People Still Listen to "Free Bird" for Fun

I have returned, and with a new look. I don't know how less than ten posts merits a considerable redesign...attribute that to a certain restlessness of spirit.

I don't profess to be a world traveler, because I haven't traveled the entire world, or even that much of it. I have jumped off cliffs in Greece, seen women breast feed on the streets of Italy, seriously considered purchasing an all-leather Toronto Blue Jays hat in the SkyDome, and even settled for ramen in Tokyo because that's what you eat when the only thing you know how to say in Japanese is "Hey Junichiro Koizumi, I'm lookin' for the can." Yet there is much soil I have not set foot on and much contaminated water I have not gulped.

Perhaps the most appealing of vacation destinations, to me, is not anywhere that has been featured on MTV Spring Break or The Da Vinci Code or the Fear Street series (Goosebumps represent). Rather, I reserve a special corner in my heart, right next to the guy ahead of me in the line at Best Buy, who, at some undoubtedly low point in his life decided it would be a good idea to get the symbols from Led Zeppelin IV tattooed on his forearm, for the lake town in the vein of Dirty Dancing. Usually a loose confederation of backwater metropolises held together by an economic rush that comes with the changing of the seasons, you know these places. You've been there. Or worse, you like Dirty Dancing with its time-traveling soundtrack. Each vacation spot has its own hijacked OBX regalia and countless microscopic vendors that pepper the landscape with goods of negative value, which include the zenith of all decorative items for one's lake house, Margaritaville-inspired phrases with corresponding artwork. Personally, Jimmy, I don't care how great the lake is, I'm crying with the saints about the state of the sinners.

What is it? Nostalgia? The something-for-everyone idea that more exclusive locales like East Timor lack? The relative proximity of lakes in some states? Imagine the aggravation Minnesota residents endure when picking which lake to go to every summer. Actually, after some research, I have come up with a few things. Minnesota is a land of lies. It is not the "Land of 10,000 Lakes," but more like the "Land of 11,842 Lakes." This means one thing: the Minnesota DMV is clearly against the War on Terror and is loaded with insurgents. We should really put all of our eggs in one basket at this point, and that basket lies with the last bastion of hope, Alaska, land of over three and a half million lakes. Good God. Incidentally, the growers cooperative Land O'Lakes, is in Wisconsin, which has never made any outrageous claims regarding the enumeration of small bodies of water within its borders. Lakes have more prominence in America than any one of us originally thought. Back to "Free Bird"...

It is the timelessness of the whole scene that has won me over. Not in the "nobody puts Baby in the corner" sense, but in the weather-beaten, wooden signs dotting the road that are stained green from overgrowth, and the gas stations, houses, and restaurants that haven't had fresh coats of paint since that moon landing hoax thing. The appeal lies in water and the possibility of Fortean creatures roaming the depths, although "Fortean creatures" and "depths" are terms used most liberally here. Everything has been held back decades, almost as if time only chooses to advance three months per year. At these lake resorts, Mr. Gorbachev hasn't torn down any walls and Elian Gonzalez isn't a twinkle in anyone's eye, thankfully. Sure, the ways to get to these places and the methods of transportation once one is on the water have changed dramatically, and thankfully so. I can attest to that personally, having used herculean strength to save a Sea Doo from joining Davy Jones' Locker and Marina. Read: it almost done sunk.

These places will never lose their luster. Why? They don't have any luster, and they never did. They are the most primal and basic destinations for fun of any sort. It is essentially like going to someone else's house for a while. Which is true, unless you have a house of your own, and then I must cast judgment upon you for any Jimmy Buffet sayings attached to the walls of your abode.

Tangents have formed their own tangents which have formed rival tangent clubs in this entry, I know. Allow me one last attempt to distill the principal idea here.

Change is certainly a constant. I have watched my hometown fall to the mercy of developers as worthless sprawl engulfed a place that had enough sprawl anyway. These lake towns are different. When time beckons them to proceed into the future, they calmly resist and retreat to the past. There is a certain element of escapism in them. You can see it in the rickety wooden structures, in the glass ketchup bottles, in the analog gas pumps, and in the long miles of greenery dotted by the occasional home. These are places where people do, in fact, still listen to "Free Bird" for fun, where the irony of the disasterpiece has not quite reached some locales. They oblige progress only at the slightest increments, and unfortunately that has come with OBX lookalike merchandise and big box stores, but life is not perfect. But it might have been with that leather Toronto Blue Jays hat. If only.