See Rock City

These are strange times that we live in.

In the past week alone, Toys R Us announced that they are going to stop selling toys, a 62 mile wide giant mutant ant colony was discovered under Melbourne, Australia and Costco started selling caskets alongside giant jars of mustard and Goodyear tires.

I had to get away from it all. Somewhere tranquil and relaxing. Somewhere away from the hectic pace and worries of the world. Some folks might think of a spa or perhaps a weekend vacation at the shore. Me? Rock City.

I quickly zapped off a wishful email to Mark saying that I couldn't stop thinking about Rock City. I expected the usual response of "What's Rock City?" or "Are you kidding? Rock City? Whaaa?" but instead waiting in my in-box moments later was an email saying, "Rock City!! Let's go!!"

I rubbed my eyes like a child who had just been promised Disney World or a river of molten chocolate..........

Whoooo doggies! I had found someone who would actually drive for hours and teeter up that steep slope to the wondrous world at the edge of Lookout Mountain! The next morning, we piled into the car and hit the road with perfect weather and mix CDs to lead the way. In the blinking of an eye, it was on.

After a couple of hours in the car and a steep climb up the mountain side complete with the pleasant smell of grinding brakes and a pit-stop for deep fried pickles, we ended up at our Mecca - the roadside institution created by Garnet and Frieda Carter over 70 years ago. R O C K C I T Y !

We stretched stiff legs out of the car and walked across the sunny parking lot - exchanging excited glances. It was just as glorious as I had remembered from my last visit almost 10 years ago. We rushed past tourists buying bricks of fudge large enough to construct cocoa villages and quickly purchased our tickets. A quick go round the turn-style and there we were ..........the land of enchantment.

We walked for a while through trails and grottos, crevices that appeared too small to pass through and dark tunnels and overhangs, stopping here and there to see hemlock, sleeping white deer and the spellbinding bird trainer with hawk on hand and gasping children all around. We crossed bridges and valleys, curving pathways and tree shaded walks. Every now and then we stopped to giggle at music piped in through speakers made to look like boulders.

Along the trails, we met the same people over and over - the Japanese tourist who at each tiny little sign or overlook would ask us to take his photo with his son. Each time, they put their arms around each other with matched beaming smiles. We also got caught up (trapped really) in the opposite dynamic of an American tourist who at each tiny little sign of interest or awe from his young son, would have to stop and berate and belittle the child for each comment of fascination. We much preferred the Japanese version and I found myself picturing scenarios where the crew cut American father would slip and fall over embankments or perhaps become wedged between piles of rocks never to be discovered again. Mark and I would adopt the young son and fill his life with the joy that is miniature golf and dusty wax museums. We would live happily ever after, shielding him from the travesty of dippin' dots and network television.

We crossed the rope bridge where I fought my fear of heights and only looked ahead to the horizon, taking slow deliberate steps and ignoring a screaming banshee child who ran and shrieked, "don't look down!!! don't look down!!" and landed at Lover's Leap where we were told that we could "See Seven States!" I remembered seeing a photo of my grandparents at this exact spot 40 years earlier. I was disappointed to find that states aren't naturally marked as they are on maps with visible dividing lines and we moved on past "Old Stone Face" and the politically incorrect "Fat Man's Squeeze" .

We walked slowly through the "Rainbow Room" where windows covered in colored plastic allowed us to view the landscape as it might appear bathed in various primary colors including the red haze explosion that I imagined might follow an atomic bomb. We walked past the Japanese boy with his face plastered intently up against ruby colored glass. His father lingered behind asking a couple of ladies if they would like their photo taken. It was then that we reached the most divine of all the stops at Rock City. Fairyland Caverns. Yes. Oh, yes.

Oh my friends, how might I describe Fairyland Caverns so that it might receive the justice that it screams for with raging black lights and moonshine making gnomes?!

It all starts in underground caverns with layers and layers of glow-in-the-dark paint and walls and ceilings coated with fake glittering crystals. It goes even further with more gnomes than you can shake a stick at and fairyland scenarios with characters whose eyes and mouths seem to be cartoonishly large and misshapen, eyes rolling skyward towards an imagined sun that they will never see. Most of the characters seem to have been frozen for 70 years in mid-scream or state of shock or transgression. We walked amongst the cobwebbed vignettes, stopping to peek inside and declaring each one better than the last. We made our way around the couple arguing the difference between stalagmites and stalactites. Wide eyed children shuffled along with skin visibly losing pigmentation in the underground cavernous lair. Claustrophobic dads wondered aloud if they could light cigarettes. Road weary mothers promised gift shop trinkets in turn for good behavior from their offspring.

