The World's Silliest Places

(that I've been)

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1. Dallas, Texas, USA. Home of the Conspiracy Museum!
2. Rockland, Maine, USA. Home of the Sea Goddess!
3. Freehold, New Jersey, USA. Where "the Boss" goes for hometown concerts. Moving up in the ranks, because the people of Freehold are voting for it!
4. Mabou and Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, Canada. Homes of the Mother of Sorrows Pioneer Shrine and Gift Shop, and the Nova Scotia Giantess! This former twin champion is moving down in the ranks, because the people of Tatamagouche are defending their town's honor!
5. Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA. Suburbia at its silliest. Moving up in the ranks, because the people of Hoffman Estates are voting for it!
6. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. It's not about Mardi Gras... but hurricanes do enter the picture.
7. East Berlin, DDR. Site of "The Wall Live in Berlin" concert!
8. Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Home of Anne of Green Gables! Moving down in the ranks, based on voting and a report that the really silly museums have left town. Aww.
9. Lexington, Virginia, USA. Home of the Robert E. Lee Chapel and Gift Shop! Moving up in the ranks, because other visitors think it's silly too!
10. Douglas, Massachusetts, USA. Redneck country in the middle of New England. Moving up and down in the ranks, because the people of Douglas are voting!
11. Speedway, Indiana, USA. Home of the Indy 500, which is much like a redneck Mardi Gras. Moving down in the ranks, because Hoosiers care about the honor of Speedway!

Disclaimer:

Silliest Places I've Ever Been

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Dallas, Texas, USA. I used to do phone company stuff there. And the more I think about downtown Dallas, the sillier it gets. In fact, it's gotten so silly, it's overflowed onto its own web page. Nothing there is quite as silly as the Nova Scotia Giantess... but it does have the Conspiracy Museum.

Rockland, Maine, USA. Rockland makes my list mostly on the strength of the Maine Lobster Festival (which I saw in 1996), particularly the beauty pageant which is officially called the Crowning of the Sea Goddess. The natives call it the Crowning of the Sea Hag instead. Here's the things they showcased in the pageant:

• The MC was King Neptune, assisted by Blackbeard, a crown bearer, and a court full of little kids dressed as Sea Hags.
• There were fifteen teenage contestants. They had trouble finding fifteen pretty ones.
• Most contestants' hobbies were "Spending time with friends and family" and "Shopping". (I'm sorry, but when you're a teenager, spending time with family isn't a hobby, it's a job description.)
• Most contestants' jobs were "Lobstering with Father" or waitressing at the Samoset Resort.
• Plans for the contestants included "Beauty Academy Junior College" in Bangor.
• Every contestant had a sponsor, usually a local business, though some raised money from their friends.
• The selection process was secret; the winner was simply pulled from an envelope.
• Several of the losers were pretty, class presidents, and members of the National Honor Society. The winner was plain and undistinguished. My theory is she raised the most money.

Freehold, New Jersey, USA. I went to Freehold on business, and ran into more weirdness in two weeks than most places have in a year. Here's some.

• Trick or treating at the mall. The Freehold Raceway Mall (conveniently situated near an August-through-May horse-racing betting emporium) has adopted the custom of giving out candy to the children at Halloween. Parents love it, because for some reason they trust strangers in the shopping mall more than they trust neighbors down the street... Anyway, I went there wearing a hockey mask, and had the pleasure of scaring small children away from a photo booth - where I then got my video taken. I didn't quite fit in the video sled. Oh well.
• The Monmouth Battlefield. A big battle was fought there during the American Revolutionary War, so there's a state park there. Its visitor centor was locked tight, because the New Jersey Park Service had a bit of trouble getting their act together while I was there. The Friends of the Monmouth Battlefield had to step in to run the visitor's center, and they couldn't quite make it in every weekend. But there were still people there recreating the battle - of Fredericksburg from the American Civil War.
• An Irish pub (Okay, it was in nearby Long Branch) where they had Sunday brunch with a ten-piece Irish band and invited audience members to perform with them. (That's one reason the band was so big, I suppose.) I had the pleasure of singing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with them. Too bad the fiddler couldn't keep up his end... but that's a lot to ask of a fiddler. Not every town has Charlie Daniels pop in to visit.
• Freehold Borough vs. Freehold Township. Downtown Freehold is known as "Freehold Borough". It earns this distinction because it is a county seat. The boundaries between the Borough and the Township are rigidly defined. And people there actually care whether you live in the Borough or the Township. When Bruce Springsteen had his hometown concert, he only let people in if they had two pieces of ID proving that they were from the Borough. And this leads to...
• Bruce Springsteen. I didn't realize Freehold was his hometown until I went into a pizzeria for Friday night dinner, looked at the TV, and saw one of the waitresses being interviewed as local color commentary on the concert Spingsteen was holding there that night. I'd heard rumors of this concert, but I'd though Springsteen hometown concerts were held in Asbury Park. And this leads to...
• Asbury Park. This glittering jewel of the Jersey Shore is like a ghost town outside the tourist season. Literally the streets were deserted on a Sunday afternoon, with trash blowing down them. And finally...
• Flounder Fantasia. Freehold is the only place on Earth (including Disney World) where I've ever seen a dish of this name on the menu. (For what it's worth, it was fish with sauce on top.)

