Get Your Kicks

by Allison Devers

photo by Meg Gray
Allison Devers joins a Buddhist conga-line, as Poochie reveals the mystic secrets of enlightenment with soft, doggy whispers

Like many of you fellow U.Va. students, Nova-dwellers, road-trip-takers, I often find myself travelling up Route 29 North. I yo-yo up and down at least ten times during the year, and I've observed others doing the same. The drive offers different destinations to different people -- for many the drive is a seasonal migration, back to the parents' crib in Northern Virginia, to spend the summer at internships in D.C. or by the local community swimming pool. I'm sure lots of you will be pressing on past the capital city, merging onto Rt. 95 for an experience in the gridlock traffic to New York, Boston, and the big fun-filled rest stop in Delaware. Just as many more permanent Charlottesvillians make it up to D.C. to experience the big bands with the big shows too massive for the likes of our humble venues, as I did for the Bob Dylan / Ani Difranco show last summer. And I bet lots of you travellers never even step out of the car in between Point A and B, not even to fill up with some petrol.

Being a more than frequent traveler on 29N, I have come to a conclusion. In theory, it is better to try to experience some of the points in betweeen the start and the finish. You will be a more complete person. Poet Calvin Coolidge illustrates the rich American roadside in his prose poem "American Ones." Rt. 29, with its plate stacks emerging from diners' counters, soft-serve ice cream, concrete buddha gardens, and Gloworms for a buck helped me pinpoint Coolidge's attraction to the roadside. Last year, I spent a whole day exploring the in between, but it can be completed in little spurts with similiar satisfaction. Here's a smackerel of what's to be found up the road, in a rough spatial order.

Palm Readings
About 20 minutes outside of Charlottesville on the left is a small one-level home. The palm reader is an older woman with a thick, unidentifiable accent. The room in which she sees you is cubicle-sized, adorned with religious icons of every imaginable type, from Jesus and Mary to Siddhartha, as if she is attempting to appeal to all belief. She makes you promise not to get mad if she tells you upsetting information, or if she predicts unwanted future events. She has attitude, and will tell you your most lucky day, when to expect your next love encounter, if you will be healthy in old age, or if you will die dissatisfied. She is unafraid. She reads like a horoscope, but the atmosphere and experience is worth the one-time expentiture of 20 bucks for her dream world prognostications.

Shack O' Soft Serve
Not far off is the Tastee-Freez. Claiming to be "The Hottest Cool Around," it sits on the left in a small pre-constructed building. Yum. Grab a grilled cheese for $1.09 and a soft-serve cakecone, sit at the counter by the window and watch the passersby pass up a simple pleasure. The times are Tastee.

Greene and Madison Counties (Warning)
Watch out for the fuzz, the local police will nab you for going ten over. They are out in hordes on Saturdays and Sundays, not offering anyone warnings. Tickets are thrown around like tossin' apple cores out of windows.

Concrete Pottery Garden
Spitting angels mounted on birdbaths, naked babies, pigs, and solemn Ladies of Guadalupe are among the many forms occupying the Concrete Pottery. Mostly, the garden is worth the stop because you can see all the varieties of lawn ornaments together. There is also a nice dog and a lawn gnome.

Mini-donkeys
I haven't paid the admission fee to On the Wild Side Zoological Park, but I have pulled over to look at the massive elk. For six bucks, the zoo supposedly offers llamas, pygmy goats, piranhas and wallabies, to name a few.

Antiquarianism
For the treasure hunters, antique shops abound. They have names like Roaring Twenties, Archangel, and my personal favorite, Eunice and Fester's. My roomate got a 2x3-foot accordion-folding Japanese lantern for eight bucks at a junk shop, and I picked up a cardboard mounted water-stained Mona Lisa for a quarter. At Eunice and Fester's there is no one by these names, although I had stopped primarily to seek these two out. Nevertheless, the place has really interesting turn-of-the-century objets d'art, like a Sphinx and Great Pyramid copper clock.

Crystal City
Ten miles south of Culpeper on the right is the rural equivalent of a strip-mall. This is my single most favorite sight on the road. The plethora of signs are strange together; the many include Nascar-Sports Cards, Rock Shop, Bar-B-Que, Ice Cream, and Tractor Rentals. There is no mini-grocery here. The rock shop is by far the most interesting place. The owner, Jack Golightly, is a North Carolina native who claims to have learned the "fundamentals of crystals" from a medicine woman on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in the Great Smoky Mountains. He looks like the sterotypical country bumpkin, with a red hat, suspenders, and plaid, but he'll tell you, "Don't be in a rush to pick a crystal. Let the crystal choose you." I bought a small piece of obsidian (you can hold the black stone up toward sunlight and see right through it), and Mr. Golightly asked me if I would be putting it in my medicine bag. He keeps a stack of copies of an article about his store as featured in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, next to the door; the headline reads, "Man's destiny is 'to be asset to people.'"

City Mouths, Country Mouths
Town 'N Country restaurant proclaims Best in Food on the large marquee. This foodstop has better-than-diner selection while maintaining a diner atmosphere. Owned and operated by the Bannourah family, the store sells rosaries next to the Mentos and gum under the register. I recommend the Fried Zucchini.

Papier Mâché Bear Trophies
The Red Shed and Clarks Bros. Guns, in my eyes, are pure tack. I doubt anyone looking would find any true Southern Gentlemen here, among the gun racks that hang on the trucks in the full parking lots. I went into Clarks Bros. anyway ... and immediately left. I received many looks from many men. If you are bold enough and not alone, I suggest you walk in and ask, "Did you shoot that there bear mounted on top of this building?"

I suppose there is an attraction for everyone along Rt. 29, and instead of mindlessly passing them by, maybe it would be good to treat yourself to a little bit o' roadside U.S.A. If your typical assumption was of the countryside being a boring exeperience where the time passed cow-tippin' and dip spittin', you might redefine your opinion.