless cruelty, in this regard, is mirrored in ‘The Garden’s’ keepers, who have constructed a playground in the center- the best playground in all of Bellstaff. To quickly catch one’s self at the end of the slide seems to be a natural talent held by most of the city’s minors, but this is not at all the case. Each of these children has been jettisoned into the thistle at least once- a tradition as deeply held as chicken pox and equally as important. They have learned and they encourage others to learn as well. Out-of-town cousins are rarely warned ahead of time and, though many consider this a vicious joke, you will find no one laughs while they rescue a child from ‘The Garden.’

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

In my absolute willingness to turn over creative guidance to the Editor, I wonder if I may have overestimated her expertise. The relationship between a writer and an editor should involve careful collaboration, I think, or a playful push and pull. It should involve a balance, not necessarily of skills, but of power.

Or so I imagine.

Somewhere along the way I seem to have given up total control to the Editor, assuming, like I do of almost every person I meet, they she knew something about this world that I did not. As I watch her struggle with the crank of an old souvenir penny-crusher, I wonder if I’ve put too much trust in her lead and I worry about the process of reclaiming that power peacefully.

“I don’t think this is the one,” I venture, and she glares at me.

“What makes you the expert?”

“If I wrote the book-” I reason, “-and you assume I did. If I wrote that it would be easy once you found the right machine, it’s not going to be hard.”

She continues to glare and I shrug.

“I never try very hard.”

‘The span known, among exonumists, as the Period for Contemporary Elongateds has already far surpassed the 20-year Period for Modern Elongateds, the distinguishing factor of which was that said elongated exonumia were mainly created and sold as trinkets in stores rather than crushed fresh on-site by the sheer manpower of the tourists themselves. The early timeline of the Elongated Exonumia Tradition is somewhat contested in the field and crushed coins existing prior to the 1960’s are simply called ‘oldies,’ a term that is just as likely to refer to actual, machined designs as it is to nickels left on train tracks.

Suffice to say that the off-centered copper stamping of a smiling gorilla that you’ve frivolously squandered your laundry money on has a long, absurd history and, no doubt, a long, absurd future.

The Period for Contemporary Elongateds is coming to a strange end with the discovery of a mysterious setting available on a series of modern penny-crushing machines in rural Iowa. The most reliable of these machines can be found at the ‘Diesel Dump,’ a small gas-station, laundromat, and dive bar that is popular both with the locals and with a certain brand of roving hipster. By pulling the crank out at its base, as though one is preparing to set the time on their watch, the machine can be operated in reverse and, fed any type of elongated copper, it will produce two quarters and an old penny.

The process has become known, in certain circles, as ‘Maxwell’s Remonetization’ and the machine, ‘Maxwell.’ ‘Maxwell’ and its mysterious process remained a strange but benign attraction until late 2017 when Alexander Horton, a longtime exonumist and recent drug-addict, arrived at the ‘Diesel Dump’ and exchanged his formidable collection of elongated coins for $350 dollars in warm quarters and pennies. The event prompted Valeria Isabella, owner of the ‘Diesel Dump,’ to admit that she hadn’t ever given the machine much thought, neither emptying nor servicing it in the several decades it has gathered dust near the door.

Experts have confirmed that ‘Maxwell’ is returning crushed pennies to their original forms, not just exchanging them for equal value, and that the quarters paid back for the trouble are identical to those used to pay for the initial elongation. The ‘experts,’ it should be said, are all members of a quasi-cult that has formed around ‘Maxwell’s Remonetization’ and believe that the machines capable of the process are acting against the slow decay of our universe. These strangers stalk tourist hubs with heavy pockets and a jangling gait, sure that, in repairing the nation’s flattened coinage, they ward off time’s arrow.

Those in opposition of the ‘Remonetizationist’ movement have criticized its followers for glorifying the past through the worship of old money. The cult leaders have denied these accusations, stating they act only against entropy and are not at all opposed to change.’

‘Maxwell,’ it turns out, has been moved near the counter so that the ‘Remonetizationists’ can be easily monitored. The crank pulls forward with a satisfying thunk and the Editor glares, again, to see that I was right.

