Osler's Razor

I received many surprising responses to yesterday's post, but mostly people were intrigued by America's Worst Welcome Center, which is located along I-35 at Exit 4 in Iowa, just north of Davis City. There are large, official looking signs marking this as an "Official Iowa Welcome Center!" but it just doesn't seem... right.

The first bad sign is that it does not enjoy its own exit/entrance off the interstate, like you find in other states. Oh, no. At Exit 4, you travel west for a spell until you find the "welcome center" wedged in by a gigantic Kum & Go gas station/burger joint. As soon as you pull in, you sense something different about this place-- the parking lot is a dark, rutted dirt lot with cars parked haphazardly every which which way, as if the rapture had actually occurred.

Inside, things are even worse. The space is dominated by a big gift shop which exclusively sells hokey Chinese-made "country" themed junk which appears to have been rejected by the Cracker Barrel restaurants. Because this is Iowa, much of it runs with the themes of pigs and corn, which doesn't make it any better.

This is the kind of store where you would only buy something if you had (1) been invited to Becky Thatcher's birthday party; (2) didn't like her very much; and (3) through some disturbance in the space/time continuum could not leave the interstate to find her a "present."

In the winter, the entire thing is constructed to resemble a portal to the ice planet of Hoth, with wind racing through with mind-numbing harshness as the Country Hell Muffin dolls lie about naked atop a mass of torn ginham. Crying children (and often, adults) line up by the dozens to use the single inadequate and often broken restroom, huddled together against the biting wind. Sometimes, one of the little ones will collapse right there in line, and the others immediately begin eyeing the poor child's meager possessions, or even evaluate the lad's potential as food, before crawling over the stiffening body as the line inches along towards the single overflowing toilet.

In the back, almost hidden from view, is the "welcome center" itself. I was looking for a map, so I sought it out. A few shelves hold thin pamphlets with titles like "Survive Hamilton County," and "Finding the Right Fundamentalist Church in Iowa." The maps themselves were carefully guarded by a sullen elderly man with a thin beard and a humorless expression.

"Can I have a map?" I asked.

"Sign in here," he said, pointing to the type of log one fills out when visiting a medium-security prison. He watched me intently. "Print carefully. Is that MI or MN?"

"MN," I told him, warily.

"What are you driving?" he asked, in a tone that revealed his sole purpose to be directing unwary travelers into the clutches of his inbred Iowa kin who then would torture and eat their prey in the depths of their white and featureless house set amid a sea of corn.

I grabbed the map and ran for it. A guy in a Miata can't take a lot of chances.