We walked happily past glow-in-the-dark children sleeping in wooden beds with scowling mouths unbeknownst to the fairies hovering over their heads (Barbie dolls wearing wings and tiny little tutus). Cinderella's coach turned into an iridescent orange pumpkin while she stared with bright florescent eyes at footmen turned to red-eyed scampering mice. Sleeping Beauty slept with glowing ribbon in hair while gnomes made to look like the seven dwarves stood helplessly by and watched her near-eternal rest while smoking tiny brown pipes.

At many turns in the tour we found ourselves face to face with identical gnomes forever frozen beside moonshine stills or in mid-swing on glowing wooden slatted swings. Some with tiny picks and shovels as if they had been trying to dig their way out into the sunlight. The gnome with the tiny little lantern looking like he was the most hopeful, perched closest to the entryway as if he almost made it out before time stood still. I remembered the lone gnome that Mark had spied through the quarter fare viewer up at the overlook. He sat on a rock alone deep down in the woods. I wondered if he had been fruitlessly waiting for the others to come all of these years. I laughed inward at my penchant for giving inanimate objects lives of their own and then thought that I saw one of the gnomes move out of the corner of my eye.

Soon after leaving the Fairyland Caverns, the tour leads to Mother Goose Village. Here we once again found ourselves underground in the dark - this time in a circular auditorium with a landscape of hills and valleys in the middle, each holding a different group of nursery rhyme characters. Yes...yes...also highlighted with black lights and bright rainbow paint. Strange, tinkling music played in the background. I couldn't decide if it was menacing or somehow magically fantastic. I hummed to myself to block it out.

A towering glowing castle sat in the middle of it all with spires touching dank wooden rafters and flags hanging limp without any hope of breeze. Here we walked like cattle around the circle, stopping to take photos of each strange character and scenario - Mark ever studious with his camera on slow exposure and me, ever the nonprofessional - skipping here and there like a five year old and snapping photos quickly while anxiously running ahead to see what was next in line. Lanky Jack Sprat dined with his fat chewing wife. The bow tied dish ran away with a screaming spoon. Mary's little lamb glowed brighter than a full moon with white coat that looked almost like it had been part of a farm radiation leak. Peter Piper's wife tried to escape through barred windows of her pumpkin shell cell while he sat on a rock nearby smiling a satisfied grin. Humpty Dumpty perched on his wall happily without any knowledge of his coming demise. The big bad wolf conspired against three of the pinkest pigs I have ever seen.

I had never before realized so thoroughly how tragic fairy tales and nursery rhymes generally are. When you throw in the added shock and awe that comes with black lights and shocking paint hues, and music that you can't block out even if you do hum Muskrat Love to yourself nonstop, the whole thing is a motley, rather nerve-wracking glimpse into the dark side of Story Land.

And we loved it!

With over 120 photos between us, we stumbled out into the bright sunlight and took refuge in the convenient location of the gift shop where we walked like zombies amongst pink unicorns and pet rocks, "SEE ROCK CITY" bumper stickers and coonskin caps, overpriced sweat shirts and snow globes and shot glasses containing plastic gnomes who had been clumsily epoxied inside by underpaid workers in China and Korea, miles away from the magical realms of this mountain top.

Immensely satisfied, we left Rock City and headed home. Or, that's how it started.

The journey home was going quite smoothly and even allowed leisure time to stop for photo ops at the lakeside rest stop containing the phallic worm statues and the space age ice cream vending machine. We talked to some children when their parents weren't looking. We lounged on the grass and cloud gazed. We saw the world's largest cat being walked on a leash. It was somewhere in the middle of the journey home that we hit the mother of all traffic jams. We crept along behind miles and miles of cars and eighteen wheelers, wishing for air conditioning and entertaining ourselves with jokes about the weary passengers in the cars around us. The car in front of us contained three Hispanic teenagers, a cooler, a thumping stereo system and a cage full of chickens. As anyone can understand, this did keep us entertained for quite some time but when we finally couldn't take the sitting anymore, Mark made the daredevil decision to drive up the on ramp.

"Up the on ramp" might also be a pretty apt way to describe the town of Jasper, Tennessee.

We figured that we would get out and stretch our legs for a while until the traffic subsided. We surveyed the area and saw that we had a few options to choose from - if we went one way the road ended a few yards ahead. If we went the other way - a steak house, a Hardee's, a motel and a giant fireworks store. Of course, we chose the fireworks store!

