Part Two, Rain Delay

Since my last post I've had about a half day of clear skies. The rest has been wet, stormy, foggy, and generally poohy. So as it has almost been a week and I've barely stayed in one spot for more than enough time to take a shower and a nap I'm now staying in a little city just outside the US border to Michigan. Instead I'm going to head over to Niagra Falls and go through back into the home country that way.

So, "how" ya'll doing? Ha, man I'm clever. That wasn't in Canada, that was in Minnesota. It's nestled right across the street from:

These two, which appeared to be under construction. I was soaking when I took those pictures, the rain was going down faster than a drunk on new years eve. Or so I reckoned.

I'm staying at a Comfort Inn that is right next to a place called "Zellers," which is basically a Canadian Wal-Mart (though theres an actual Wal-Mart a block or two from here). I walked in there and looked around a bit a little while ago and the first thing I heard was this nice soothing Canadian song about maple surup or something (that sounds like I'm being stereotypical, but I'm pretty sure thats what it was about). Not thinking much of it I walked a ways more into the store only to realize it was coming from a loudspeaker but from an actual live Canadian folk band in the lobby of the store. All dressed up like they were on the way to the county fair. The weird thing is its a Monday. And its not a holiday. They were just there. Singing. Later as I walked around the store they were gabbing amongst themselves in the in store resturant, I waved, and they ignored me, or didn't see me, or whatever.

When I started out I said that the one thing I would not do on this trip was let my gas light come on. I made it maybe three days before I had a nerve racking and painful forty-five mile drive with the gas light on and the needle well below the E. The worst part of the whole thing was that one of the exits that I was praying to have gas at, that didn't, was a little farm town called Fallon. I think the road gods were mocking me a bit. When I did finally find an exit that said Gas I had to drive about ten miles into town to get to the first gas station, cursing every business I passed along the way for not having gas and petting my car and talking to it in baby talk telling it everything was going to be okay. When everything is working in my car its just a cold metalic object. When your counting road mile markers and praying that you'll get a little bit of cell phone reception to call someone to bring you some gas the car becomes a poor dying child, and all your thoughts go to her well being.

That was the hotel room I stayed in a couple nights ago. Frilly, pink, and with one channel on the television. Don't stop for a motel in Aitkokan, Ontario. Trust me. That was the only place open that wasn't full. The rest of the town was dying, it seemed. Several other motels, even the ones listed on the little town map I picked up in a gas station, were all closed. For Sale signs hung loosly and neglected in their windows. I was afraid to stand under them for fear they could fall at any moment, and I wondered to myself, is this whats happening to all small towns? Just collapsing as people flock to the island oasises of bigger and bigger cities? I've passed hundreds of milies, thousands of miles, of wilderness, of places with trees or sagebrush or rocks that have no one around. They seem somewhat habitable, some of them at least, but they are just empty. Farms decorate some of the landscape, but it seems no one wants to live in a place without its own Barnes and Nobel, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. Once upon a time these stores would set up were there were people, now they set up and the people come to them. I suppose I don't really blame anyone or any corporation for this. I just wonder how many small towns are going to be left? They either grow or they die, and although I don't really want to live in that small of a town, I also don't want to see them go extinct. Yet I start off this paragraph making a bit of fun of one, so go figure.

I suppose the reason I don't want to see these small towns go away is because of things like this. I'm not sure of the name of the town this was in. It was a little bypass route for a highway in Minnesota. And I have no idea what the significance is. But you can't look at a eight foot tall turkey and not think; this place is doing something right.