RD201902

Dog in Cactus Flat, South Dakota. I

know because we stopped to see the

prairie dog in 2006. We also stopped

in Collinsville, Illinois, to see the

World’s Largest Catsup Bottle. Both

stops occurred on the way to Mount

Rushmore, which my husband still

calls “The World’s Largest Carving of

Presidential Heads.”

All across the country stand an

uncountable number of homespun

reminders that American ingenuity

and wit have not yet been Walmart-

ized out of existence. Think of Car-

henge in Alliance, Nebraska, a replica

of Stonehenge made entirely of vin-

tage automobiles. Think of Dog Bark

Park Inn in Cottonwood, Idaho, a

bed-and-breakfast that doubles as

the World’s Largest Beagle. Think of

the 13-foot-tall peanut smiling with

Jimmy Carter–style teeth outside of

Plains, Georgia; the World’s Largest

Ball of Twine, claimed by Cawker City,

Kansas; or Lenny, the World’s Only

Life-Size Chocolate Moose, in Scar-

borough, Maine. Every state has them.

Virtually every road in the country is

the site of at least one.

They are most visible on leisurely

summer road trips, when a detour

to take a selfie with a chicken or to

snicker at a 112-year-old statue’s bare

butt won’t make anyone late for the

cranberry relish or the Easter ham,

but they are always there.

Often meant to be advertisements

for local enterprises, they are in-

evitably much more than the mercan-

tile economy requires. They are also

evidence that human imagination

will always resist homogenization,

that daring art isn’t found only in

galleries and museums, that wit and

wile are everywhere among us. When

interstate exits are marked by the in-

stantly recognizable icons of a dozen

fast-food restaurants and gas stations

supplied by the same multinational

oil companies, the giant roadside

chickens will always remind us who

we are.

A piece of the rock in Moab, Utah; the world’s largest scale model of a tire, near Detroit;

Lucy the Elephant in Margate, New Jersey; “alien” lands near Area 51 in Hiko, Nevada

new york times (august 25, 2018), copyright © 2018

by new york times co., nytimes.com. from left: ruslan kalnitsky/shutterstock. susan montgomery/shutterstock. courtesy library of congress. diegomariottini/shutterstock

Reader’s Digest Travel

104 february 2019