Freehold has a lot of cool people in it, some of whom contributed to this entry. Thanks to all the following.

• I made friends in Freehold. Greetings to the Reformed Church, and to its guests from the Baptist church on Throckmorton Street on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Not Martin Luther King Junior Day, mind you.
• Thanks to the Friends of the Monmouth Battlefield, who ran a state park when nobody else could be bothered to.
• Thanks to Frantz of Freehold, who says, "You haven't even seen half of the silliness. Trust me, I live there."
• Thanks to Nia of the Township (not the Borough), who has much more to say about the Township/Borough rivalry.)

Mabou and Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, Canada. Every town in Nova Scotia works hard for tourist dollars, but some towns have to work harder than others. For instance, Louisbourg doesn't have to work terribly hard, because it has a giant French fortress reconstructed with mass amounts of Canadian taxpayer dollars. Mabou and Tatamagouche, on the other hand, once jointly got my First Prize because this is what they had to work with:

• A distillery (in Mabou) which was in the business of producing eight-year-old single-malt scotch (the only one made in North America!), and (when I went there in 1995) had been in business only five years. As you might imagine, they were three years away from making ends meet. So they rented out rooms there. I spent the night. I also drank lots of moonshine cocktails.
• The Mother of Sorrows Pioneer Shrine and Gift Shop, in Mabou. I bought a statuette of the Holy Mother which changes color, because "The Statue Knows the Weather". When the statue turns blue, it means your air conditioner is working. (But, to give the place credit... I lit a candle for St. Christopher, the now fictitious patron saint of travellers, and had great travel conditions for my trip from Mabou to Tatamagouche.)
• A historical museum in Tatamagouche, dedicated to the Acadians. All the maps were photocopies. The exhibit on Acadian artifacts had a couple of tools, plus a sign saying "Most Acadian artifacts were plundered by New Englanders".
• The Tatamagouche Cultural Centre. It had a room dedicated to Anna Swan the Nova Scotia Giantess, a local girl who ran away to join the circus in the 1800s and grew up to be eight feet tall. And in the basement, they have two two-headed calves stuffed and mounted. (Remember, this isn't the Museum of Oddities, it's the Cultural Centre.)
• The Train Station Inn (in Tatamagouche). Not to be outdone by the distillery inn in Mabou, Tatamagouche allows visitors to sleep in train cars. Some of the rooms are kind of small, but that's what sleeping in trains is all about.

  If I'd been in Nova Scotia a week later, I could have seen the Tall Ships besiege the Fortress of Louisbourg... or I could have gone to Tatamagouche for the Nova Scotia Giantess Festival.

Thanks to Rob and Rosemary Barrett, who provided scholarly information about Tatamagouche and cared enough to defend its honor. To learn about Tatamagouche's serious history and much more about the Nova Scotia Giantess, one can visit Canada's Digital Collections.

Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA. It is said among its residents that Hoffman is not only silly, it's a joke; all the other suburbs call it "Hoffman's Mistake" and won't let it join in any suburb games.