We loitered around inside as long as humanly possible, walking around between rows and rows of fireworks named for wartime weapons and venomous animals, watching anticlimactic video tapes of exploding fireworks and even purchasing over twenty dollars worth of cardboard monkeys driving flame shooting cars and pandas that promised to launch skyward with bright colorful sparks. While paying for the purchases, a scruffy teenager came in devouring a burrito. He reported that the traffic jam up ahead was due to a big wreck where a semi truck ran over a car. He exclaimed, "There's one dead and one a dying! " We all groaned and looked at each other. I stuck my head into the large paper sack containing the fireworks and snapped a photo.

Mark and I realized that we might just be in Jasper for a while and decided to find something to do to pass the time. I asked the teenage clerks what there was to do in the area. They looked at each other and started laughing. The boy with the burrito said that they usually hang out at the car wash. When they realized that we might not be the car wash loitering crowd, he recommended that we go to the WalMart or maybe to the bar down the road. The girl wearing a t-shirt that read "EXPLOSIVE" quickly looked us up and down and jumped in to the conversation and said that there was no way that we would make it out of the bar without threat of serious altercation. A light then seemed to come on in the boy's eyes and he said, "There's goats out there behind the motel."

"Goats!!", Mark shrieked. I bit my lip and wondered if maybe WalMart wasn't as bad as I remembered.

Before I knew it, we were traipsing past overflowing dumpsters and over grassy hills towards the Chet Atkins motel in the distance, looming like a guitar decorated Oz on the horizon. I mumbled, "poppies...poppies.." in my best sleepy voice but Mark didn't seem to notice. It was goats that he wanted. I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder and pushed my hair out of my eyes and followed him to the field behind the motel.

There was indeed a pen full of goats. Around the pen shuffled three little children making goat noises and shoving fistfuls of long grass through the openings. They honed in on us like flies on stink. Before long we were also attempting goat noises and having our hands licked and gobbled by goats. The smallest of the children disappeared every now and then and reappeared when least expected and announced his arrival by climbing our backs like we were trees. We shook him off like a snake shedding skin, looking around for his parents. Sooner or later, we met their mom and the family horse and then retreated for a rest in the shade with hands smelling like goats and little kid footprints on the backs of our legs.

We sat for hours on the grass behind the towering fireworks store, the sun catching the glittery starred letters in beautiful silver flashes. We had a perfect view of the miles of cars at a standstill down on the interstate and starlings congregating on broken spotlights. The sun began to fall and a few of the letters on the motel came on advertising, " T E L ". We had good conversation with bare feet resting in cool pasture and were only interrupted briefly by the children who wanted to show us their dogs - a spotted friendly brown one on a barely-held-back-by-boy rope and a little black terrier who I swore must have thought I had a head made out of steak.

I have to admit that I enjoyed sitting there, knowing that we couldn't go anywhere even if we tried. Making the best of what life had dished out for us. Being forced to just be in the moment. With goats and country children and bored teenagers surrounded by large fireworks with signs reading, "SOON TO BE ILLEGAL!" The wind shifting now and then filling our noses with the smells of roast beef and T-bone steaks and goat manure. It was my brand of perfection.

Around dark, we decided to go see what a Western Sizzlin' entails. Surrounded by famished families and friendly waitresses wearing shirts decorated with black and white spots and the words "MOO CREW", we were handed stacks of plates of various sizes. We then walked curiously between rows and rows of buffets, trying to figure out the plate system and what each deep metal container contained. Soon after, Kansas born Mark learned about the beauty of candied yams and I learned that ranch dressing shouldn't sit out for hours under spot lights. We laughed amongst chandeliers made of fake plastic antlers and restroom doors marked "Cowboys" and "Cowgirls" and watched more and more weary, trapped travelers coming inside for respite.

Sooner or later, the restaurant began to hand out maps to an alternate back road route out of Jasper. It was then that I realized that yes, there was a back route out of Jasper. We could have been home hours and hours ago. On the way out, we walked past the little goat girl standing beside her grass-stained mother at the bread buffet. She smeared huge spoonfuls of honey butter into bowls and onto her hands and wrists. She smiled up at me and Mark in recognition like we were old friends. We smiled back and told her goodbye.

We walked out of the restaurant with our little mimeographed directions in hand. Past the open grassy field and overflowing dumpsters. Past the red neon letters still advertising, " T E L " with crude goat pen hidden behind. Past the intense humming glow of the fireworks store with bored teenager sitting inside watching fireworks on video tape . I looked up at Mark and tried to stifle a wide smile but couldn't. Not for anything.