May 25, 2024

After years of these trips, we inevitably find ourselves repeating certain themes.  Enroute to our destination, we pass a truly remarkable center of commerce, BOOMLAND! 

Yes, it deserves those capital letters.  In an earlier blog post, I described it as the acme of Southern kitsch.  Perhaps I was unfair.  Well, no I wasn’t.  It is that.  But that fails to do it justice.  It is difficult to describe the sheer scale of the place, dedicated as it is to the American ethos that too much of everything is just not enough.

The outside promises Specialty Food! (Mostly pizza and hamburgers,)Gifts and Collectibles! (depends on what you want to collect, I guess.) Home Decor! (If you want to do your home in contemporary American tacky.) And of course, FIREWORKS!!!

We visited the one in Charleston, MO (up to this point, I was never sure which location we were visiting.  There are two of them, because one just is not enough.) Just beyond the rocking chair, one is greeted with a huge variety of baseball caps.  One of the employees greeted me with enthusiasm when I walked in the door.  I had forgotten that I was wearing one that I had purchased a few years ago.  This is decidedly red territory, so unsurprisingly, the hats tend to celebrate religion, conservative politics, or both.  I do not know if I would have been as cheerfully greeted if I wore my “Make America Not Embarrassing Again” hat.  A couple years back, Andy purchased a “Bikers for Jesus” hat, but it is a pretty good guess that the locals are not attuned to irony.

Beyond that, there is just loads and loads of STUFF! I am no arbiter of women’s fashion, but a woman could purchase an entire wardrobe here.  Then there are the knickknacks and the like.  It is like if you gathered every truck stop and tourist trap in the state, loaded it up with fireworks, then just set the whole thing off. STUFF EVERYWHERE!

Bears, trolls, dragons, angels, just about any other kind of figurine you can figure, a selection of children-sized t-shirts big enough to outfit several kindergartens and a section of junk food big enough to keep them all on a sugar high for weeks, signs, crosses, an entire section of furniture. 

Almost inevitably with all that stuff, some of it is actually pretty nice. There is a lovely antique amoire for sale, and a beautiful antique piano in the dining area. Even the enormous rocking chair, though too big for anyone to comfortably sit in is a fine piece of furniture. Unfortunately that stuff gets lost in ocean of merchandise.

But my favorite section is always the hot sauce!  I do not know what these different concoctions taste like, and I am not brave enough to try and find out, but the names are just amazing.  There is an entire brand of varieties named after uncomfortable bodily functions.  Butt Pucker, Sphincter Shrinker, Anal Angst, Flaming Flatulence!  The theme is carried on by other producers as well.   Blow Out, Backfire, Colon Cleaner, Xtreme Regret!  Wait, this is supposed to make you want to buy the stuff?

Beyond the ones promising gastrointestinal suffering are others promising destruction of one kind or another.  Vicious Viper, Widow No Survivors, Lethal Gator, Bad to the Bone, Extreme Damage, A Little Nuke, Hellfire, Lucifer’s Last Blast, Road Kill, Mustard Gas.

Lunch, served in a dining room/airplane hanger and featuring a menagerie of deceased animals, was tolerable, if not outstanding. There are plenty of alternatives. The pork cutlet sandwich that I had was pretty good. Jim reports the cornbread muffin he had was terrible. I did not try any of the hot sauce.

I did pick up a couple jars of freshly canned stuff because it looked interesting and it was on sale. This is the kind of thinking pursuades one to purchase a two-pound bag of ground glass because it’s cheap and is bound to come in handy some day, but jars of tomato preserves and blackeyed pea relish sound interesting , and did not require much of an investment.

But the drawing card of course is the fireworks.

Again, the sheer scale of the place is intimidating. It is the size of a large supermarket with lots of signs proclaiming “No Smoking,” (to which I want to reply, “No $#1+”)

Here are a couple of my favorites. Dance in the Rain seems positively pleasant, but would seem to create some problems if you want to set off fireworks. I have no idea where Pickled Parrot came from.

The names seem to change from year to year, though some themes seem to be constant. Lots of reference to patriotism and the military of course. And then various provocative names. Sexually suggestive names seem to be in vogue this year. Sassy with a label of long feminine legs, Sexy Rider, Trophy Wife, Dirty Little Secret, and one with a pirate on it called Chasing Booty. (Booty! Get it?)

Certainly no shortage of things that make bright sparks and go boom. But when we were last here, things were just opening up again after the Covid Pandemic, supplies of lots of things were short, and Boomland’s shelves were half empty. For better or worse, it is good to see the country return to something resembling normal. It might even make the idea of exploding poop seem like a good idea.

No, probably not.