This in no way is meant to disparage Wall Drug.

The conjunction of words, wall and drug, has an effect of terror on me. A terror as if you had just awakened from a dream where you spent the whole day at school in your underwear – and not your best underwear either – and then remembered, as you shook off your chilling sleep, that it wasn’t a dream, that it had actually happened.

When I was 7 or so, my mom and my maternal grandparents packed me along in their Chevrolet for a two week road trip across the American interstate system. My grandma entertained herself for most of the way by humming incessantly pleasant hymns. Whilst I fiddled with my Rubic’s Cube and my portable Pacman. All the way through South Dakota and whatever dusty states might have preceded it, we were assailed roadside by signage for Wall Drug. I was a lot less interested in the signs than my grandfather who pointed them out enthusiastically as they came up. “Have you Dug Wall Drug?”

What a queer pilgrimage that was, in our shining green Chevrolet, dragged along by the gravity of Wall Drug. I was working only on borrowed interest. My grandparents, and the signs, built this place up to be the Shangri La. Not that I knew then what the Shangri La was. In fact it’s the other way around. Whenever I hear about Shangri La, I imagine it to be much like Wall Drug.

“We’re going to be there tomorrow,” my Grandfather told me, crinkling his face, looking happy and wizened. I hadn’t asked. He was sneaking a cigarette from my mom behind the motel. I was relieved; but only so that I could get the much anticipated and, by then, much feared experience over with and so that, at least, I could look forward to seeing nothing more than the back of Wall Drug signs as we continued on our trip. I was much more excited about the South Dakota caves, and yes, looking forward to the big faces on the mountain.

When we at last arrived, it was clear there was no good reason for us to be there; and, as with most anticipated destinations, no good reason either for the place to be there. I was quite sure that this was exactly where people meant when they said the middle of nowhere. I think Wall Drug even used that as part of their advertising. Americans build their temples and their holy places in such odd places. It’s really a unique phenomenon. Perhaps because the space that is America has nearly no discernible history. And no discernible holy places. Even its monuments and its cities, yes, even its citizens, have all been transplanted. Holy places are designed and placed randomly. And, perhaps not surprisingly, most of them look garishly artificial.

I can think of no better example than that tourist mall — living kitsch —, Wall Drug. I resurrect it in my mind like walking into a shiny postcard. Sunny, of course. A lot of wood and the smell of wood. A collection of stuff nobody should ever care about. A pharmacy, hence the Drug. Shiny over-sized figures. A dinosaur, I think. A shiny Annie Oakley with a big bosom. The place had the personality of an artificial silver Christmas tree, which might explain why my grandfather recommended it so.

I remember I had to go to the bathroom really badly. In the artificial space of this shellacked Shangri La, I expect my mom and my grandparents were comfortable leaving me to fend for myself. In urgent need, I found out the bathroom. It was a separate building. I remember it as a log cabin. For no reason that was evident there were no lights on inside and, at least as I remember it, it was pitch dark. But as I said, I was in urgent need, and now, left to myself, I stepped into the nothingness. It smelled. That sticks with me still. Sun-heated crap and urine and other smells. I remember sounds that let me know I was not alone but I would have preferred to be alone. The sounds were scary and unfamiliar. I can only guess, now that I’m older, what the men might have been doing in the dark.

I couldn’t see the toilet. I had to find it in the dark. Similarly, the lock. I locked the stall from the inside in the dark. As with every 7 or 8 year old, I was concerned that there were crocodiles or snakes in the toilet and I usually checked but without benefit of night vision or a flashlight there was no telling. Now my grandmother was of the sort that would often say that you should squat, yes, but never sit. Nevertheless, I dropped my pants and sat. I was not practiced at squatting. But if there were ever a time to squat and not sit, this would have been it.

I did my business. I wiped myself in the dark and got my pants back on. I washed my hands in the dark. I didn’t dry them. I was too eager to get away. Still the smell.

I came out into the light, small and dazed, the color of blanched shrimp. I blinked in the light. I shook my wet hands. And set out in this crazy foreign space to find someone I recognized. Meanwhile, following me, the horrible smell.

And smiling varnished faces followed me. And still the smell as I wandered about the dejected tourists lost in the Americana miasma. Occasionally a face, a realer face, would follow me and grimace. The looks of the travelers made me feel like a stray and mangy cat. And still the unshakable smell. In a mirror I discovered why I couldn’t lose the horrible smell of baked feces and why I was causing the twisted up faces. Across my backside was a horrible smear of brown. The texture of tomato paste.

I could summon no solution and so, as inconspicuously as a 7 year old could manage, shamed and shit-smeared, I sought out my mother. Who quickly collected me and took me to the car and made me change, in the shaming light of day, outside of the car. Another indignity. And before I had finished, me in my underwear, and the mark of my shame stinking up a tied up shopping bag, I was joined by my grandparents. I don’t believe I was ever able to convince my mom or my grandparents that I hadn’t soiled myself or that the bathroom had been as dark as sin.

I’ve never been back. I have dug Wall Drug. And the whole experience was shit.

SS