If you ever wanted to know what America would be like if the Germans won the war, go to Frankenmuth, Michigan.
A tourist destination near the thumb of the mitten, Frankenmuth was settled in the 1840s, long before Hitler was a twinkle in anyone’s eye. Timeline aside, it’s a strange look into a strange could-have-been but thank-god-it’s-not future. Frankenmuth mirrors the German-designated section of Epcot — beer halls, cheese and sausage shops, perfectly maintained buildings in the Bavarian architectural style with astutely trimmed window boxes of multicolored pansies. Every shop attendant is dressed in “traditional” German garb — lederhosen for men and dirndls for women with the obligatory Heidi braids. Upon entering a store, you are greeted with “guten tag” and after swiping a free sample or four of fudge, sent away with “auf wiedersehen!” Not a single piece of garbage flutters to the street before it is swept up by an employee who is neither seen nor heard. Most disturbing is the absence of minorities. Everyone, from the employees to the patrons, is a minutely varying shade of ivory.
There are a few expensive restaurants along the main street, toting themselves as “inns” and each serving what they claim to be a “World Famous” chicken dish. We ordered all our finances would allow — sides of spetzel and beets, curious to see what the illustrious chicken dish was but unwilling to pay $28 a person for it. At the next table over, a couple suited up to consume one of these famous feasts, which upon arrival looked no different than fried chicken from a cardboard bucket. This did not seem to bother the couple, who waited just until the waiter breathed to shovel food into their mouths.
The centerpiece of this whitewashed abyss is Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, boasting itself as the world’s largest Christmas store.
The parking lot overflows in mid-July with sparkling mini-vans and SUVs. Women with wooly up-dos and bermuda shorts pushed heavy shopping carts, filling them with white boxes containing ceramic, light-up scenes from Norman Rockwell paintings and It’s a Wonderful Life, none for less than $70, nearly twice their K-Mart price.Unenthused husbands in Lions’ and Packers’ sweatshirts nodded in sync with each flowing query.
“Do you like this?”
“Do we already have this one?”
“Isn’t this darling?!”
Music dreaded for ten months of the year is enjoyed at the highest volume. Rows of glimmering ornaments for every occasion imaginable are lined up over more square footage than a professional golf course, organized into categories like “newly engaged,” “food,” and “fishing.” There’s an employee who’s purpose is solely to customize ornaments, painting messages like “Derrick and Brittany, June 2014” on a frail periwinkle bulb. Everything makes noise, or worse, sings a song.
Bronner's also had no problem letting their patrons know that their electrical bill is $900 a day.
Being in Frankenmuth is like being stuck in one of those tiny, porcelain villages, this Made in China town where everything exists for display purposes only — a lived-in cuckoo clock. Even the people seemed like they were purchased and set there, dressed in costumes they didn’t have the option of removing, swallowing a conveyor belt of beer and cheese and sausage medallions on an endless loop. Dolls in someone else's playhouse.
The Midwest gets a lot of hate for a number of reasons.
Perhaps the biggest, at least to me, is the sameness of it all. I won’t deny
the existence of Midwestern hospitality, and while there is some natural beauty
in the Midwest, most of it has been bulldozed to make way for suburban
developments. It is a very bland, homogenous landscape of vinyl-sided prefabs,
covering the full spectrum from beige to taupe, with a CVS across from a
Walgreen’s across from a gas station across from a used car dealership.
(Seriously, Indiana, what the Hell is up with that?)
Breaking away from that sameness is Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula. The people who know about it all agree that it is a wonderful
place…but then, there is everybody else. On the one hand, there is the fact
that an unsettling percentage of the American population would fail even the
most basic of geography quizzes. But on the other hand, there are maps,
graphics, and illustrations that just plain leave
the Upper Peninsula off.
The Upper Peninsula should be right next to the Northeastern corner of Wisconsin.
Their loss is ours, too, because the Upper Peninsula
should not just be its own state – which I actually am in favor of – it might
as well be its own country.
