Highway Ten: Part One

Needed to go; needed to drive. Needed a trip home to Fargo. I'm done with 94 - it's dull, you don't see any sights except for the thrill of passing Middle Spunk Creek, and ever since they gone and built th' diversion 'round St. Cloud, a man don't see a town anymore than he's likely to see Jehosophat hisself. Or so I'd say if I was in full Coot Mode. Actually, I've just seen 94 too many times, and I hate construction. Got an extra hour? Highway 10 is the route you want. The road pokes around the edges of some towns, plows straight through others. It's old in spirit but freshly paved, four lanes wide. Except where it's not.

These towns have different purposes now - some serve the cabin-culture, others have withered and are close to perishing, but some are still self-contained civilizations perfectly content to be two hours away from the Cities, thank you. To know them completely you have to spend your life there, content to watch time mesh its gears with the sure slow patience of a mechanism that strikes twelve once in your life. Twice if you're lucky. But you can learn a few things from a drive-by, and that's what we'll do in the next few days.

Got in the Element, nosed my way through metro traffic. You pick up 10 outside of Anoka, and then it's a long smear of old and new strung out for 30 miles. You pass abandoned drive-ins . . .

You all know what that one is, just by the color. You hate to see it: no Teen Burgers for you, no heavy frosty mugs, no orange webbing on the tray taht clips to your window.

An ancient laundry:

Stony Lonesome, of course, complete with big picture window that must have tempted a thousand cons to engineer an escape. We'll save up books from the library, tie 'em together, throw 'em through the glass, and be at the Green Lantern in two hours!

Along the road to St. Cloud I always look for the drive-in, but it's been gone for many years. That's 10: you remember the things that were more or less gone the first time you saw them. After St. Cloud, you're out there. Nothing but land and sky, trees standing on the horizon like soldiers watching you pass:

They look like rockets made from spare churches.

Then the cities begin. First Royalton, known for Treasure City. Gosh, it would be great if I had pictures, eh? Well: I was traveling alone, and it's best enjoyed with kids. Also, I had a different goal this trip. I wanted to stop in places I haven't visited before. As the song says: Don't you know when you drive on this road you / oughta end up stopping in an unfamiliar venue / It's Verndale . . . Frazee . . . Perham . . . or this place:

This . . . is MOTLEY. I haven't stopped in Motley because I feared I wouldn't be able to avoid making a joke to the locals. I mean, for heaven's sake. Motley. But I'd driven past an antique joint for years, never stopping - it was always on the wrong side of the road when I was heading out and had time, and on the way back I wanted to get home. This time I whipped a bat-urn and went back.

You're greeted by a bland but somehow unnerving cow:

Inside, heaps of stuff. Outside, rusty old children's rides, the sort of thing you'd see outside the Ben Franklin.