• The local phone monopoly is The New AT&T, formerly known as SBC, which used to stand for "Southwestern Bell Communications", but now stands for nothing in particular. (The local monopoly used to be Ameritech, before the last two mergers.)
  • The compound where they keep their Illinois programmers, is ten city blocks in area, or roughly the length and breadth of downtown Dallas. The jogging trail around the main building is three miles long.
  • Their company store has no phones nor offers of phone service, but it offers a full line of casual wear with phone company logos.
  • They have a Wellness Center in their basement. It offers more aerobics classes than a typical Gold's Gym, and has almost as many weight machines.
  Hoffman Estates earned mention on this Silly Places list, just because of the AT&T / SBC / Ameritech Center.

  But on top of that, there are...

• Illinois Nazis. Naturally, most everyone everywhere hates Illinois Nazis. But Hoffman Estates has the distinction of supposedly having at least 50 residents who wanted to hear Matthew Hale, Pontifex Maximus of the racist World Church of the Creator, speak at the Schaumburg township library.
• A local Cineplex 30, which is at least 15 more than I've seen anywhere else. Of course, this leads to the observation, "30 channels and nothing on..."
• A new Hilton hotel, which doesn't quite have all the room heaters working right yet. If you stay there, ask to be shown the master on/off switch for your room. (Actually, this is good advice for lots of hotels.) But I did kind of like the hotel; the two closest restaurants were both brewpubs. The closest was...
• A Fancy Restaurant, the Millrose, which is constructed entirely out of barns. Seven of them. Trucked in from throughout the neighboring countryside. They process their own meat, and brew their own beer. It's the Fanciest Place in town.
• Farmland and wild creatures. Agriculture (beans and pumpkins, though they're building a Meijer Thrifty Acres on the bean farm now) and industry exist side by side here. Geese stay there year round and shit on the sidewalks, because they find enough people to feed them. Deer can be seen on the Ameritech Center grounds. The nearby Interstate Highway 90 has "deer" warning signs.
• Absolutely no downtown area. Hoffman Estates Village Hall is built on a golf course.
• Massive Christmas decorations. I used to think lawn displays were an urban legend, until I came to Hoffman Estates. If you live there and you have a giant light-up inflatable Santa on your lawn at Christmastime, you've only started decorating, because there's still a giant inflatable snowman, a bunch of reindeer, and a manger scene to go.

  And finally...

• The Willow Creek Community Church, whose compound is not quite as big as the Ameritech Center yet, but give them time; they're putting on additions. When I first saw the number of cars in the parking lot, it scared me and I went elsewhere. But eventually I made it back. This is what I saw:
  • This church is the largest I've ever seen. They hold their services in an auditorium which, I estimate, holds 2000 people. (After the additions, this is now the small auditorium.) They fill that auditorium for two services every Sunday morning, plus others throughout the weekend. They show the whole proceeding on closed-circuit TV, so everyone can see the show.
  • The locals here say, this church holds conferences, and attracts visitors from througout the country. They've gotten coverage on national news magazine programs. They have acres of parking, more then enough, but their traffic causes jams at least half a mile away.
  • The church gets high marks for not letting children disrupt the service. Children go to "Promiseland", which is what they call their Sunday school, throughout the service. There was one crying baby in the auditorium, which ain't bad for 2000 people. On the other hand, they had Promiseland-logo signs on the stairwell which was most clearly labeled "Restrooms", saying, "For the safety of the children, this stairwell is closed". That wouldn't have been so bad, except they also had a sign at the bottom of the stairwell, saying, "For the safety of the children, this door is locked." B{C>
  • They are entertaining. They specifically gear their Sunday services toward "beginners". People who wish to "advance" are invited to a five-week seminar. This smacks of $cientology to me, but I can't accuse Willow Creek of being money-grubbing...
  • They sell discount books and CDs in the bookstore. They make people get tickets in advance for Easter services, but the tickets are free. They have seven services that day, and still turn people away. They even tell visitors not to put money in the offering plate.
  • The church also has a cafeteria (the "Harvest Cafe") with separate lines for pancakes and crepes.