Michigan itself is an interesting state, unfortunately known
mostly for their run-down urban centers like Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw,
places that even the proudest of Michiganders (yes, that is the actual term)
speak about in the hushed tones typically reserved for discussing a recently
incarcerated relative: “Yeah, it’s a shame, really…” Of course, there is far
more to Michigan than just urban decay, fun and scary as all that is for
hipster photography students and locals, respectively.
At some point in the not-so-distant past, an advertising
slogan came about for Michigan’s tourism industry: “Say yes to Michigan!” The
counter-slogan for the Upper Peninsula, which has achieved far more immortality
than the original advertising campaign it mocked, is “Say ya to da UP, eh!”
Describing the difference between the residents of the Upper Peninsula, who
call themselves Yoopers (hey, it rolls off the tongue better than
Michiganders), and pretty much everyone else in the United States can be easily
summed up with that slogan.
The UP boasts a strong Scandinavian heritage, largely due to
the low numbers of people who initially settled there. In many ways, the UP
shares a lot in common with Aroostook County in Maine: low population density,
locals who are just as Old World as their ancestors who arrived six generations
ago, plenty of room for nature, and a local humor that is far less parochial
than one might think. Roadside souvenir shops boast Genuine Yooper Goods,
including this Yooper bug-killer:
My personal favorite was what looked like a mileage chart,
indicating the distance from various UP locations to other major American
cities. Instead of miles, though, the sign listed the number of “road pops”
needed to get there. I asked a shopkeeper what a road pop was, and with a proud
chuckle he informed me that road pop is beer. The distance from St. Ignace to
Chicago? Six road pops. Drunk driving – not funny. Road pops as a unit of
measurement – hilarious.
The Mackinac Bridge, connecting the UP to the Mitten.
Of course, in the same way that Michigan isn’t all Detroit,
the UP isn’t all Scandinavian hillbillies. Marquette was a lovely college town,
and Ishpeming is not just home to a rich history of copper mining and the
International Skiing Hall of Fame, it was also one of the final contenders for
Michigan’s state capital. (Now there’s an interesting “what-if” for you, if
that’s your thing…) My friend and fellow Monkees scholar Colin told me we absolutely
had to visit Houghton and Hancock, twin towns separated by a river, on the
premise that “it is just like walking around inside a Gordon Lightfoot song.”
It definitely was, and we also had an incredible Finnish breakfast in Houghton.
Hancock, as seen from Houghton.
And speaking of Gordon Lightfoot, the Shipwreck Museum in Paradise
features a short film on the wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald that reduced everyone – everyone
– to tears. Not just quiet weeping, either, we are talking full-on funereal
sobs. Beyond the tragic element of the souls lost in the treacherous waters of
Lake Superior, the Shipwreck Museum offered a lot about the lives of lighthouse
keepers, which was apparently a prestigious job in its time. The museum also has
startlingly realistic dummies, so if you visit, be sure to look out for that.
The Shipwreck Museum
Whenever either of us write about a place we genuinely liked
– or even loved – both Alexa and I always wonder if our enthusiasm was
contagious enough, especially since writing such pieces typically devolves into
us saying, “This place is awesome, so just GO already and see it for yourself!”
Downtown Ishpeming
It may not be the easiest place in the country to reach, but
for adventure seekers, who want to see what a colorful downtown looked like
before the invasion of the big-box retailers, who want to be one with nature
(did I mention we began camping out in the UP? Highly recommended, but bathe
yourself in bug spray – the deep woods stuff.), who love being on the water,
who cherish soaking in the local culture, well…this place is awesome, so just
GO already and see it for yourself!
We passed through plenty of towns with some claim to fame, hometown of this or that famous or infamous individual or setting of a certain movie or television show that collected a cult following, but none as proud as Metropolis, Illinois. And rightfully so. It’s common for every tenth town to boast it birthed some one-hit-wonder, troubled Disney star, or indie darling, but only Metropolis has rights over Superman.
