Sometimes we take a vacation all together. To Silver Dollar City where they recreate pioneer days, and also Wild West days and gold rush days, and dust bowl days. They recreate all the difficult, dirty days. The City itself is made of dirty streets of straw and mulch, and black asphalt. People dressed as train engineers drive golf carts around on the mulch and asphalt parts. People dressed like pioneer ladies stir big kettles of lye soap and big kettles of pork rinds, and other edible and nonedible things that are brewed in kettles. But I like it. I like the gadgets, and the soap makers, and the pork rinds, and how there are weird candies and raft rides. My dad likes the bluegrass bands, but sometimes we can’t afford the tickets for the week with the bluegrass bands, so we have to go during the festival of crafts. My dad likes this almost as well. He is a man who enjoys a craft, apparently. He especially likes the quilts that are mostly made by hand by what seem like genuine old ladies. I don’t know about this thing my dad has for the quilts, but he likes them. Sometimes we drive out of our way to go to a farmhouse where he looks at the quilts a lady makes and then purchases a quilt. He does not use this quilt for a bedspread, but instead has a wooden rack where he displays his quilt. He can only afford one at a time. Quilts are not cheap.
But we like it—we like the Silver City. It is in the mountains. We think it is in the mountains, anyway. On the way we stop and look at the giant Christ. He is perched on the mountain and his arms are stretched out, and you look at him through a telescope from the parking lot of a barbeque restaurant and gift store. This doesn’t seem at all odd to me at the time. We get photographed in the parking lot. I am in a romper. I only ever dress in rompers my grandmother makes from what looks like beach towels. Rompers are ideal! Nothing has ever existed more ideal than a romper! I am pleased with myself in my yarn and romper. My brother looks grim. He’s not happy about any of it. He is in Adidas and jeans and a baseball shirt, but he has a cowboy hat in his hand because he is about to transition from being into skateboards to being into bull riding.
Then we are suddenly in the Silver City. We walk around in packs admiring the crafts and sometimes going on a ride where you get splashed at the end, which is necessary because it is so hot. It is hotter here than anywhere it seems and smells more like tar, and also more like wood chips, but I receive many things as we walk around, because of the vendors that show you their wares. My dad is the spirit of generosity in the Silver City.
I receive two garters. My dad takes one off the leg of the saloon girl, and then I take one off the arm of the dandy. The saloon girl has fishnets and several tiers of polyester ruffles slit up to her hip socket. She wiggles her shinbone and winks at my dad. The dandy leans down and flexes his shirtsleeve. Even at five, I know that my deal is the less sexy deal. My dandy is a pretty average teenager, and this is the era of the Bruce Jenner physique—fed on cereal, built for knee socks. The dandy is waxed. His whiskers are fake, the shirtsleeves are inauthentic, but when I pull off the garter, the saloon girl catcalls anyway, to heighten the effect. It’s a hint: a hint at a world beyond the spectacle, where something adult takes place.
Later we take a tintype. I am bribed with taffy and almond bark. They bribe my brother with down time, bribe him with getting to be alone after. We climb into costumes that are only a front. They velcro in the back, or tie like hospital gowns. The attendants put a big hat on my mother, one with ostrich feathers. They slap a leather vest on my brother and put him in the back row in the picture. My dad is a sheriff or a gunfighter—same costume but with star or without star, depending. I am in a standard Laura Ingalls Wilder farm frock. They take out my yarn, and I get my ponytails made pigtails by some older lady in a similar frock, but one that goes all the way around her. Because she has to be there all day, she gets to be viewed in the round. She likes my dad and talks about how good he looks in the suit. My dad winks at everyone all the time. My mother in her gaudy ostrich hat forgets and smiles when they take the picture, and it ruins the whole thing, so my dad and I do one on our own. It’s better: we look like the grim period, the period of hardship.