Works by
Mike Fowler
"A Brief History of Machismo, with Attention to the Male Mystique."
"Last Dance."
"The Nouveau Shelter for the Rich."
"An Exhibition of the Instruments of Some Famous Musicians, Except the Musicians Are Ordinary Workers."
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Get Your Souvenirs Everywhere
By Mike Fowler
We Americans can’t go anywhere or do anything without memorializing the grand event with a souvenir mug or magnet or sticker or shirt. I can’t return from a scenic Sunday drive through rural Ohio without bringing home a faceless Amish doll to commemorate the expedition, and friends of mine incarcerated for nonpayment of child support lament after 30 days that there are no souvenirs of the justice center for sale at the release desk. I’ve read that, in Hannibal, Missouri, there’s a brass plaque on the sidewalk to mark the spot where, in 1872, Mark Twain suffered flatulence, with a theme-related restaurant and pharmacy around the corner. It’s gotten that bad.
And rural Ohio, the jail where my friends sleep, and the site of Twain’s gaseous mishap are three fairly minor attractions. A truly popular and impressive site, like Niagara Falls, gives rise to whole towns of tourist trap exhibits and amusements, as well as to eponymous Niagara Falls hotels, Niagara Falls restaurants, and of course Niagara Falls souvenir shops. I took my wife and kids to such a town a few years back, on the American side of the Falls; I believe the town was called Niagara Falls, in fact, just like the watery wonder. We adored the attractions—the Falls itself, the Rainbow Bridge over the Niagara River, the cold spray on the Maid of the Mist boat ride, even the homely hydroelectric plant, whatever it was named--and we snapped up souvenir raincoats and washcloths and towels all the way. We also bought a pass for the Niagara Falls Haunted House in town. This was several floors of winding corridors where unseen spirits called out to my terrified kids, “Tasty children, tasty children,” until the tykes, thinking they were about to be eaten, screamed and wet themselves. At the end, with a cringing, wailing child on each arm, I confronted the proprietor, showed him my bankroll, and demanded souvenirs of the ghosts--whatever ghostly caps, magnets, or mugs, he had. On being told nothing was for sale, the family and I rushed off to Canada, where fortunately souvenirs abound. I forked over good US dollars for jerseys and scarves and wallets with maple leaves on them and got back in change a handful of undervalued foreign coins. I considered it a bargain.
Naturally you expect gargantuan souvenir industries, and you do find them, at amazing attractions like the Falls, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, and Salem, Massachusetts. In Salem whole bazaars cater to the witch-on-trial and Nathaniel Hawthorne crowds, and you can buy everything from books of spells to scarlet-lettered sweatshirts. And of course it isn’t just us Yanks selling the stuff. Christian litter flies off the shop shelves in Bethlehem, Pyramidal trash in Cairo, Papal detritus in the Vatican, Roman rubbish in Rome, Socratic debris in Athens, Elephantine muck in Nepal, plaster Eiffels in Paris. And although I haven’t been there, and never will go there, I don’t doubt that teeny Great Walls of putty can be had in Beijing and tiny tin Kremlins in Moscow. But it’s got to be mainly American tourists buying the stuff, wherever it’s sold. I mean, how many Arabs and Israelis are buying silver Jesus sandals in Old Jerusalem?
And the sales don’t stop, in the USA, with the major attractions. In the USA the big sites are just the warm-up. In Kentucky I visited the Abraham Lincoln birth cabin. This small structure is housed indoors within the Lincoln Museum a few knobs over from the town of Hodgenville. A knob, for those unfamiliar with Kentucky metrics, is a hilltop. Anyway, just when you thought the Lincoln birth cabin with its ramshackle wall and rickety door and lack of a floor was a slam dunk for authenticity, you come across the fine print etched on the museum wall. There you read that the cabin contains not a single scrap of wood from Lincoln’s actual cabin, not a splinter or a knot. No, it is entirely a fabrication based on some modern carpenter’s idea of Lincoln’s cabin, composed from a tree that may at one time have grown up near Lincoln or at least in the Midwest. But there are no guarantees, since the actual birth cabin decayed ages ago and nothing at all is known about it. Now, the subject of this fine essay is souvenirs, and the quack Lincoln cabin is not technically a souvenir, since it isn’t for sale. And yet one can buy a miniature plastic replica of it in the museum--a knockoff of a knockoff, as it were. And I did, in fact I bought two, an extra as a gift for my mother, who may have known Lincoln. And I wasn’t the only one buying them. That’s how perfect is our thirst for souvenirs. We buy knockoffs of knockoffs.
Such consumerism is deeply ingrained in us Americans. I’m sure that somewhere in Russia there reposes a Lenin birth cabin, and deep inside China the Mao birth cabin stands proudly as an inspiration to the common people, both buildings inauthentic down to their termites. But the difference is that in the autocratic regimes of Russia and China, only Western visitors purchase the souvenir cabins--mainly Yankee tourists, as I mentioned. Whereas in America, even the natives buy the kitsch. We can’t live without it.
But to return to Hodgenville, home to the Lincoln Museum and counterfeit Lincoln birth cabin. The town shows, to put it mildly, the ravages of Abe Enterprises. There is a Lincoln Restaurant, a Lincoln Hotel, a Lincoln Law Firm, and even a Lincoln Laundromat. The place has the biggest tourist trade buildup I’ve seen outside of Niagara Falls. It was, of course, Hodgenville’s Lincoln Gift Shop that drew my immediate attention. Here, famished for souvenirs, I paid five dollars for a bust of Lincoln chiseled from a lump of bauxite coal, which has since crumbled to oily dust in my house, to go along with my cheap model of the faux birth cabin. For ten dollars more, I picked up a miniature backwoods axe that was suitable for splitting miniature backwoods rails, or would be if it weren’t so flimsy. It was manufactured in South Korea, and perhaps those small if well-intentioned people underestimate the Great Emancipator’s size and strength.
A few miles, or knobs, down the road, as I discovered on leaving Hodgenville, the Daniel Boone Industry was in boom mode. I saw electric signs bearing the frontiersman’s name and a number of shops doing a brisk trade in buckskin jackets and raccoon tail caps. But I didn’t stop, though I could have done with a squirrel vest, since I was hellbent for the home of Stephen Foster, composer of “My Old Kentucky Home,” in Bardstown about 30 knobs away. I was in the market for a Stephen Foster toy banjo for my son, who is musical, and maybe a Stephen Foster memorial plate for the wife, who eats off plates. I didn’t even care if I saw the place. I just wanted the souvenirs.
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