I was surfing the net today and re-discovered the delightful Roadside America site, which meticulously catalogs all the oddball attractions the American people have created to draw interest to their towns and neighborhoods. Writers are always looking things to inspire the written word, but what if your writer's block is really, really bad?
Well, go to Roadsideamerica.com and find a giant fiberglass wonder near you. Go there. Sit under it. If nothing comes to you, at least you can write a pithy essay on the experience. If you sit next to one of these things long enough, you're gonna see SOMETHING worth writing about.
Oh, and don't miss Roadside America's hilarious blog.
Here's the most recent one of these monuments to American culture that I found:
Oddly, according to Roadside America there is some controversy over the Garrison, MN giant fiberglass walleye, as there is another town named Garrison in North Dakota that has one too. Both towns claim to be the "Walleye Capitol of the World". I was unaware of this dispute when I casually posed before the Minnesota walleye. Walleye, for those of you from elsewhere, is the native fish of the north country, a mild white fish that fries up just nicely.
Not content to take the usual tourist shot, I decided to get "artistic" with the giant fiberglass fish and focus on its awe-inspiring head.
See the mighty fish struggle for breath! The temperature is about 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a bit chilly for a fish. But we must consider yet another view.
Yes, the tail, and in the background, the frozen lake, and the shoreline of Bemidji, and the wistful dreams of all Walleye hanging with the ice-fog on the distant shore...ooooooh, SO much bad writing can come out of a fiberglass fish. Excellent.
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