From her wallet, the Editor pulls an old souvenir penny, dark with tarnish. She hands it to me without explanation. It says ‘CLOWN TOWN, 1991’ and features a wide, cartoon grin from which several teeth are missing.

“My sister stole my lucky quarter for this,” she says when I hand it back, “And it’s been a pretty shitty thirty years.”

The Editor bends the metal to that it fits into the machine’s input tray and slams it backward. We work the crank together and ‘Maxwell’ groans with mysterious internal effort. After a minute, or so, three coins clatter out the bottom. The Editor retrieves them and she smiles, instantly, in recognition.

“That’s the one.”

The remaining 26 cents is thrown into a pile that eventually pays for two soft-serve ice creams and a coffee on the patio of the ‘Diesel Dump.’ The sun is setting and we haven’t made plans for the night, a prospect that would normally worry me, but seems to be mitigated, in part, by the Editor’s renewed calm. She fingers the quarter incessantly, twirling it on the table and dropping it often enough that I suggest she pocket the thing before it’s lost again. She does, and her hand remains there with it as the ice cream melts to a chocolate puddle on the cheap plastic furniture.

-traveler

‘Though a business model like that of ‘National Harvest’ necessitates many branches, tours are only offered at the founding facility in Northern Vermont. ‘The Stowe Facility’ is a modest structure compared to the modern holdings of ‘National Harvest’ and much of the original machinery inside has been decommissioned, forming a small museum. Active sectors are reserved for research and development as well as a variety of kitschy, public-facing services: a shop where one might purchase a small sack of leaves that once circulated near their childhood home, a booth where one might don the regional uniform and practice firing leaves from a leaf blower (spreading them evenly over the yard of a false home), and, finally, the largest leaf pile in the world where, for a modest five dollars, adults can relive the joy of leaping into the autumnal unknown.

Alisha Hirsch, ‘National Harvest’s’ current CEO,  maintains a residence on the grounds of ‘The Stowe Facility,’ though she is rarely seen outside her small, private forest (a sampling of nearly all American deciduous species). A fierce businesswoman, Hirsch garnered a degree of infamy in the 1980’s when she pioneered the use of sticks in otherwise harmless leaf piles with the purpose of dissuading children from inhibiting the re-collecting process. Backlash would later result in the recall of dangerous sticks and the distribution of festively designed ‘jack o’lantern’ leaf sacks, a gesture many still see as self-serving given the ease in which the sacks allow for ‘National Harvest’ to reclaim and process used leaves. Following the haphazard recall, sticks remain in circulation to this day.

Controversies aside, ‘Autumn’ is commonly recognized in the central and northern stretches of the United States and, recently, has begun to enjoy increased popularity overseas as well. Offering rare insight into the complex logistical problems a company such as ‘National Harvest’ might face on a global scale, Hirsch recently outlined a plan for ‘international Autumn.’

‘It couldn’t all happen at the same time,’ she admitted, shuffling through the motely detritus outside her home, ‘The sheer volume of leaves necessary for a worldwide Autumn would be unmanageable. What would need to happen, what we’re testing right now, is a staggered approach, so that the collected leaves from one country are processed and shipped to the next. It would never be Autumn everywhere,’ she concluded, ‘But it would always be Autumn somewhere.’

“Hirsch is a bitch,” the Editor growls, crunching her way across the lawn and toward ‘The Stowe Facility’s’ small giftshop, “It’s not just the sticks- did you know she was behind the child labor shit too?”

“I thought I’d heard something…”

“Back before she was CEO she designed this whole idea of having kids rake up leaves like it’s some sort of great American duty. She convinced a generation of parents to force their kids into slavery and then stabbed them in the back- literally in some cases. There was a lawsuit and everything.”

The Editor stops to collect herself at the giftshop’s door, heaving out a great lungful of air before stepping inside. Her tirade continues but is reduced to a mutter.

“The leaves they’re using these days are designed to break apart after a season or two,” she says, picking up a small plastic bag of leaves and sniffing carefully at the contents, “They realized it’s cheaper to produce lower quality shit because it keeps people from just re-using their own, storing them in the basement or whatever. Used to be you could jump in the same pile ten times before it flattened out…” She chooses another sack and grimaces at the smell. “What order are these in?”