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. I judge New Orleans to be quite silly, though it tries too hard. I refuse to account for Mardi Gras in my silliness ratings, because it is a deliberate attempt at silliness. But even outside Mardi Gras season, there's lots of silly stuff that goes on there:

• Bourbon Street and its immediate vicinity has a nightlife that few cities even try to match. It typically starts at about noon, every day of the week. If you get up before then, you can see how they've hosed down the puke from the night before.
• How do they pay for it? $5 beer and $8 cocktails, in every place that has a band.
• Some places compete by offering $1 beer, but you have to drink it off premises. Good luck getting that beer into another bar, though. Or finding a place to piss it away. Luckily, New Orleans allows open beers in public. Though not open pissing.
• There's a place called Preservation Hall, which takes yet a different approach. It is a world-famous jazz venue with nightly performances. It's what you might call "intimate": less than 100 people fit in there, and those in the front row have to dodge the trombone. (Don't even try to dodge the trumpet spit from there; it can't be done.) It's also what you might call "primitive": no audio amplification of any sort is used, and the staff does not admit the presence of bathrooms (let alone beer) to the tourists.
• For those who prefer freelance entertainment, there are street performers. The typical street performers are blues musicians, tarot readers, and the occasional mime.
  • The tarot readers are allowed near Jackson Square, a park in the French Quarter.
  • The mimes just stand still and try to look like statues.
  • The blues musicians, on the other hand, set up their six-piece bands (with piano) in street intersections, and then wonder why the police set up roadblocks on their behalf and take them to lockup afterward.
• For those who want things other than beer and entertainment, there are museums.
  • The Louisiana State Museum has five branches in the French Quarter alone. These are small historical and cultural exhibits. A rather large branch is dedicated to the history of Mardi Gras.
  • New Orleans also has a small Confederate military museum...
  • ... and a large D-Day museum (opened 2000, guess what date. Clue: D-Day was 6 June 1944).
  • And the Jean Lafitte National Park, which fits inside a single building (counting the courtyard).
  • And a battlefield cruise (for that battle Andrew Jackson fought in 1815).
  • Even the local stores call themselves museums, at least if they sell pewter or voodoo paraphenalia.
• Despite (or perhaps because of) the presence of beer and museums, New Orleans is not what you'd call child-centric or family-friendly. I saw as many children among the street performers as among the tourists. There was one street clown, who would make balloons for what few children he found... and then hit on the mommies. (This clown also claimed to own a bar near Jackson Square. He doesn't seem to actually own the place, but he does have a web site, Perri_The_Hobo. He takes pride in being an officially licensed performer in Provincetown, Massachusetts.)
• New Orleans isn't especially cheap, either. Outside the museums, the city runs on tips... and a 9% sales tax. The locals say, it gets you the best politicians money can buy.
• Oddly enough, when I was in the New Orleans airport, I never saw an open barroom. Other airports have lounges open all day, even on Thanksgiving... but not New Orleans. Strictly 11 am for them.

Post-Hurricane-Katrina Note: Most of New Orleans has literally sunk beneath the weight of humanity, and was swamped in 2005 the first time the then-most-recent levees broke.

• Of course, during the disaster the local politicians blamed everyone else they could. So did the state politicians. As the locals are on record as saying, New Orleans has the best politicians money can buy.
• But most politicians agreed on one thing. By Mardi Gras 2006, the tourist districts were fully restored. Mardi Gras for tourists is a priority. Of course, it helped that tourists stay in the parts of town that don't sink.
• As of 2007, volunteer teams from throughout the country are still going to New Orleans to muck out the black mold from people's houses. One can find a church almost anywhere outside New Orleans which brags about this. The volunteers usually retire to the tourist parts of the city each night and have a nice restaurant meal.
• The former residents of these houses can't be bothered, because they've all gone to other parts of the country to make a living and not be swamped again. The volunteers send them any personal items they find.
• Some people are now rebuilding their lives in the swamped districts, but even they find amusement in the situation. Look for "blogs" from New Orleans for ongoing updates. (Here's one!)

On this web page, the silliness rating of New Orleans is now purely a matter of public vote. But in my considered opinion, with all due respect to the human tragedy which is intrinsic to life itself, the current situation of New Orleans only enhances its silliness.

