World's Largest Hockey Stick, Duncan, British Columbia
mixednutslinks.blogspot.com/2015/10/worlds-largest-hockey-stick-puck.html
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"...the windows are completely covered
With the decals from all the places where we've already been
Like Elvis-O-Rama, the Tupperware Museum
The Boll Weevil Monument and Cranberry World
The Shuffleboard Hall Of Fame, Poodle Dog Rock
And The Mecca of Albino Squirrels
We've been to ghost towns, theme parks, wax museums
And the place where you can drive through the middle of a tree
We've seen alligator farms and tarantula ranches
But there's still one thing we gotta see
* * * * * *
We're gonna see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota"
- — "The Biggest Ball Of Twine In Minnesota" (1989) by Weird Al Yankovic
( ISBN-10: B003FCKHJO )
On my business travels I always like to take the time "stop and smell the flowers" as they say, if I can. As I wrote in my book A Survival Guide for the Traveling Techie, in the section called "THE FINE ART OF THE MICROVACATION," it is good for one's mental health to find quick but engaging diversions now and then.
A Cornucopia of Delights
Finding diversions is pretty easy in big cities, which offer a cornucopia of delights. For example:
- In Chicago, Illinois I was able to find the Eastern terminus
of Route 66, the ornate art deco Chicago Board of Trade building,
and a monument to the first controlled nuclear reaction on the
campus of the University of Chicago.
( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Energy_%28sculpture%29 )
- In Atlanta, Georgia it was easy to find Olympic Park, from
the 1996 Olympics, with its Coca-Cola museum and nearby CNN Center,
but a little more digging got me to the Old Fourth Ward, home to a
revitalized restaurant district, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center,
and Oakland Cemetery with the grave of "Gone With the Wind" author
Margaret Mitchell.
( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Fourth_Ward )
- In Austin, Texas one can watch a million bats fly out from
under a bridge where they've made a home, and visit the historic
nightclub Threadgill's, where Janice Joplin first performed. Try
the cheesy grits!
- In the greater Los Angeles, California area, which probably has more tourist attractions than any other metropolis in North America, there is a unique bookstore and art gallery called Wacko, devoted mostly to pop culture, that is absolutely fascinating. The Paley Center (formerly the Museum of Broadcasting) in Beverly Hills had a vast library of vintage television shows you can watch. And hidden in Griffith Park is the old miniature railroad maintenance barn from Walt Disney's back yard.
Hidden Gems
Smaller cities also have hidden gems. It pays to ask around. Among the treasures I have found:
- In Columbus, Ohio there used to be the original first location
of the Wendy's fast-food chain, complete with mini-museum of advertising.
(Remember "where's the beef?") The house American humorist James Thurber grew
up in is now a museum dedicated to him — the actual location of the
story "The Night the Bed Fell" that many of us read in grade school.
( www.thurberhouse.org/thurber-house-museum-and-thurber-center.html )
( www.newyorker.com/magazine/1933/07/08/my-life-and-hard-times-i-the-night-the-bed-fell )
- In smaller Cincinnati, Ohio (which inexplicably has nothing
commemorating the beloved TV show "WKRP In Cincinnati") I found, down by the
river at the Cincinnati Public Landing, a scale model of the Ohio River in its
entirety, and nearby a replica of the largest steamboat paddles ever built and a
grove of steamboat whistles at the National Steamboat Monument.
( cincinnatiusa.com/things-to-do/attractions/national-steamboat-monument )
- In Athens, Georgia I mentioned to a nice lady at a customer site that I had some time before my flight and she directed me to several things worth seeing. The town is the origin place of two rock bands, the B-52s and R.E.M., and the latter used a photograph of an old ruined railroad trestle for the back cover of one of their albums. They also named another album "Automatic for the People" after the slogan of a small and hard to find but wonderful barbeque restaurant, Weaver D's. (It was reported to be closing in 2013, but Yelp.com says it is thankfully still in business, probably after being sold.)
Why Is This Here?
I've found that it often pays to ask folks you are visiting why this place is here — what was the original reason for the founding of the town? Usually the first few people you ask have no idea, and maybe even never thought about it before, and possibly think you are nuts for wondering. But if you keep asking, often someone eventually realizes you need to talk to "that guy" (or gal), another nut, who works in their office. And then you hit the mother lode. You have the local history fanatic, who can fill you in on the whole story. You may find, for example, that the town was founded because of a sea port (like San Diego, California), or a bend in the river where a cargo dock was built (like Bend, Oregon), or a pass through the mountains suitable for a railroad (like El Paso, Texas). Other examples:
- Columbus, Ohio is at the confluence of two rivers.
