Tuesday, November 3, 2009

On the road again. (NaBloPoMo Entry #3)

I know I'm going to get tired of this daily blog posting attempt after this first week, but for now it is a great distraction from a million other things I should probably be doing, so I'm not going to complain.

My older sister finishes college this year and we want to celebrate by taking a cross-county road trip this summer. However, rather than going to all the typical touristy spots, we want to hit as many ridiculous roadside novelties as we can. For example: the World's Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kansas, or the Toilet Seat Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.

There is something fabulous and comforting about such pointless and unnecessary objects throughout the American landscape. In a way, I see them as epitomes of the American Dream. I'm pretty sure when our ancestors came over on the boats, they had certain ideas about what it would take to be successful. "We'll be bankers!" some said. "We'll be gangsters!" said some others. I don't think any of them said "We'll build a giant lady's leg sundial in Roselawn, Indiana!" Oh, how proud they would be of you, Alois Knapp, you nudist stud, you. Oh, how proud.

Nowhere else in the world could such success come from such a pointless source. That's America, for ya! Let's just hope these novelties don't become chains.


Oh no! They already have! I thought there was only ONE World's Largest Ball of Twine?!?


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've always wanted to go a road trip to see oddities!!! I'm trying to convince my boyfriend that we should do it next summer. There's a book that gives the histories of them . . . I'd tell you the name but it elludes me and I lost the book in the divorce...