East Berlin, Deutsche Democratische Republik (East Germany). I'm sure it wasn't silly before then and isn't silly now, but it sure was when they were tearing the Berlin Wall down and selling pieces of it. Especially the week of the Roger Waters "The Wall Live in Berlin" concert in July 1990. They weren't quite sure what to do with a quarter million extra tourists in town. They should have taken some crowd control lessons from Speedway.

• Reputedly, Roger Waters had previously vowed only to do "Pink Floyd The Wall" in live concert only if the Berlin Wall fell. When he said this in the mid-1980s, this seemed like a safe bet for him. Too bad about the fall of the Warsaw Pact, Roger.
• The best place for the concert was Potsdamer Platz, a conveniently open space near the Brandenburg Tor. This space was open because one layer of the Berlin Wall was missing, and convenient because the other layer was still there to help with crowd control.
• Naturally, the remaining members of Pink Floyd were having nothing to do with this. So Roger recruited most anyone who was available, with surprisingly good results. The concert featured Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Thomas Dolby, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, Sinead O'Connor, James Galway, two of Mick Jagger's old flames, The Band, The Chieftains, The Scorpions, East and West German soldiers, and the Marching Band of the Combined Soviet Forces in Germany.
• I was there for the concert. (In fact, I got so close to the stage that I recognized myself in a crowd picture.) The dreaded Volkspolizei (or "Vopos") of East Germany, deadly guardians of the Berlin Wall, were reduced to helping do crowd control. The real hazards there were:
  • Beverage control. No bottles or cans of anything were allowed. Fortunately, I'd brought European-style boxes of fruit juice, which for some reason was OK. And I shared, so my party and the people nearby didn't die of dehydration.
  • Lack of bathroom access. I went ten hours (a personal record) without going to the port-a-potties, because I knew I'd never find my party again if I did. Luckily, I'd given away most of my beverages.
  • The crowd, particularly the great Irish oafs who bulled through the crowd while James Galway was playing. But the clueless Germans who waved their lit cigarettes at elbow level were no fun either.
  • The combination of wind and dirt. Remember, this was where the Berlin Wall had just been dug up. As soon as the crowd started moving after the concert, clouds of dirt rose.
• Naturally, a concert album and video were produced. I did not see good reviews for it. The Providence Journal-Bulletin slammed the whole thing. Its reviewer had good things to say for only Sinead O'Connor. Which is ironic, because Sinead screwed her lines up at the concert. They re-recorded her section later.
• I spent the rest of that week dodging tourists. This was easy, because they were mostly lined up at the West Berlin train station, trying to get out of town. I, on the other hand, explored East Berlin.
• East Berlin was just starting to get used to Western tourists. One outdoor fancy restaurant I was at sold me half a barbecued chicken... with one small napkin. When the wind blew it away, I had to chase it. But it sure was cheap.
• East Berlin was just starting to get used to Western business, too. Beer carts were selling West German beer cheap... and after its expiration date.
• The East Berliners caught on to one thing fast, though: the demand for Soviet Bloc souvenirs. While I was there, Checkpoint Charlie was bulldozed... and replaced by a flea market, dealing with Soviet memorablila. Small badges went for 2 Deutschemarks, or roughly $1.25. Small baggies full of chunks of the Berlin Wall went for 5 Deutschemarks. Or you could bring a chisel and get your own chunks. Forget your chisel when you got on the plane? You could rent one!

Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Due mostly to Lucy Maud Montgomery, noted adventure writer. She's best known for Anne of Green Gables, a precocious little girl who grew up (like her author) on Prince Edward Island. (Admittedly, unlike the Bobbsey Twins, Anne of Green Gables grew up and graduated to romance novels. As of this update, not even Harry Potter had done that yet.)

"We went up the path but when we reached the top - oh horrors!
There right before us were two cows and they looked simply savage.  
In panic we turned and flew down that path headlong...
We had no end of a time getting home, in deadly fear of cows."

• A Madame Tussaud's wax museum.
• A Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.
• A museum of oddities (but not a cultural centre), distinct from Ripley's.
• Prince Edward Island National Park, whose beaches conveniently face north toward Newfoundland, so beachgoers can watch the fog roll in. P.E.I. also has southward facing beaches so you can get the sun, but these are often closed. Even in May, there's snow near the beaches.
• Country inns. Like much of the remainder of P.E.I., many of these come complete with authentic country smell. (Is it cheese, or cow shit, or is it... both?)

