World's Largest Prarie Dog

If you've driven I-70 through Kansas you have seen the signs, maybe even been fooled into visiting the attraction to which they refer: The World's Largest Prairie Dog. The signs have been up for many years, far longer than the life span of many prairie dogs. This could be because they have been breeding freakish prairie dogs for years, or it could be because the world's largest prairie dog isn't a prairie dog at all, or any kind of dog. It's made of concrete; but it may well be the world's largest poorly rendered concrete representation of a prairie dog. It may be the only one.

Prairie Dog Town is home to a prairie dog colony and several oddities of nature--steers with extra appendages, chickens with three heads, three beaks and six legs (three chickens), a camel with 72 humps (tumors), a cat with nine lives, a quartet of pigs that can sing every folk song from the early sixties, a rattle snake pit, and Kenny Rogers. I've passed the town, Oakley Kansas, dozens of times and never made the turn, but someday I intend to make every single turn off of I-70 and examine every local feature or oddity of every little town before they go the way of the old Burma Shave signs and Stuckey's. These would not be great cultural losses, though they seem to matter somehow.

When you really feel the real loss is where I-70 corridor Kansas towns intersect with the Interstate. They are as hard to distinguish between as the McDonald's of which each town has at least one, as well as Motel 8s, 6s, (they seem seedier each time I stay in one) Hilton Express, Ramada Inns, Comfort Inns (not bad), America's Best Value (and greatest health hazard), Wendy's, Long John Silvers (they are to seafood what Purina is to beef), Taco John's (if he wants to survive, John needs to change his name and his restaurants to Del) and the ever-increasing number of gas stop convenience stores with names like Corner Market, 24/7, QT,  (one of the better ones--very clean and almost good unhealthy food). These are mostly very depressing stops. The worst of them sell stuffed animals, jewelry and hateful extreme-right bumper stickers along with chips, candy, beef jerky, and condoms, for safe beef jerky consumption. And there are the trucker mega-stops, where you can get a shower, a blow job, wash your clothes, and even sit in a stinking filthy little mini-theater and watch a crappy movie. These places have video games, fast food, trucker accessories in the thousands, and smell bad--no, not exactly bad; they smell like depression feels-- and create a fluorescent-lit other-worldness that benumbs you into forgetting your children, your identity, and any reason for living.

The National Transportation Safety Board claims that each trip of more than 500 miles on the interstate system shortens your life by an average of two months (four months for truckers) due to a combination of factors: poor nutrition, fast food poisoning, and deep vein thrombosis from sitting for hours every day, and--especially for the truckers--exotic diesel-based strains of venereal disease that are immune to treatment, CB radio injuries, logo hats with excessively long bills, alcohol and heroin use. The NTSB recommends switching from alcohol, hallucinogens, opiates, and diesel to meth, cocaine, Red Bull Kill Shot, coffee, and K-Y Jelly, all of which are readily available at most truck stops. President Eisenhower figured none of this into his great vision for an interstate highway system, but I'm sure he'd be impressed.

What we really miss when we miss Burma Shave signs is our youth, when everything seemed new and interesting, before we understood how the world operates (assuming we ever find out) and what adults are really like, and that we'll become them. My father disliked fireworks and amusement parks because he felt like you were either burning money or sticking it down a clown's throat. Actually, what money is for depends entirely upon how much of it you happen to have. It may be for buying barely enough gas to get you to the next gas station in the next town and have a meal, too, or to gain you admission to Prairie Dog Town and every other distraction just off the highway. Either way you can have a blast, if you're a kid and the adults are shouldering the worries.