My wife and I were driving along on the highway the other day when I spotted a historical marker along-side the road. I couldn’t help it, I just had to pull over and see what it had to say.
It’s not that it was any big deal, it was just your run-of-the-mill marker. But, whenever I see those bronze roadside plaques my heart beats faster, my palms begin to sweat and I start salivating like a Pavlovian dog. You see, I was conditioned as a child to hold these informational monuments in high regard. Dispensers of vital trivia, they must be read, because you never know when someone might ask you if you know where Laura Ingalls-Wilder once built a sod outhouse, or where Buffalo Bill’s beloved pet prairie dog is buried, or where General Grant once had a headache or where the geographical center of South Dakota is located.
I can say I’ve been there.
It’s my mother’s fault, I think. She used to research our family vacations and day-trips for months ahead of time, scouring local tourist guidebooks and atlases for any and all must-see points of interest within driving range. I’m sure they looked good on paper, but I have to say, when you’ve seen one warehouse full of clocks, you’ve seen them all. As a child I visited the Amish earmuff-weaving colonies, the quaint chewing gum grottos of Poontzville, Iowa and the famed Cracker caves in West Pfizer. I’ve seen the world’s largest ball of toilet paper and petted the only surviving laughing badger in all of North America.
En-route to these storied attractions, we stopped and read every roadside sign and historical marker we encountered, and though the years have passed and they have all dissolved onto a kind of chronological blur, there is one that stands out in my memories. A marker so significant, so different from all the others that it warranted a trip of it’s own, a pilgrimage miles into the heart of nowhere just to say that we stood on the hallowed ground.
It was in Iowa, of course. You can visit it right there in Tweed county on Highway 233, four miles west of Putzdale.
The place where nothing happened.
It was a watershed moment in my young life, and I can still remember what it said.
“Here, on the banks of the Unnamed River, nothing happened.
No battles were ever fought here, and the nearest railroad passed by seventeen miles to the East. The early explorers generally disdained the area, giving it a wide berth, and the Indians had no name for it. During the land rush years of the 1800’s it was settled by a series of anonymous pioneers, none of whose names are known today, and although there are some records of a town being established in the vicinity, no evidence of it’s location presently exists. If you look in any direction, you will see several miles of flat, non-descript land. This area, known as “The Flats”, contains soil so poor, that even grass won’t grow, and instead, the hills are colonized by a generic form of fungus.”
“Wow,” we thought, “it’s boring, but by God, it’s unique.”
My mother read on...
“Although many people would be tempted to call this area unique, it actually isn’t - similar landforms may be found on every continent, and in fact the entire nation of Lower Twerdzania is built on land exactly like this.”
We stood there on the scenic overlook (actually a small hillock about the size of a pitcher’s
mound), drinking in the splendid blandness of it all for nearly an hour. My mother took 4300 photographs that all looked exactly the same, and then we adjourned to the requisite souvenir shop. It was a hard choice. As every child knows, the main purpose of a vacation is to buy every worthless plastic dolphin, dog whistle and postcard that you can lay your hands on. These are then carted around in your pocket for the entire trip, and promptly discarded as soon as you cross the threshold of your home. I was torn between the “Box-O-Dirt” and the always reliable “My parents went absolutely nowhere, and all they got me was this lousy T-shirt” shirt. I finally chose one of those holographic keychains with a 3-D picture of the Flats that changed perspective when you looked at it from a different angle. Of course, it didn’t change much, mud is pretty much mud no matter what your viewpoint might be, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t have any keys to put on it anyway.
On the way home, my brother and I played auto bingo, fought with each other, tried to spot license plates from foreign states, fought with each other, sang every campfire song we could think of, fought with each other, and tried not to throw up too many times. In other words a typical family vacation.
Hey, you’ll have to stop over some time and see the slides!
About Me
- Don Kashatkovich
- Don was found wandering the streets at the age of seventeen, begging for lefse during the great Minnesota Lutefisk Riots of 1974. Apparently he was lost in the forest as a baby and raised to adulthood by raccoons. If true, this would go a long way toward explaining his present day affection for grubs and berries, and also the fact that he feels compelled to wash his food in the river before eating it. After failed career attempts at mail-order brain surgery and buffalo wrestling, the boy settled in as an interpreter for the American embassy in Tokyo. This didn’t last long, however, due to the fact that he doesn’t speak a word of Japanese. A lifelong resident of Minnesota, he now defies convention by splitting time between developing a hardier breed of mosquito and working on his dream of constructing a Pothole Hall of Fame. Tall Tales and Short Stories is his first collection of letters to friends, dreams and incoherent scribblings jotted down on napkins in bars. It will soon be released as a major Hollywood motion picture starring Lorena Bobbitt, Lyle Lovett, and the ghost of Elvis Presley as “Bob”.
No comments:
Post a Comment