While the town recognizes that Superman did not actually spring from the banks of the Ohio, he is their bona fide hometown hero. The town itself is a blip, a few municipal buildings, a pizzeria guilty of frozen, pre-made crusts, a fifty-year-old hardware store surviving because the town is too small for a Lowes, certainly nothing like the fictional city of glass and concrete Superman perpetually saves from certain destruction. But, through a simple duplication in name, Superman became the icon of the real Metropolis, and standing in the center of their downtown is a glossy, two-story statue of the comic book icon, fists to his hips, his fiberglass cape blowing in the wind.
Every year, Metropolis hosts a celebration honoring Superman, drawing comic book nerds and cute kids in costumes to the southern Illinois village of only a couple thousand residents. In the past, when Hollywood producers decided to film a new movie about the Man of Steel every few years, the town of Metropolis gathered at the local cineplex to cheer on their hero. The theatre has since closed.
Across from town hall is a museum dedicated to Superman and his nearly seven decades of saving the world. It’s more of an insane fan’s collection rather than carefully maintained and curated articles, neatly displayed for viewing. Only a few items have homes in cases or garment bags, and things have begun to wither and yellow under a layer of dust. There’s costumes, props, and stills from every television reboot, and shelves full of plastic cups from every time a fast-food restaurant promoted a Superman movie. A Superman documentary plays on a loop, covering the creation of Superman up through the largely mediocre 2006 release Superman Returns. Thousands of action figures stare down from their shelves, gifting the museum the feeling of a journey into a nerdy ex-boyfriend’s basement, all the stuff he would never want you to know he owned.
Outside of the museum, tourists poked their heads through cardboard cutouts of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Dwarfed under the enormous fiberglass statue, they snapped this year’s Christmas card. “Have a SUPER Christmas!” The bought souvenirs and t-shirts from the museums only worker, the in-the-flesh version of The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy.
Superman does save Metropolis, Illinois — he saves it from existing as yet another depressed town, overwrought by strip malls and chain restaurants, existing just as the next town over, the only difference being it’s name. It has pride, far more than hundreds of places we’ve passed through, and pride is worth everything.
Alongside
Interstate 70 in southern Illinois is a massive cross – 198 feet tall, to be
exact –made out of aluminum siding. Do I even have to write this one to convey
to you our shared thoughts on it?
Imagine
a world where a religion adopted a method of execution as their central symbol:
a noose, a guillotine, a lead pipe in the billiard room…now imagine that symbol
stamped all across the United States. The cross, too, at least historically,
was the device for one of the most popular execution methods of its era:
crucifixion. There are crosses everywhere in this country. In regions with
higher concentrations of Baptists, it is usually a trio of crosses. Roadside
are makeshift memorials to loved ones who died in automobile accidents, marked
by crosses. And yet, there is never a roadside assemblage of crescent moons and
stars, six-pointed stars, the Sanskrit depiction of “Om,” Buddha’s wheel of
dharma…
For those who don't know - and want to - the Christian Cross, Jewish Star of David, Hindu Om, the Star and Crescent of Islam, the Buddhist Dharmic wheel, the Shinto Torii, the Sikh Khanda, the Baha'i Star, and the Jain Hand.
Now
is as good a time as ever to restate that I find nothing wrong with the core
precepts of Christianity. Whatever belief system helps you become a better
person without being a self-righteous ass about it, I say go for it. My dad is
a good Christian. My grandparents are good Christians. There are plenty of good
Christians the world over. This isn’t for them or even about them – and with that, I hope more Christians stand up for
themselves and the true messages within their religion, of love, acceptance,
and service to mankind, not just as an affront to the clinically insane claimants
of the faith, but also to reshape popular perception.
Theological
conundrums aside, and I assure you the book will have a much meatier take on
the subject, the important question I have asked as we traveled across the
United States is this: “What about non-Christians?” What about non-Christians
who wish to buy alcohol on a Sunday in any number of states? What about
non-Christians who see a billboard telling them evolution is a lie, and to call
1-855-FOR-TRUTH to hear the real
story? What about those pro-life billboards?