But call ahead. Aside from tourist season which consists of July and August, much of Prince Edward Island is closed. Reportedly most of the museums have left town in disgust.

(Thanks to Sandra of Cavendish for updates on that entry. Yes, I admit Anne of Green Gables is probably worth reading for someone, even if I'm not the target audience. And I'm glad to hear that Cavendish is still near a water park, a golf course, and historical sites for the visitors. That doesn't sound all that silly... at least not until they have as many water parks as the Wisconsin Dells have.)

Lexington, Virginia, USA. This place is the home of Washington and Lee University, and Virginia Military Institute (VMI). This doesn't make it a Silly Place. But there are things which do:

1. Stonewall Jackson's Outhouse. Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson used to teach at VMI. His home is open to the public as a museum. The kitchen contains wax replicas of period food - except the Virginia ham is real, because it's salty enough to be safe from all scavengers other than Virginians. The outhouse is not part of the museum tour, but it is plainly visible from neighboring houses and inns.
2. The Robert E. Lee Chapel and Gift Shop. Who's that statue of, behind the pulpit? No, it's not Jesus, it's Robert E. Lee! Confederate General Lee is buried in the family crypt downstairs, but his death statue is upstairs, in the part of the sanctuary which most places call the "Holy of Holies". Downstairs in the gift shop, the Robert E. Lee Beanie Baby is conveniently made available for sale. You can buy the doll, take him upstairs, pose him next to the General's statue or in his favorite pew (marked with a plaque), and take your own photos. For those who want to learn other ways to spell "traveler", General Lee's horse Traveller is buried outside, at the door of the chapel.
3. The Cemetery. Many military heroes are buried in Lexington's cemetery, including Stonewall Jackson himself. But the organizations which honor these heroes with little flags, have to keep extra types of flags around. There's a WW2 hero there (a Marine general who commanded the artillery at Iwo Jima), and he has a little American flag next to his grave, as WW2 heroes often do. But all the other heroes (including some named Sheridan and Lincoln) have either Confederate flags, or markers with same flag plus the Latin phrase "Deo Vindici" ("God Will Vindicate Us").
4. Tourist Attractions. Lexington is filled with other tourist attractions which are tasteful, such as museums. For tackiness, one has to go out of town to the nearby Natural Bridge, a stone arch on which U.S. Highway 11 (the Robert E. Lee Highway) crosses Cedar Creek. Don't expect to see the view from the highway, though; it's fenced off. You'll have to buy a ticket. But your ticket will get you admission to a nightly Creation Story and Light Show at the bridge site.
5. Eclectic Cuisine. There's a new Fancy Restaurant in town, the 19 West, which is building up its clientele by serving things other than chicken-fried steak. The beer on tap is sometimes Brooklyn Lager. The Muzak there includes a folk tune, "Will Jesus Wash the Bloodstains From Your Hands?" (Remember, they're in a military town in Virginia.)

Douglas, Massachusetts, USA. It's the lucky town which borders both Connecticut and Rhode Island. I lived there for several years.

Douglas, like much of Massachusetts, is "Beyond 495". That means it's farther west than the second beltway from Boston. If Boston had three beltways, Douglas would be beyond the third one too.

People from not "Beyond 495" say that "Beyond 495" is like walking into a scene from "Deliverance". And to an extent, it's true. In Douglas I first heard the phrase, "You can take your cousin to the Prom".

Douglas can be divided into three parts:

• East Douglas is a typical depressed New England mill town, except the mill's still operating. You can see mothers and daughters walk to work at the mill together. You can also see other mothers and daughters work as waitresses across the street from each other.
• Douglas Center consists of roughly ten houses, a church, a gift shop, and a graveyard.
• West Douglas consists almost entirely of trees (courtesy of state forests), with the occasional small monolith (indicating a state line) thrown in. One of these monoliths indicates the boundary of three states.