I spend time looking over a few decorative magnets while the Editor describes her old town to a clerk. My own childhood home was situated in a pine forest and, while there were a few families who celebrated ‘Autumn’ with a transplanted maple or two in their yard, it’s not a season I became accustomed to until I began to travel.

“Found it!” the Editor smiles, her mixed feelings about ‘National Harvest’ briefly suppressed by a wave of nostalgia, “Take a whiff of this and tell me what you think?”

The leaves in the Editor’s bag smell much like the others- much like the store and the grounds overall, but I smile back and give her an appreciative thumbs up.

“It’s expensive,” she admits, crinkling the little sack between her fingers, “They’re not producing this mixture anymore. And these are… old. Like, they could have been from my neighborhood when I was a kid there.”

“At least they’d be durable.”

“Yeah…”

I see the Editor struggling to justify the expense and, in the end, agree to split the cost with her.

“It’ll be nice to smell something besides our feet when we camp.”

The Editor is subdued again as we prepare for the next stretch of highway. She sniffs at the bag before carefully zipping it into her pack.

“It’s weird to think that the others, the other like me- they’d walk away with a completely different bag. Their ‘Autumn’ would be totally different. Maybe it died with them.”

“Maybe,” I admit, “But if we’re off to meet one of them, maybe we’ll get a chance to compare.”

The Editor disappears into her helmet before I can gauge any reaction, but I see her carefully crush several leaves under her boot before mounting the bike and she laughs as I steer us through a loose pile in the parking lot, scattering it behind us in a great, broken cloud.

-traveler

‘Blame for ‘The Sharp Place’ lies definitively with the Baby Boomers, whose method for the disposal of razors parallels their method for handling the climate, a whimsical laissez-faire approach (that may, yet, be the death of us). The method is simple, if not baffling: 1. A slot is cut into the bathroom wall, sometimes in the mirror cabinet and sometimes garishly chiseled out of tile. 2. Used razors are pressed into the slot by freshly shaven homeowners. 3. Intrusive ideas about where the razors may go or what may happen when they are found are ignored. 4. The homeowner’s subconscious remains distantly aware that the walls are filling with rusted razors, hair, and blood. 5. The homeowner’s subconscious manifests irrational fears that the razors will turn up at inconvenient times (i.e. in the apples given to children at Halloween). 6. Repeat.

‘The Sharp Place,’ then, is an American state of mind, a chicken-or-egg straining of logic that takes the example of pressing razors into the walls of our private restrooms and allows us to assume the worst of everyone in the neighborhood because, if good people can press razors into their walls, who knows what the shifty couple across the street might be capable of? Gluing them to playground equipment? And if the neighbors are feeding razorblades to stray dogs, is it really so bad to press them into the bathroom wall where, at least as far as we can tell, they are safely away from children and animals?

‘The Sharp Place’ is equal parts condemnation and permission, the new American paranoia.  It’s the reason razors are banned from airplanes- if we can’t trust ourselves with them, we certainly can’t trust the man sitting next to us who may, in our absence, slip under the seat and run one across our delicate Achilles tendon. And he, under the seat, can hardly trust that we have not gone to press razors into the walls of the airplane bathroom, risking catastrophic depressurization for the relief of being free of a blade.

‘The Sharp Place’ is also a place, deep underground but open to public viewing. It is the terminus of a complex series of pipes, an infrastructure that connects the walls of all American bathrooms and ferries abandoned razors into a natural pit, the bottom of which remains something of a mystery. It is a place that smells like blood, though it is likely only rust.

Visiting the site of ‘The Sharp Place’ does nothing to mitigate the feeling of it, though some have found small relief in bringing boxes of their used razors for disposal at the hub- a guilty pilgrimage that misses the point entirely.’

The Editor and I search for an entrance to ‘The Sharp Place’ off I-5 in Washington and find nothing but an orchard where Shitholes suggests it might be. I call her superstitious when she stops me from eating an apple there but I drop it when she isn’t looking. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

-traveler