It’s not a day I’ve been dreading, exactly, this taste-test at ‘The World’s Worst Coffee Corner,’ but when I see just how little of the coffee at ‘Tony’s Café’ customers are able to drink, I worry. The servings are generous, by default. The menu above the counter suggests that larger sizes are available, though I have to assume this is a joke. The sitting area is empty, presumably due to the smell. It’s like someone learned to dry cat urine and has decided to burn it.
Burnt is Tony’s take on bad coffee. This I’ve read. The liquid he produces is paint-black, thick, and oily, served in special cups to combat the acidity of the brew.
But its drinkable- that’s the rule. The two cafes, racing each other to the bottom, both produce something that is legally a beverage. That is technically coffee.
It’s expensive. That’s what gets me. A tourist tax for coffee so bad that it’s a joke. I take a sip and barely hold it down. It seems to shrivel and dry my tongue. My throat tries to reject it but I coax the liquid down and it settles inside me, seeming to fizzle. I worry it will leave a hole in my stomach. It will likely emerge in much the same state it was consumed. I assume I’ll piss fire later, so little of the beverage being worth the effort of my body to process it.
‘It was ‘Joe’s Joe’ first and ‘Tony’s Café’ soon after: two little shops that produced such lackluster coffee in such close proximity that, when a local news article chronicled the journalist’s disgust at leaving one and winding up at the other, a race to the bottom was born. An annual competition sees crowds in the hundreds flocking to Edmonton, Nebraska to taste and be disgusted by the worsening coffee of these establishments.
The shape of the contest has changed over the years. ‘Joe’s Joe’ held a winning streak in the mid-nineties before it was revealed that their recipe had veered into the actually-toxic. ‘Tony’s Café’ held their own when points were still awarded for poor customer experience, employing deeply uncomfortable chrome stools and highly attractive, but cruel, baristas. Bizarre rules have been employed to keep things fair. The coffee must be vegetarian, for instance. It must pour with the viscosity of water. It cannot be served frozen or boiling. It must be served in a paper cup.
‘The World’s Worst Coffee Corner’ recently made The Post’s list of ‘Stupid Places to Spend Thirty Dollars,’ and the recognition has rekindled public interest. Lines are longer, now, which only serves to deepen the experience.’
I buy a very expensive bottle of water from a nearby mom-and-pop and attempt to palate cleanse while my digestive tract complains about the few drops of Tony’s. Then, it’s on to ‘Joe’s Joe’ where I’m given the option of roast in an atmosphere that is breathable, at least, but that smells nothing like coffee. This, it turns out, is because ‘Joe’s’ practices a long-term soaking process which produces a liquid that is hardly tinted amber but painfully, painfully sour and so highly caffeinated that my head begins to throb before the first drink has left my mouth. I pass out and wake up on a couch in the café several minutes later and overhear the men at the counter suggesting I’m the second collapse in the day, that the recipe will need to be tweaked to qualify as edible.
A loyalty card has been placed on my chest, a single punched coffee on my way to the 10th free.
-traveler
There was another time I stopped at the ‘Long Haul Bus Depot,’ thinking I could check it off the list. That was back when I had the motorcycle, though. Nowhere to warm myself. A cold snap on the second day forced me to abandon the attempt. I was more cautious with my life, then.
I figured I’d get back around to it eventually.
‘There are a lot of ‘rules’ floating around about the ‘Long Haul Bus Depot,’ but the only three that matter are:
- Show up before noon.
- Wait three full 24-hour days.
- Don’t get on the bus at night.
It is these three rules that stand the test of time and only these three that are conservative enough for the most risk-averse traveler. Some who board the bus early return. Some who board the bus at night return (but are changed). Nobody who has arrived before after noon on any given day has found the bus to be timely. It is a waste of twelve hours to arrive early and it seems to encourage the bus to arrive at night. Those who board at the proper time, having waited for the ‘right’ bus to show, are almost guaranteed to emerge at their destination unharmed.’
I’m not sure if the camper counts as waiting at the bus stop but, with no real deadlines looming, I park nearby and tailgate for a while, spending what seems like a respectable amount of time in the old bus shelter as is possible- even sleeping there. But I return to the camper to cook. And to relive myself, finding that the smell of warm urine too nearby keeps me up. And after a few false starts, during which strange buses come and go, the blood-red ‘Long Haul Bus’ stops for me and the hollowed-out man at the wheel beckons me to board, indicating, as he always does, that the ticket machine is broken and that no payment is required.
The air near the bus feels colder.
The tires leave wet tracks though no rain has fallen.
The bus driver smiles down, failing to acknowledge my hesitation. He lets the moment drag on though I can see other passengers aboard, waiting, their faces obscured by condensation on the glass.
I shrug. “Think I’m due on the next one.”