- Barstow, California (originally called "Forks in the Road") is
at a major wagon road fork that later became a huge railroad
switching yard.
- San Antonio, Texas was founded near an irrigation dam that was the
first Spanish waterworks in the United States.
- Las Vegas, Nevada (Spanish for "the meadows") had a spring
which created a marshy green spot, evidence for ground water
suitable for water wells in the arid Mojave desert.
- The Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolis is there because (before some dams were built) if you paddled up the Mississippi River from New Orleans the first obstruction to stop you was St. Andrew's Falls in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Places I Never Heard Of
Some of my most fascinating discoveries came in places I'd never heard of before I visited (or so I thought):
- I asked folks in Bellingham, Washington if they had a claim
to fame, and they told me comedian Ryan Stiles of Whose Line Is
It Anyway? fame and alternative band Death Cab for Cutie both
hailed from there. Stiles founded the local Upfront Theater. Upon
returning home I mentioned all this to my wife, and she pointed out
that in science fiction novel Footfall by Larry Niven and
Jerry Pournelle — which I'd read — the town is
destroyed as collateral damage in a war between Earthlings and
elephant-like aliens.
- I found out in Evansville, Indiana that the town was the
setting for the TV sitcom Roseanne, with many establising
shots filmed there, and also portions of the movie A League of
Their Own were shot there. Nearby in Santa Claus, Indiana (48
miles) is Holiday World, a theme park based on the Fourth of July,
Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, which I would like to visit
one day.
- When I was sent to Stroud, Oklahoma I had to look it up
on a map to figure out how to fly in, and found it was on old
Route 66 halfway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. I flew into
Oklahoma City because the airport is larger, rented a car, and
drove the old highway to get there. When I came upon the Rock Cafe
in Stroud (pictured above) I stopped for lunch, and from the menu I
learned that the building was made of rocks dug up to build the old
highway in the 1930s. I also learned that when John Lasseter and
his crew from Pixar toured the old highway researching for the movie
Cars in 2001, they arrived after closing but proprietor Dawn
Welch opened up her kitchen and made them all dinner. They took a
liking to the place and to her, and used it as their headquarters in
susequent Route 66 explorations. The character of Sally the Porsche
in Cars was based on her (a fact confirmed in the "making of"
featurette on the DVD).
( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Caf%C3%A9 )
- My first visit to Binghamton, New York seemed incredibly out
of the way. I was also visiting central Massachusetts (Lunenburg,
near Worcester) and to get to Vestal, a suburb of Binghamton where
I had a brief appointment, I was going to have to drive an hour
back to Boston and then fly for five hours via New York City. I
elected to drive directly there for four and a half hours instead.
(I was visiting to resolve a customer problem, which it turned out
took about 30 seconds, but I stayed for a about four hours to provide
additonal software training and then took him to lunch since it had
taken so long to get there.) But I found to my amazement that
Binghamton had a number of claims to fame. It has the largest
collection of wooden horse merry-go-rounds in the USA. Nearby
Endicott was the birthplace of IBM Corporation (originally the
International Time Recording Company, which made time clocks and
other punch card machines). In the airport while departing on
a subsequent trip I saw an old Link Trainer, a failed carnival ride
that was repurposed as the first aircraft simulator for training
pilots in World War Two, and from the display learned that simulator
company Link Miles, which later
merged with Redifusion, got its start there. (Upon my return home I
mentioned this to my dad and he told me he'd made a number of
business trips to Binghamton when I was a teenager, to arrange for
his employer Pacific Southwest Airlines to buy some flight
simulators. Apparently he told me about this and I'd forgotten.)
But the weirdest connection was that it was the home town of
Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone TV show,
which I was very fond of. I found some monuments and exhibits
devoted to him througgout the town, including a plaque commemerating a
bandstand and merry-go-round which inspired the episode "Walking
Distance." (Later I told all this to an old friend who responded,
"You knew I went to high school in Binghamton didn't you?" Cue
Twilight Zone music.)
placard honoring Rod Serling in Recreation Park, Binghamton, New York
( www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g47320-d103777-r288196796-Recreation_Park_Carousel-Binghamton_New_York.html )The Tip of the Iceberg
All of this has convinced me that there is no such thing as an "out-of-the-way place," at least anywhere with human inhabitants. Every place has a claim to fame. In preparing this article I had so much material to choose from that I had to leave out far more than I put in. So rest assured, if you find yourself with two hours to kill because of an early finish to an appointment, or a delayed flight, there is probably someplace within a few miles of where you are that has a fascinating story to tell, if only you can find it.
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