For
people living on either coast, this may seem baffling, but it is a reality
throughout the Midwest and the South. (That said, I would love to know the rates
of teen pregnancies in regions with those awful “LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION”
billboards.) If this was a phenomenon limited to a single state, it would not
be as bad. It would be a problem as easily resolved as my version of
censorship: if you do not like it, turn it off! If you don’t care to see these
messages, avoid the one state that has them. Unfortunately, this presentation
of a warped, distorted Christianity that is anti-gay, ferociously
anti-abortion, and anti-science, whatever the numbers actually are for
practitioners and church memberships, is loud, proud, and preachy.
People
are entitled by the Bill of Rights, their own free will, and some level of
divine inspiration to pursue and practice the belief system of their choice.
Where I draw the line is when one narrow school of thought is considered
superior, influencing not just popular culture, but public policy. My gripe is
with how in-your-face certain types of Christians can be. For the most
egregious example of this, look no further than the Effingham Cross.
Interstate
70 serves as a major route for transportation from Baltimore to Utah, spanning
just over 2,150 miles. Anyone who has passed through Illinois on this road has
seen it, almost popping up out of nowhere: a giant cross, illuminated by a circle
of spotlights on the ground. A close inspection reveals it is covered with
aluminum siding, looking more like the weekend project of a crazed Home Depot
employee than an earnest testament of faith.
No idols...no graven images...but a cross that towers over the nearest grain silo? Totally okay.
At
the cross’ base is a relatively new church facility. Its sanctuary has at its
front a wall of glass, granting visitors a view of the enormous cross and the
relaxing vista of four lanes of constant Interstate traffic. Staffed by elderly
volunteers, the church also offers a ten-minute video detailing the construction
and installation of the cross. For reasons that I do not understand, both the
video and their literature makes a big deal out of the fact that the cross was
completed and put in place in the weeks after 9/11.
Alexa Altman: 5 foot 4 inches of fierce.
I
was also left with a bad taste in my mouth when I learned the designer
deliberately planned for the cross to stand 198 feet tall. What sounds like an
arbitrary number is in fact two feet less than the minimum height listed in an
FAA regulation requiring a blinking red light on top. Something about that
struck me as so unnecessarily defiant, as if a cross twenty-four inches taller
would somehow be cheapened by a blinking red light in compliance with federal
law.
It was (literally) a hundred degrees out, with that Midwestern humidity to boot. I promised Alexa a cake pop to stay there while I walked back far enough to get the entire cross in the frame.
The
worst thing about this incredibly well-lit monstrosity is in knowing the
resources invested into it, the time, money*, and manpower that could have
built a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, or a Boys & Girls Club. Jesus was
a champion for the weak, for those in need, and for children. My Biblical
knowledge is rusty, I’ll admit, but I definitely do not remember him insisting
his followers build a cult of personality around praising him, much less to
construct a replica of the device used in his brutal public execution.
Jesus' execution, as depicted in a film that parents who otherwise protest violence in cinema took their children along to see.
Christianity
is not the only religion in our cultural landscape, and with increased
globalization, its numbers will continue to drop so as to make room for
different belief systems and philosophies. This does not mean it is going away –
and I would not want that to happen– but instead that other ideas will enter
our cultural lexicon. After all, is America not the land that, even today, boasts room for all? Or did that go away along with habeas corpus and payphones?
The
Effingham Cross would be less obnoxious if, along that same stretch of road,
there were massive replicas of the symbols of every major world religion. But
then again, it would not be too long before Muslim extremists would attempt to blow
up the Star of David, Zionist war-hawks would build a barbed-wire fence around
the Star and Crescent after vandalizing it, while the Baha’is would wonder
aloud why we all just can’t get along.
