Dead Presidents

WORTHINGTON, MINNESOTA: I started out the day at the most American of places: Mount Rushmore. This place strikes at the heart of the American take on hero-worship. In Europe in the old days, people treated their kings like demi-gods. Then we had our revolution and got rid of all that. Our leaders were just regular guys doing an important job: no hero- worship, no demi-god. And yet, people seem to have this need to worship one of our own, even if for no reason (hence celebrity magazines). So early Americans repressed the hero-worship impulse, but eventually it had to explode. And when it did, we did it bigger and better than anyone had ever done: we carved giant heads onto a mountain.

Yeah, that's good stuff. It's strange to see a place thousands of times in pictures, then to show up there in real life. I mean, I goof on it, but it is pretty awesome, in the original sense of the word. There was a good crowd here, too. Talk about creating a tourist attraction. The Black Hills are pretty nice, but there's no way all of these people would have showed up if there had not been four dead presidents carved into the hills. Good marketing by the state, or whoever decided that it should go here.

The next stop was Rapid City for lunch, then onto another wonder of the plains, Wall Drug. This is not related to Wal-Mart, but rather is named after the town in which it is located, Wall, South Dakota. No, that is not a joke. This place started out as a drug store, and later expanded into different stores across several blocks, all connected. You find the same variety of shopping choices as in a shopping mall, but they're all the same company. Last night, in the dark, I drove past the geographic center of the United States. Today, though, I found the center of old-timey Americana, and it is Wall Drug. I bought a t-shirt.

After that, it was a straight, fast drive for the state line. As you travel east, South Dakota flattens out and greens up and looks more like the Midwest than the Great Plains. I crossed the Missouri River and then the Minnesota line, and sadly said good-bye to 75 mph speed limits and giant stone heads of presidents.