The first site that we hit is the 33-foot witch. She looms over the abandoned nursery with her red eyes, pointy nose and flaking grey skin.
“Why is this even here?” my husband asks.
“I think they put her up for Halloween and never took her down,” I say.
“This is horrible,” he says, but he takes a picture and we get back in my parents’ car.
“Are you ready for ‘Giant eagle that flaps its wings’?” my dad asks.
I grew up on Long Island but left over a decade ago to move to the UK, and I’m rediscovering it via the Roadside America app, which promises to unlock ‘offbeat’ attractions. My father downloaded it the day before and we spent a lot of time narrowing down our options. The app has a surprising number of grave-related sites, including the grave of Nixon’s dog Checkers and a historic graveyard in the parking lot of a Home Depot, but we have bigger things in mind. Literally. We are only planning to see things that are stupidly large for no reason.
The eagle has a 20-foot wingspan, but it seems small compared to the witch. Also, we have missed it flapping its wings by about three minutes, since it only flaps on the hour. Disappointed, we walk across the street to the next attraction on our list, a large bust of Hercules draped in a sleeping lion from a 19th century ship. I poke at his delicate tufts of painted armpit hair. He is in better condition than the witch and slightly more impressive than the non-flapping eagle, but we’re eager to move on to what we’re sure will be the highlight of our trip – the giant rooftop hotdog.
The rooftop hotdog captured my imagination as soon as I heard about it. Suddenly, I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten this far in life without seeing a giant rooftop hotdog. As a vegetarian I don’t even eat hot dogs, yet I am excited about seeing a very, very big one. It is the most American thing I can imagine.
We find the hot dog on top of Hot Diggety Dogs, with the back end on the roof and the front end held up by a yellow pole. It it indeed giant, and had a stripe of yellow mustard painted across the top. The sign in front promises the world’s best hot dogs, but the shop is surprisingly empty. My husband gets a hot dog and pronounces it “just okay,” but the fried pickles that I order are a revelation. The breading slides off and they burn my fingers but I continue to eat them, dunking them into a mysterious cream sauce with great enthusiasm.
On the way home we stop at one last attraction, temptingly described as ‘Rooster pulls buggy, spits water.’ We spot it in front of a poultry market – a giant metal rooster attached to an Amish-style buggy. He is flanked by two normal-sized roosters, one of which has fallen over thanks to a broken leg. We wait for him to spit water but he doesn’t. Still, he is amazingly large.
“You need to see The Big Duck sometime,” my father says on the drive home, referring to a shop in the shape of a 30-foot tall duck that was built in the 1930s to sell poultry.
It occurs to me, perhaps for the first time, that I’m lucky to be from Long Island, a place where people don’t seem to ask “Why?” but instead “Why not?” I feel at home amongst these big, weird things that serve no practical purpose.
“I can’t wait,” I say.
About the Author: Katie Lee is an ‘Americanish’ writer who grew up on Long Island but has been living in Britain for the past 11 years.
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