Then
again, religion is a subject much like sex. A private and deeply personal
matter, it is best discussed in small groups, where experiences and pursuits
can be discussed in a climate of respect and understanding, with an unwritten
law in effect that those who talk the most frequently, the most publicly, and the
loudest about it are the ones who are getting the least enjoyment from it.
Neither of us are the ideal people to write about
casinos. We hate them. Alexa and I both think casinos do nothing but attract
the sleaziest elements, separating the gullible from their money to the point
of addiction while at the same time heralding the culture of conspicuous
consumption for America’s jet-set. This one won’t be pretty.
I grew up in Seymour, Indiana. It is the “small town”
that John Mellencamp, the poor man’s Springsteen, rhapsodized about, but only
after he had made his first million and gotten the Hell out. For many locals,
this is still a sore subject – he abandoned his flock, he got too big for the
“little people,” he forgot his roots…by moving to Bloomington. Bloomington –
the hip, liberal college town, the only spot in Indiana that doesn’t deserve a
napalm strike. For moving two counties over, just 50 miles away, the man is a
sell-out, a Judas.
If I were him, I would have thought that even Bloomington
was too close to that depressing track-mark, the land where religious diversity
means Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians are breaking bread over the same
buffet of casseroles and mayonnaise-based “salads.” It is a land that offers
nothing but complacency, conformism, and being criticized in the rare case that
you are even just a little different. I was happy to leave and have never
looked back, not even missing Bloomington but for those fleeting moments of
dumb nostalgia – yearning for an idealized past that never really existed, but
one still envisions “those days” as being uncomplicated – and finally reminding
myself that even Bloomington is only so much limestone and mortar.
Beginning with my adolescence, I knew Indiana was a state
with no future. What a bleak thing to think, but only those who have seen it
firsthand, with the right kind of eyes, will know what I mean.
I am singling Indiana out here, but the same can be said
for a bulk of the Midwest. It has no future.
“Look at all the people,
Well they all look the same,
They’re going to the factories,
In their cloth caps and trilbies.”
- The Kinks, “Scrapheap City”
It is all about homogeneity. The sameness. The same
houses. The same American-made trucks. The same haircuts. The same religious,
political, and social views. And it has been meticulously crafted by the powers
that be – all them liberal queer-lovers can stay out on the East Coast, or in
California, because the Midwest has no place for them here. Putting a boot in
one’s ass, according to popular lore, is the American way.
Fuck that song.
Perhaps more tragic than having no future is when a place
has no idea what – if anything – to do with its past. Again, this is not just
Indiana I am talking about. In fact, I’ll begin with an example from Indiana’s
somehow even more depressing neighbor, Ohio. When we visited a friend in
Columbus, she recounted to us that the birthplace of Rutherford B. Hayes and
the first-ever Wendy’s had both been bulldozed. A White Castle now sits atop
the latter.
I have talked a lot in my writings about my grandfather
and his influence on me – loving history, my infatuation with the early days of
the space program, leaving room for nature – but now is as good a time as any
to mention his son, my dad, and what he brought to my upbringing. Besides music
and movies, Dad has a love of architecture. Anything from the Victorian era up
through Art Deco is right up his alley – he helped save a historic home near
the Freeman Field airport from demolition – and he even lives in a house
constructed in the mission-style, from 1912. This is something he has imparted
onto all three of his kids. My older brother even considered architecture when
he started college.
Way back when our family just had the one computer, Dad
had as the desktop background a picture of the famous resort in West Baden,
with its massive domed atrium. Dad told me all about it, and that one day,
“when they finally get around to restoring it,” we would see it. West Baden
shares a municipal border with French Lick, the unfortunately named hometown of
Larry Bird. French Lick is also home to another famous old resort hotel, known
for its sulfur-scented hot springs. Because the water induced diarrhea or
something, it was bottled and sold for its curative properties as Pluto Water –
“if nature can’t do it, Pluto will!”