• Camping. Douglas actually imports vacationers (though admittedly low-budget ones).
• Boating on many fine lakes, including Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaug, in nearby Webster, Massachusetts. The lake's name is the Nipmuc Indian word which is said to roughly translate to, "You fish on your side, I fish on my side, nobody fish in the middle."
• Stock car racing, at nearby Thompson, Connecticut.
• Country music concerts, in nearby Webster, Massachusetts. Including Charlie Daniels. Too bad he doesn't hang around Freehold where they can use a world-class fiddler.
• Yard sales. Sometimes indoor yard sales in abandoned mills. Not every New England mill town is lucky enough to have an active mill.
• Family dairies, complete with authentic country smell, Prince Edward Island style. (Is it cheese, or cow shit... or both?)
• Revival meetings, right in the woods near downtown Douglas every year, ever since 1876. The modern-day meeting is known as the Blackstone Valley Crusade. In the 1920s, H.P. Lovecraft wrote stories about back-country New England communities whose residents gather in the woods at night to pray for the return of their mighty lord. And Lovecraft is known to have visited towns next to Douglas. Coincidence? I think not.
• Getting lost in the woods. When you hear a clicking noise, watch out for men with guns who think you're a deer and are trying to get you in rifle range. And if you get lost during a blizzard, you may never find out what animal gets lost in the cave with you. One person I know did this (by his own account) and lived, thanks to the animal's body heat, during the "April Fools" Blizzard of 1997. (Thanks to Chris Mauro for the report.)
• Bizarre gardening incidents. One child is said to have died, by a wound involving gardening shears and a mountain bike. Take that, Spinal Tap.
• Rallying to save the woods from development. Half the Douglas woods are zoned "industrial" by the town. The first industry which was interested was a mega-dump. The fight against this dump involved a country music concert with Marie Osmond.
  • Don Henley couldn't make it. He is also interested in saving woods in Massachusetts, but only in the high rent area near Walden Pond (not "Beyond 495") where he has a house.
  (By the way, the dump's been defeated. For now. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has changed its mind several times.)

Speedway, Indiana, USA. The Indy 500 is not actually held in Indianapolis; there is a Town of Speedway which is built around the racetrack. (I grew up there.) It's a quiet suburban town, except for the month of May when they hold the Indy 500. (And now August, when NASCAR races there. And now they have Formula One racing there too. They had to sacrifice part of the in-track golf course for it, though.)

During race weekends, it gains the ambiance of a Mardi Gras. When I was growing up, the Indy 500 took two full weekends for qualifications, plus one for the race. But boy, the third day of qualifications was boring. So now they've replaced that day with a quickie 100-mile race!

• The Indy 500 is the world's largest Sunday sporting event - half a million people go there. The streets are jammed for hours before and after.
• The smart people arrive Friday night and spend the weekend. They fill every hotel in Indianapolis, and camp out in every vacant lot near the track. The vacant lot owners rake in millions of dollars each year, just charging for parking spaces with no amenities. Naturally, there's no urge to develop those vacant lots.
• Every church within easy walking distance of the track shuts down that day and sells its parking spaces to visitors - $10 a spot, the last time I checked. It's probably up to $20 by now.
• But hey, it's probably okay with God, because before the race they always have an Army chaplain or the Bishop of Indianapolis lead a prayer for the safety of the drivers. I suspect it's the world's largest reoccuring coordinated prayer, because not even Billy Graham ever got 500,000 people in a stadium every year.
• But that's just part of the pageantry. The pre-race ceremony always features Boy Scouts, helium balloons, Florence Henderson, Jim Nabors (who has a very nice singing voice, Gomer Pyle to the contrary), the Purdue Marching Band playing "Taps" as four Air Force jets fly over, and the magic phrase "(Lady and) Gentlemen, start your engines." Three corporate blimps orbit the track during the race.
• Even so, lots of entertainment is impromptu. The main battle cry of those who attend is "Show Us Your Tits!"
• Even outside racing season, there's evidence of the favorite pastime:
  • Mario Andretti's less successful brother Aldo runs a Firestone tire dealership.
  • The high school athletic teams are the "Speedway Sparkplugs".
• And even outside racing season, at the finest hotel in town, one may still park one's car outside one's room door, and find rednecks swilling long-neck bottles of beer nearby at 3 am. (I mentioned this to an Indianapolis native once, and he said, "Then you do know Indianapolis!")

Honorable Mentions