Dear Town Near Six Flags That We Ended Up Staying In For Three Days When My Friend’s Car Broke Down,
You are a contradiction: a place so articulate and well-formed that you have the stark outlines of a movie set; a place so strange and singular that sometimes I forget I even know you. In fact I don’t remember your location. Or your name.
If there had been anything to gain from tricking three college students who had gotten stranded by driving a car with a busted radiator through the baking hot “safari” park of a Six Flags – I would have believed you were dragged together by carpenters and casting directors as part of an elaborate hoax. The single taxi in town, the one payphone, the one hotel with one room left and the diner across the street that was the only place to eat, the woman who checked us into the hotel and then, an hour later, took our order at the diner, the mechanic that kept telling us it would be “one more day” – everyone’s deadpan expressions and listless movements made us feel like we were stars in a zombie movie and the director was going to yell “action” any second.
I hate amusement parks. I could say it was a dumb plan and that I was pressured into going in the first place. But it isn’t nice to speak ill of the dead. So all I can say is that it was ill-fated.
My friend put me on a bus back to school. She and her boyfriend broke up after I left. Was it your fault, Town Near Six Flags? Maybe not. But I’m not entirely ruling it out.
-e.