The location of the resort may seem like a bit of a
head-scratcher, smack in the middle of south-west central Indiana, but it was
its proximity to Chicago along Highway 41 (just far enough to be a getaway)
that made it a favorite place for businesspeople, gangsters, and film stars.
Long story short, the place fell in and out of disrepair
(along with the West Baden Springs Hotel, which for a period became a Jesuit
seminary), changing ownership every few years with loads of empty promises
about restoring the place to its former glory. When I visited French Lick with
my family in 2004, we actually stayed at the famed hotel. The lobby was in
great shape, but the corridors and rooms definitely had a Shining feel to it.
Maybe it had something to do with Indiana being a depressing shade of grey from
November through April, but it had its share of charm. At the time, the West
Baden Springs only offered tours of its grand lobby, with the scuttlebutt of
the time being that Donald Trump had plans to revitalize both French Lick and
West Baden.
Within a year, that rotten, racist son of a bitch had
pulled out for “various reasons.” Instead, the Cook Company from Bloomington
pledged their money, and by the time I left Indiana for good in 2009, French
Lick’s grand hotel had become a resort and casino once again, with West Baden
soon to follow.( Of course, some laws had to be rewritten so as to allow for
the legalization of gambling first, but given the millions granted to the
hotels, I’m sure a check or two made its way to Indianapolis.)
In our travels, and even when we still lived in New York
City, the oft-proposed solution to money woes for a given town that inevitably
floats to the surface like a turd in a swimming pool is, “I know! Let’s build a
casino!” And the town is never the same. We have seen it everywhere there is a
casino – panhandlers begging for money for a bus ticket, a gallon of gas, a
phone call, that one last drink, plus that overall grimy and vulnerable feeling
one gets upon realizing that they kissed personal safety goodbye twenty minutes
ago – but that has not stopped local lawmakers from buying into the great lie
that casinos create jobs and stimulate the economy.
The French Lick Springs Hotel, now dubbed The French Lick
Resort Casino, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has
been dubbed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the
Historic Hotels of America. These coveted distinctions were not enough to keep
an entirely new wing from being added on to the original building, with the
pressurized air from the connecting hallway blasting down the corridor.
That lobby I praised? Gone. It has been gutted out,
renovated to look like an ugly modern hotel. A plastic bimbo hawking seats for
a timeshare presentation in Group Meeting Room C was offering free cookies.
Looking around at the clientele, she probably also should have been offering
insulin shots. None of the original charm was intact – people addicted to penny
slots don’t give a splatter of vomit about interior design, they just want to
win big. But hey, at least they kept the tile floor.
Sitting on the large covered porch – another feature I
was shocked to see left intact – were affluent vacationers, all reading the
same shitty inspirational Christian fiction, looking like they just strutted
out of a Ralph Lauren catalog. The men all play golf and the women treat
themselves to oily rubdowns in the spa. A hundred years ago, they would have
played croquet at lawn parties, sipping lemonade, advocating for temperance, and
deriding gambling as the devil’s game. Now they sit above it – both
architecturally and metaphorically – while the same groveling minions they
slowly work to death during the week blow their wages below.
Throughout the historic hotel are signs indicating that
no smoking is allowed. Hell, you now can’t even smoke within thirty feet of the
entrance – but those rules don’t apply in the casino. The moment you cross over
into the new addition, there is a faint aroma of tobacco smoke. At the
escalators, the aroma becomes first a smell, then a full-blown stench, as you
descend into the abyss. After you get past security, you are surrounded by
winos, seniors connected to oxygen tanks, obese vacationers, and even more
obese people who use motorized carts to get from one machine to the next.
You are inside the belly of a windowless, charmless,
monitored-from-all-angles beast. All around you are blinking lights, loud
synthesized notes as the tumblers spin inside the slot machines, and every few
minutes an artificial bell ringing because someone just won three bucks on a
nickel game. No machine makes any noises when you lose, and why should it? Keep
the customers happy; anyone from our generation who played them can remember
the crushing agony of the countdown after getting a game over at the arcade.
