Advent: Seventh Note: This the seventh part of a twenty-four part series running through December 24th. To read the previous installments in a convenient form, go here. Morning comes to Terra Haute and you have left a mess on Ohio. We ran out of newspapers for you to pee on back in Pennsylvania and since then we have been using the previous days state map for papers. I crumple up the Buckeye State and toss it into our standard issue knee-high plastic trash can and Daniel and I smuggle you out of yet another dingy Motel 8. "Does Terra Haute mean "the end of the land"?", I ask Daniel, knowing full well that he doesn't know the answer either. The land of Lincoln is dull, drab brown, filled with pathetic trees, pathetic towns and the occasional muck swamp. Every day our mileage has been increasing and fueled up on IHOP pancakes and sausage, we blaze through the state in record time and when St.Louis appears on the horizon, we shout for joy and light a cigarette in celebration. The Gateway to the West looms larger and larger and then finally, at long last the mighty mighty Mississippi is lapping at our feet, a rich brown Lethe that we recklessly dip our heads in to drink deep of the silt, of the earth, the land. Toweling off, we find a parking garage near the Arch and after a quick break of walking you, where you damn a few tourists and a policewoman's horse, we descend into the museum below the Arch and from it, rise up, rise up on a ratcheted space-pod designed at the height of Fifties optimism to the top of Saarien's slender stainless steel, impossible tribute to running into the unknown. From the top we can see stupid-fucking Illinois to one side and great grand unknown Missouri on the other. From the top I can see Daniel leaning onto the carpeted portholes to look out and I can't quite figure out why this non-action makes me love him all the more. Back on Earth, we unsuccessfully try to get into a riverboat casino and then wander through St. Louis' painfully self-conscious historic district. We're heading back to the car when I announce to Daniel that I'm hungry. "You can wait right? We need to get back on the road." "No. I'm hungry now." "Well, I'm not." "So, what? You want me to starve?" "Puppy's in the car." "Yeah, and she'll stay there till we get back. You know how I get when I don't eat." "Fine." The historic district, true to form, has nothing to offer the weary travel for repast except for high-end sit down restaurants. I try to reassure Daniel that there's some place to eat just around the corner and he's now walking far in front of me and I have to run up to catch him. "What the hell's your problem?" "Just looking for a place for you to fucking eat, that's all." I hate him for the next ten minutes it takes to finally find a Subway and then hate him for five minutes after that when he orders a huge meal for himself as well. Travelling South into Missouri, the land grows greener, and the Ozarks begin to bulge up from the soft plains of the East. The Missouri Department of Transportation seems to be run by a cartel of demolition experts as the road continually blasts its way through any mountain that dares tread its path. Billboard after billboard for Meramec Caverns ("Home of Jesse James' Hideout!") assault us every half mile or so and eventually we relent, pulling off the highway and down an increasingly rustic road to the fabled caverns. The caverns themselves are situated in a quiet glen filled with RV's and bisected by a merrily chirping brook. Jutting out the side of the mountain, the Visitors Center is a dull, weather-worn brown, but surprisingly well maintained, the sign of a high quality attraction. The parking lot is nearly deserted however. Daniel decides to stay in the car, while I scout the place out. The Visitors Center, which appears to be the size of a small cabin on the outside, expands into a huge vaulted ceiling of rock inside. Carnival games, stuffed animal claw-grabbers and penny presses nestle in among neon-hued stalactites and when I get to the tour desk, I'm told we just missed the last tour of the day by five minutes. Back outside, I tell Daniel. He turns to me and says, "Well, next time we're in Meramec, Missouri, we'll go. Okay boy-o?" We drive back up to the highway, but decide to stop at a convenience store that looks like its last customer came circa 1971. Inside, in addition to the usual assortment of Twinkies and Doral Lights is row upon row of cardboard tubes, plastic straws reconfigured into stars or cones, red cylinders connected by tightly wound green cords and wrapped in cheap acetate and every single one of them filled with countless varieties of luminescent gunpowder, ready for the Fourth of July, or better yet, today. Daniel and I pick up packages of smoke bombs and paper bees glued over in wax paper, fuses sticking out of their ass. We grab firecrackers, sparklers and roman candles. We make it down the road a whole five miles before we pull off to an abandoned parking lot and set off the smoke bombs, which produce such heavy gray smoke that we momentarily lose each other, Jizelle and inside her, you, yipping wildly at the end of the world outside your window. I release the bees and spirt forward in the air for a few seconds before falling to the ground and popping with a crack and a jubilee burst. The smell of sulfur is intoxicating and so specific that even when we've finished, leaving behind nothing but burnt paper and wire and a few black smudges on the faded asphalt, it lingered there as we drove westward, mingling with the musky smell of the late summer grass.

posted by Japhy at 12/06/2002 09:00:00 PM || #