Journey to the Centre of the Universe
By Michael J Logsdon (The J is for Jules)
The names and characters and anything else I felt like in this story have been fictionalized
There were clues that should have signified something was amiss. Seemingly random events that I should have connected.
It all started with a trip to Montana in late September. We were travelling in a rented Cadillace Deville to Glacier National Park. When we got there almost all of the accomodations were closed for the season (it was late September, remember? That was only two sentences ago) except for the West Glacier Lodge. Having no other options we stayed in one of their cabins for the night, a cabin that we would soon learn to be haunted.
There was an area in the middle of the cabin that should have had a closet, but there was no way to get to the inside and it emitted a strange "Woooooh" noise. Then there was the scraping sound coming from the outside wall of the cabin, and every 30 minutes through the night we could hear a ghost train pass in the distance. It sounded just like a regular train but I'm sure it was a ghost train because that fit better with the rest of the cabin. And worst of all, the television only had 2 channels. Thankfully one of them was PBS and I was still able to watch my Friday night "Mclaughlin Group." We slept fitfully despite the strong odor of disinfectant and woke up at five in the morning and headed into the park.
That was when the first real sign came. We drove on a road called the "Going to the Sun Road" over Logan Pass, and if you read the title of this you already know that that was an omen.
The second omen came while driving back through Montana into Idaho that afternoon. We were cruising stylishly down I-90 in the Caddy when I suddenly looked around and realized that there were no other cars. Surely this isn't happening, I thought, how could we be the only vehicle in sight on a well-traveled interstate. But ten minutes went by without seeing a single other car. Surely, something was amiss, cosmically amiss.
We arrived in Wallace, Idaho that evening, a small mining town near the Montana border. There were no rooms available at the local Best Western but the person there referred us to the Stardust Motel. Again, those of you who read the title should realize the significance of that last sentence. I can't stress enough how important the title is to this piece.
Anway, we walked around downtown Wallace looking for dinner and just checking out the town in general. For some reason, there were police officers standing around by intersections and several barricades had been set up. While walking back to the hotel after dinner we saw spotlights shining into the night sky. Uncle Bruce couldn't take it any more so he asked one of the police officers what was going on.
"Oh, I think they're dedicating the center of the universe over there sometime tonight. They must be for all the hassle they're making us go through."
Of course, we all shrugged that statement off as hyperbole from a cop who was disgruntled about a public event booking his Saturday night. But we kept asking around and finally got a time: nine o'clock. So we went back to our motel room to wait about 30 minutes until going to the social event. To simulate that downtime in the story, I'm going to use this time to introduce the cast of characters. There was me, of course, and I was travelling with my brother Ben and my Uncle Bruce. In the relationship of story time to real time, that was probably close to 30 minutes, so lets move on. A little before nine we went to the intersection with the most activity to see what was going on. We stood there on the street corner in the dark among a small group of people who had come out for the event. Keep in mind that we had been up since five, driven through a national park, went on a hike, and driven back into Idaho, so the following events seemed even stranger than they already were.
It started with a low rumbling sound in the distance. The sound got closer and closer, until it turned the corner into the street in the form of a marching band. The band was followed by a lodge worth of half-drunk Elks members and the mayor who all congregated in the center of the intersection around a manhole that had been roped off with police tape. The mayor made a speech, from which we found out that this manhole was being dedicated as the center of the universe. Everything felt so surreal, standing under the several streetlights in the middle of the intersection: standing with what was probably the entire town of Wallace in a circle around a manhole and the mayor.
In the Mayor's speech he outlined a panel he had put together to deal with disputes arising about whether Wallace, Idaho really is the center of the universe. The panel consisted of famous and deceased gangsters. The mayor also explained that since nobody can prove that downtown Wallace isn't the center of the universe, then downtown Wallace must be the center of the universe. It all made sense in a strange sort of way.
After the Mayor's speech Uncle Bruce walked up to him and personally thanked him for making our road trip much more entertaining, and Ben and I both shook the Mayor's hand. At the center of the universe.
We went back to our motel rooms and slept a deep sleep uninterupted by dreams.
The next morning we were eating breakfast in a restaurant and casually mentioned to the waitress how entertained we were by the events of the previous evening.
"What are you talking about, I didn't hear about that happening."
"Downtown last night the Mayor dedicated a manhole as the Centre of the Universe, you didn't hear about that?"
"If this is a joke I don't get it. Nothing out of the ordinary happened here downtown last night."
Huh. That was unusual. So we decided to verify our perceptions by going back to the intersection to see the Centre of the Universe manhole. Not only was there no Centre of the Universe manhole, there was no manhole at all in that intersection. Now things were getting strange, but I remembered that I had taken pictures of it with my digital camera; so I got out the camera and set it on review pictures mode. There was a picture of the manhole in the camera.
© 2004, Michael Logsdon