Incredi-Bill: North Platte, Nebraska's Fort Cody Trading Post

Nothing warms the heart of a bored cross-country roadtrip passenger than a good, old-fashioned politically incorrect tourist trap. Such is the case of the Fort Cody Trading Post, just off Interstate 80 in North Platte, Nebraska. North Platte has a genuine claim to fame, as it was the 1880s home of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Not exactly the stay home and collect stamps-type, he got his nickname for killing 4,280 buffalo in an 8-month period during 1867-68. There are lots of good reasons to stop and stretch your legs here: the "fort" is actually a western museum/wild-west-show-in-miniature/kitschy gift shop all housed in a mock stockade (mockade?) complete with soldier mannequins (one with an arrow tastefully stuck in his butt) and a corral out back that is home to a...drumroll, please...Muffler Man Indian! The western museum displays many authentic items, including chaps, guns, boots, spurs, stuffed animals, and some statues of Bill and various Indians. The piece de resistance, though, is a stuffed two-headed calf. The miniature west show is an accurate, if not tiny, diorama of Buffalo Bill's traveling extravaganza from the 1870s. Ernie and Virginia Palmquist carved the 20,000 figures --snake charmers, knife-throwers, fat ladies, cowpunchers, squaws, you name it -- that come to life every half hour in an animated show, free of charge. The gift shop features a glittering array of items to mark the occasion and remember your friends and loved ones by: iron dinner triangles ("Come an' gitit!"), books of western lore, taste-challenged T-shirts, edible bugs, stuffed jackalopes, candy cigarettes and more John Wayne paraphernalia than you can shake a stick at, Pilgrim. And if that's not enough, out back there's a corral with wagons, a tee pee, a buffalo and, yes, the famed 25-foot lantern-jawed brave, girning at you with Native American Muffler Man pride. Muffler Man aficionados will tell you this is a modified classic MM, not the official Indian classification, just so you know. However you categorize him he's awesome, and how.

So don't pass up the chance to see a real kitschy Americana treat the next time you're passing through central Nebraska. And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Southern discomfort: Scenes from the Tennessee-Alabama Fireworks gift shop

As an eccentric roadside traveler unfamiliar with the deep south, I had a preconceived notion of what a 7-day driving trip through the region would have to offer visually. I pictured a Confederate flag flying from every flagpole and a "Git-R-Done" bumpersticker on every car. That was stupid. I saw virtually none of that the whole time I was in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, with the exception of one stop I made heading south from Nashville to Chattanooga on Interstate 24. Two giant fireworks emporiums sit at the bottom of Exit 152: Big Daddy's and Tennessee-Alabama Fireworks. Both have a fine array of retail explosives, billboard-sized signs on their fronts and a smattering of souvenirs to impress the folks back home, but only Tennessee-Alabama dealt in what I was craving: taste-questionable merchandise. Mixed in among the Confederate flags, Civil War icons and framable Elvises was a jaw-dropping display of ceramic Mammy teapots, old-black-manservant salt shakers and smiling-little-black-boys-eating-watermelon toothpick holders.

Watermelon.

In 2010.

Wow.

I consider myself a connoisseur of bad taste and, for my money, this tops them all. An about.com page by Barbara Crews has this to say about this kind of memorabilia:

Although many people consider black memorabilia to be offensive and insulting, it might surprise you to find out many big-time collectors of black memorabilia are, in fact, of African American heritage. Celebrity collectors include Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Bill Cosby and Billy Dee Williams. And oft-times these collectors look for and acquire the most offensive and slave-related pieces. Why? According to Philip Merrill ("Antiques Roadshow" guy), it's a way to remember and preserve the past, and to make sure history is not repeated.

Okay, I feel a little better, now that I know Spike Lee is on board with this. However, these pieces aren't antiques -- they're newly minted. Call me politically correct, but it's hard to picture a factory churning out black-people-eating-watermelon figurines in 2010.