Roadside America

Anyone who has to drive from DC to anywhere north of Philadelphia knows that traffic on 95 north tends to be brutal. After sitting in traffic around the Delware Memorial Bridge for the seventeenth consecutive time, I finally decided I had had it  - and that I would be boycotting 95 for the rest of my life. Since that point, about two years ago, I have taken to using the interstate highways that go through Pennsylvania. And it was in this way that Roadside America first piqued my interest. The signs for Roadside America begin just before the exit to the town of Shartlesville, a small village whose name suggests that it couldn't possibly be anything but. Prior to my stop at Roadside America, I hadn't spent much time in Shartlesville - but if the billboards in the surrounding area are any indication, the town is known for Pennsylvania Dutch food and gifts, sheepskin jackets, produce stands, and Roadside America.

It's rare that I feel like stopping to look at roadside attraction during a trip between NJ and DC; my plan is usually to hurry home as quickly as possible. But when I saw the entry for Roadside America in 1000 Places to See Before You Die in the USA and Canada, I knew that I wouldn't be able to resist much longer. The temptation to check off the entry in my book was simply too great. So this past Sunday, during my drive back to DC, I decided to make the long-awaited stop. Housed in a building with windows looking only into a gift shop, Roadside America immediately presents an air of mystery. I knew from the entry in 1000 Things that I was about to see "The World's Greatest Indoor Miniature Village," but in a way, I wish I hadn't known. There is just something oddly exciting about a building with an ambiguous name, that promises only "More Than You Expect." After paying a grizzled old woman more than I expected ($6.75 for adults), I was permitted to enter the door leading to the main event. This was less a "Miniature Village" than a "Miniature Metropolis." To look at the landscape in front of you is something akin to looking at all of Berks County, Pennsylvania on Google Earth. It is a mish-mash of trains, mountains, trees and buildings - and people and animals. I've been describing the whole scene to people as a "toy train village," but this is about as inadequate as calling Philadelphia a "train city." Yes, there are trains. There are also many other interesting things that have nothing to do with trains. In fairness, the exhibit cheats a little bit by using mirrors to make it look roughly four times its actual size - but its actual size is still significant. As 1000 Things notes, the village is richly detailed, containing "10,000 trees and countless other tiny touches." A complimentary pamphlet identifies many of these details, but as it turns out, this is mostly just for the diehards. After politely looking up each of the points on the pamphlet, I decided it was probably a better idea to admire the work as a whole, and to find my own details. One of my favorites that wasn't in the pamphlet: the men and women in the Luray Caverns section of the exhibit (in its own special corridor) are dressed in their formal attire.

Roadside America is an anthropological artifact from a culture that did things like wearing suits and dresses on a voyage into an underground cavern. But the beginning of the exhibit, which suggests that the village is going to a recreation of Pleasantville, is just the tip of the iceberg. The village is in effect a pageant of the most romanticized pieces of American culture. Around the bend from Pleasantville we come to the old frontier, where by pressing a little button, you can make the old blacksmith hammer away at the old anvil, or make a line of cows trot one by one into some sort of building with no windows (What could it be?). Only here do we find an airstrip on one side of the town, and a covered wagon on the other.

The cynic in me wants to find something in Roadside America to mock - but I'm not sure it's possible. This is an irony-free zone. The entire village is unabashedly patriotic and god-fearing (a picture of J.C. himself, spreading his arms in blessing, is projected onto the wall once every half hour.) People who mock It's a Wonderful Life aren't funny - they are jaded, bitter individuals and I feel sorry for them. The same goes for anyone who would dare say a discouraging word about Roadside America.

Signs on walls of R.A. politely discourage running. And yet during my entire trip to the village, three kids - two girls and a boy, all red-headed - were running amok as their ineffectual father screamed, "Stop it!" (Do parents in the greater Shartlesville area just spend every weekend taking their kids to Roadside America? "Come on kids! We're going to see the fake zoo again!") I'll grant that this was annoying - but only until I looked back at the people of the village, doing good work, reading their bibles, minding their mothers and fathers. Children here were incapable of disobeying - just as parents were incapable of yelling.