Maybe it is a bit cruel to make this observation, but I
have already conceded my faith in Jesus as the son of God, so by these people’s
standards, I’m already going to Hell: Alexa and I noticed that the people
playing the machines were, in some part, machines themselves. Some of them need
a mechanized apparatus to breathe. Others needed a machine to get around.
Others still, while having nothing obviously wrong with them externally, pumped
in change and pulled levers like they were automated, occasionally taking a
drag off of their Marlboros.
This whole notion of machines playing with machines was
compounded when we saw the serious players who weren’t using cups o’ change.
That is for the amateurs, apparently. No, these high rollers had little cards with their name, rank, and gambling habits go into the machines – and just how many of these people are frightened of
the Affordable Care Act? – which all of the players had attached to their
wrists. It was like a little umbilical cord, connecting them to the machine that
is the opposite of a womb: it depletes their money, rarely providing anything
beyond sensory overload, and ultimately only brings them closer to the
inevitable.
Though it is not without its problems - like the lady we saw pumping gas, holding her baby, and managing a cigarette all at the same time - Kentucky is home to dozens of whisky distilleries. You can smell the rye drifting through the air for miles. It’s fucking beautiful.
As a whisky drinker, I found myself in a lush's Shangri-La when I realized we had unknowingly shacked up for a few days in the Bourbon Capital of the world, using Bardstown as our home base. We researched tours and, with some help from Alex's grandparents, settled on the Maker’s Mark distillery. They still hand make the product and haven’t gone all corporate like some other brands, collaborating with shit-food chain restaurants to create a syrupy sauce to pour over a hunk of all-purpose beef. In fact, they have their own chain of restaurants.
Descendants of the original Maker’s Mark family still live on the property where the whisky is made, bottled, and distributed. Tours are affordable at $7 per person, and the best part is most people usually don’t bring their little kids. Good parents, at least. There’s always that one family who thought a whisky distillery would make for an appropriate family outing and just think it is so cute when their dumb little angel decides to tell the docent that they love Batman.
They led us through the sweltering-hot room where the product ferments and turns from an oatmeal-like substance into actual, drinkable whisky. Our guide let everyone dip their fingers into the enormous wooden vats to taste the product at it’s three stages. I’m not a germaphobe but I know what people do with their hands. She assured us it was safe, and we all stuck our fingers (some used their whole hands) into the tub of boiling slop. It tasted like cheap, stale beer. Each vat was more potent than the last, and eventually, you could taste the whisky.
The bubbling brew.
She showed us to the packaging and distribution center, where workers in hairnets slapped on labels and dipped thousands of bottles in red wax, the product’s signature. They clattered by on a conveyor belt, the wax dripping down the neck on its way to shipping.
At the end of the tour, our guide led us to the tasting chamber, where we sampled four different versions of Maker’s Mark, including the top shelf one that I know I’ll never be able to afford. We finished our samples and stumbled, as always, into the gift shop. We didn’t buy anything, but then again, we never do.
We aren’t drinking much on the road, save for special occasions and when we visit friends. For the moment, it has been deemed an unnecessary expense, which it is. When we finally are back to earning paychecks, I’m going to buy a bottle of Maker’s Mark, pretend it’s one I saw rattling by on the conveyor belt at the factory, and pour myself a whisky and ginger ale.
There are not too many man-made landmarks that
look better in person than they do in an exquisitely shot photograph. The right
lens can make the Statue of Liberty look much bigger, same also with the
Washington Monument. Everyone who has been to Pisa – from my high school Latin
teacher to my cousin Jeanne – has said the tower is underwhelming and the town
is a tourist trap.
However, the same cannot be said of natural wonders. This
is also something I have struggled with in our travels as our de facto
photographer – it is easy to photograph buildings, cities, people, even
interesting graffiti we see along the way. But it is hard as Hell for a camera,
even a fancy one, to capture the size and might of the natural world.
