In the latest development in our war on terrorism, The FBI warned officials in the city of New York that it had received “uncorroborated information” that terrorists had made threats against the city and some of its famed landmarks

ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

In the latest development in our war on terrorism, The FBI warned officials in the city of New York that it had received "uncorroborated information" that terrorists had made threats against the city and some of its famed landmarks. The warning came at the Memorial Day weekend, a peak time for New York tourism. It reminded me that the threat is far from over. And, as millions of people hit the road for their summer break, the places where they gather may be at particular risk of attack. Take for instance, our national monuments: the Statue of Liberty. Mount Rushmore. Disney World. Graceland.

While I have no doubt that the fine law enforcement officers of New York and the elite Disney security forces are on guard against the threat, it might be a good idea to consider taking your vacation at some of the other spots that make America the great country that it is. Some of the spots, for example, that not only could foreign terrorists not find, they couldn’t understand what they were seeing when they got there. I’m talking of course about places like:

The Worlds’ Largest Thermometer: Towering 134 feet over the desert town of Baker, California, this behemoth commemorates the highest temperature ever recorded in America: 134 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded at nearby Death Valley in 1913. Now, for most normal folks, this sort of thing would be the signal to flee the area like rats, but the good people who unaccountably still live in Baker are quite proud of their big thermometer. "Baker can meet your needs!" their website asserts. Especially if those needs include a really big thermometer.

The Forbidden Gardens: Located in Katy, Texas, this amazing bit of Americana is just the thing for the traveler who’s always wanted to visit the magnificent Forbidden City of Beijing but who doesn’t want to deal with any actual Chinese. The park features a scale model of the Forbidden City under a 40,000 square foot steel canopy to shield the faux world traveler from the Texas sun. But the main attraction is the replica of the clay army of the mysterious Emperor Qin. As you may remember, archaeologists unearthed the tomb of Qin, purported architect of the Great Wall, in 1974. Buried in the tomb were 6,000 life-sized clay soldiers, which legend has it were to guard Qin after his death. This story apparently stuck in the craw of a Texas millionaire, the wonderfully named Ira Poon. Poon decided, possibly under the influence of the aforementioned Texas sun, that anything the Chinese could do, a Texan could do, by gum, so he constructed his own one-third sized replica of the 6,000 clay soldiers. Every single one of them. Made from fiberglass. And people ask me why I love this country.

When taking a break from traveling , why not stay in one of the few remaining Wigwam Motels? The last remaining remnant of a once up-and-coming franchise, each sleeping unit at the Wigwams in Holbrook, Arizona and Cave City, Kentucky, is shaped like a giant cement teepee. They feature amenities, however, like cable TV and air-conditioning, the sort of comfort our red brothers could never have envisioned of, unless they got heavily into the peyote.

The Giant Peach: a personal favorite of mine, this one is located on Interstate 95 near Gaffney, South Carolina. It’s actually the town’s one million-gallon water tower. It started its career as a spherical structure, but in the early 80’s someone in the town’s Public Works department had the idea to commemorate the area’s major cash crop by turning the water tower into a giant peach. I’ll let the Peach’s website (yes, of course it has a website) tell the rest of the story. "It took five months to design and mold the steel for the project. A foundation containing 10 million pounds of concrete had to be poured. One and one half miles of welds had to be made, requiring that welding rods had to be delivered to the site by the ton. A stem 12 feet long and 18 inches in diameter was added to the top. A huge leaf, 60 feet long, 16 feet wide, and weighing 7 tons was applied to one side. A huge cleft along the entire height of the "peach" was created through false work steel paneling applied to the sphere of the tank." Ah, yes, that cleft. It’s that, er, cleft that give the Peachoid, as it’s called its real pizazz. See, at night, from the correct angle (Which happens to be approaching the Peach on I-85) the thing looks like an enormous pair of glowing buttocks mooning the traffic. The first time I saw it, I laughed so hard I almost went into the median.

America. Has there ever been a country with so much energy, so much imagination, so much delirious weirdness? This summer, thumb your nose at the terrorists the way the builders of America’s roadside attractions thumbed their nose at restraint, good taste and even good sense. Get out there and see the sights that make this country great.

Dusty Rhoades lives in Carthage, practices law in Aberdeen, and would have done a few paragraphs on South of the Border, but he ran out of space.

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