The bus driver nods and shuts the door and the ‘Long Haul Bus’ pulls away, the road empty until it’s out of sight. Then, as if a dam breaks, traffic resumes.
-traveler
Via some trick of the volume or the spacing of the speakers or maybe something more orchestrated in the order in which the audio is played, the many voices of ‘The Audiobook Library’ come together in a small space to form the generic murmur of a crowd. It’s uncanny and it sounds so much like the real thing that I find myself constantly looking over my shoulder, ready to brush into a person that isn’t there.
When I focus in, I hear snippets of several novels, none of which I immediately recognize. It’s been ages since I read a book for fun. Ages since I read a book that wasn’t the guide. I used to have a paperback or two floating around the dash. I used to have several CDs from the middle of ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ I haven’t properly started that novel. I haven’t properly finished it. I remember exactly where one of the discs was scratched, the way the words would loop.
But that’s gone now, too.
‘The Audiobook Library’ is small and empty but it sounds the opposite. I pull out my phone and start to record.
‘It has to do with copyright- that’s why the audiobooks can’t be properly checked-out or listened to individually. That’s why they’re all playing all the time. Does this make ‘The Audiobook Library’ something of a wash in terms of community resources?
Probably.
There are some rumors that the literary cacophony sometimes syncs, however, and reveal something else. The works coalesce into something new and beautiful.
This may well be a ploy on the part of ‘The Audiobook Library’ itself, which offers a steep lifetime membership and likely only sells a few.’
I try to play it in the trailer once I find my stride on the highway again but the recording doesn’t carry the weight of the lived experience. It was a stupid experiment, but a while has passed since I’ve been around a group of normal people and I thought it might help.
-traveler
‘Not technically open to the public or even legally witnessable, the country’s ‘Helium Depot’ has recently become something of a traveling Wayside attraction. Until now, the exact location of America’s helium stores was confidential, though it wasn’t exactly a secret people were dying to know. With the secret out, a great deal of effort is being put into reminding the public about the civic duty of looking-away-when-asked.
But it’s hard to look away.
‘The Helium Depot’ appears to be constructed of some very strong and very light metal alloy- a warehouse that was untethered to the ground by the precious gas it once stored. With helium supplies running low, ‘The Helium Depot’ has entered the demented frenzy of an old birthday balloon, choosing not to fly or fall but to hang, morose, at varying altitudes between the sky and the ground. It rides a wind current through the middle of the country, having torn loose from its foundations during a recent storm and attempts to restrain it.
‘The Helium Depot’s’ little collisions have caused a great deal of damage as it passes slowly through Nevada and petitions for compensation are met with a waggling finger. Nobody is supposed to know about ‘The Helium Depot.’ That’s the law.
Requests for clarification on the legality of publishing this entry were answered by a man with a no-nonsense attitude and an unusually high voice who could not speak to the legal status of anything he couldn’t legally know about.
-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
You would think there would be more graveyards in the guide. They seem to fit the vibe and famous graves do make a lot of the more skewed-from-traditional roadside itineraries. Pretty or creepy gravestones. Celebrity resting places. Loci for regional urban legends. There’s a draw, sure, but most just don’t have a lot going on.
And they don’t usually have bathrooms.
‘The Rose Garden’ makes the cut for its being contentious, though the conceit does it some favors. The gist is that some long-dead rich man lost his daughter, ‘Rose,’ and developed such a grand resting place that he thought it should be shared. The form of this largesse, was such that he worked with local lawmakers to mandate that all further Roses and Rosalines meeting their end on county soil be interred in ‘The Garden.’ It wasn’t a lot, but over the years, ‘The Rose Garden’ has grown.
‘Nobody’s arguing that it’s not a nice place. For a rural cemetery, ‘The Rose Garden’ is ritzy up to the point of bad taste. It’s been renovated several times, more recently with touches in gold and glossy red enamel that are meant to evoke velvet furniture but land, instead, on laminate diner booth.
And there are rosebushes, of course.
The money set aside for upkeep of ‘The Rose Garden’ has been invested in several strains of the flower that bloom in the winter. The cemetery is red, even after a snowfall, and this tends to have a negative effect on the human psyche. Red like a rash. Red like something that wants you to know its venomous. Red like blood under the surface of the skin, which may be the most painful image to manifest in those who come to grieve the long dead.’
There is a dead Rose in the county now, her body in limbo. It’s became a national story as soon as the government seized her and the family threatened to dig her up if she’s not placed in the family plot out of state. The burial is scheduled and ‘The Rose Garden’ is set to be off limits in the days to come, preventing sabotage and protest, so my visit is hurried. The other visitors seem angry, like they want to break something but understand that the grounds are sacred despite themselves- that some people have been buried here willingly.
I’d say there’s a 30% chance that by the end of this, someone else will be dead.
-traveler