Niagara Falls is one such place. In my lifetime, I have
visited the falls as a baby, a preschooler, a high schooler, and now once more
as an adult. It truly is a sight to behold, and no amount of photos, movie
clips, or even my own words can really describe it unless you are there, right
in front of it.
In this age where knowledge is power, and with a
gut-busting defense budget to reinforce said power, we tend to rhapsodize
constantly about the myth of our own indestructibility. If something ugly happens
that doesn’t involve some sociopath with a gun at a public place – that is to
say, natural disasters – we try not to think about it. In our travels, we
frequently eat breakfast in motel lobbies that feature the Weather Channel. The
way the anchors can so nonchalantly describe wildfires, floods, and heatwaves
is disgusting and disturbing. People’s lives are ruined, forever altered, or
even abruptly ended, and these starch-sprayed plastics breezily mention it like
they are talking about a day in the park. After all, what does it say about the
universe if our intelligence, our technology, or even our very structure of
living can be wiped out by something like nature?
It is with that notion that a site like Niagara Falls is
best admired. In a single second, over 100,000 cubic feet of water traverses
the falls. A number of measurement like that is too great to comprehend, so
consider this: one cubic foot of water is roughly 62 pounds. Take that times
100,000. That is over 6,200,000 pounds of water pouring over the falls in a
second. That number I gave isn’t even the peak flow – that is the average of
the hot summer months. Peak flow is 202,000 cubic feet per second.
Observing the
grand scale of nature and tallying up the numbers like I just did serves as a
reminder, one indelicate, one much more delicate. On the one hand, Niagara
Falls will continue with its impressive flow long after I am gone, long after
you are gone, and long after anyone else we know and their descendants are
gone. The casinos, haunted houses, taffy shops, and wax museums may vie for
your attention – maybe even succeed – but those, too, shall pass. Just like the
Georgia Guidestones warned us so many months ago, “Leave room for nature . . .
Leave room for nature.”
On the other, softer, hand: whatever your personal
philosophy might be, marvel at the sheer fact that you are alive and able to
live in a world where something as powerful and as mighty as Niagara Falls
exists.
The people who seemed to appreciate that - and we were there on a hot summer day - were the ones who, like us, were able to shut the fuck up, put their phones away, and simply watch in awe. The one's who didn't? They were impatiently looking at their watches, corralling their stupid kids (usually with a little too much force), and wondering how long they had to stand there and watch the water before they could go to the casino, wax museum, haunted house, or go buy enough saltwater taffy to kill a small army.
Lastly, should you cross the border on foot via the Rainbow Bridge, expect only the rudest, power-abusing meathead dickbag of a tax-funded rent-a-cop at customs. Despite that, it is totally worth it.
On two very unrelated - but worthy - notes, we had lunch at the famous Anchor Bar in Buffalo, birthplace of Buffalo Wings. Maybe we got spoiled from Cajun, Thai, and Indian food, or maybe people up North have a very different idea of what constitutes spicy, but even their "suicide" wing sauce brought about only a mere tingle. Still, Alexa managed to eat 18 of our 20-wing order:
Finally, perhaps the best part of our day - which, considering that we saw Niagara Falls and also Alexa's crazy pop-eye after demolishing a plate of wings - was visiting the DiBlasi family farm. It was there that my grandfather and his 9 siblings were raised. Upon retiring from a career in healthcare at the local VA, my great-uncle John and his wife Lucille (Lu) took over the farm. I had only visited twice, over twenty years earlier, and was even reluctant to call. I was glad I did.
As we ate dinner, I rather stupidly asked if John and Lu were living in the same house. I remembered several years back that the farmhouse had burnt down. John said that I was thinking of the adjacent property, where Frank DiBlasi lived. We shared a laugh when I realize John and Lu's house was indeed the same, only in the 20 years since I had last been there, I had just gotten bigger! After catching up on family and telling them about our book, it was time for us to go. I was happy to have seen them again, and we were both delighted to see a couple in their late 80's still very much in love with one another.
