Driving up a two-lane highway into the hills, I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the road. I wanted to look at everything. Just off the road there isn’t much to see; a beat up shack in the woods, a closed-up-for-winter bait shop. But the sun was setting, hazy and orange, a yolk that broke and spilled down the side of a hill covered with barren brown trees. So far, I like winter in the hills of Missouri.

The two-lane road changed into four lanes and lead me to the resort I’ll be staying in for the next few days. The stark, sepia beauty of the lonely road up changed into a half-shut wasteland for the summer BBQ and JetSki crowd. The road must be insane in the summer, but now, in winter, I can drive less than the speed limit with no one riding my ass. I looked at everything. Conoco, gas $2.18 a gallon. Miniature Golf. Grog ‘n’ Grub, Steak ‘n’ Ale.

My first night here, I was sick. My energy is still pretty low and I fear I won’t ever have enough on this trip to walk around this resort, which is vast. I have visions of sweaty, hormone-fueled boys trying to get just-as-horny girls to go up into the woods with them. Parents shouldn’t be scared of myspace.com, they should be scared of those woods. Summer here must scream promise. I could come back here and write a twisted young adult novel. Maybe could get Oprah to hate me. Maybe not.

Yesterday, I drove into town with a mission. Ray had told me he heard a radio spot advertising marriage vow renewal at a Walmart drive-thru. The renew-ees will be presented with a rose and frame-able proof that, they did indeed get their vows renewed at Walmart. I had to go and see if this insanity was true.

I’ve only been to Walmart once, to buy a phone for my grandmother, and it was a small Walmart, no bigger than a Target or a K-Mart. The Osage Beach, Missouri Walmart, however, is like the mother of all Walmarts. Like a small city that threatened to swallow me whole. It reminded me of Auchan or Panorama in Italy. I love those places, because they sell a thousand different pastas and wine out of the barrel along with their Barbies and barbeques. I must admit, I was almost as fascinated by this uber-Walmart. For one thing, they sold mini-muffins. You’d think in Walmart, the muffins would be really big, right? No, straight from the bakery, a eight-piece pack of bite sized muffins. I looked for regular sized muffins, but all I could find were donuts. Maybe they were in between the bicycle tires and the laundry detergent. I got grapes and oranges and made my move.

My cashier looked exactly like what I thought a Walmart cashier in the Ozarks would look like. Scraggly hair, missing teeth, a large, protruding wart-like item on her chin. Maybe Walmart, as a concept, is bad for America, but they are definitely giving people jobs. “Ahem,” I said to the cashier. “Do you, uh, know anything about this thing on Valentine’s Day where you can get your marriage vows renewed?”

“I dunno anything about that,” she said. I told her about the radio spot. “Really?” she said. “WILMA! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT GETTIN’ MARRIED HERE ON VALENTINE’S?” I felt my face go five shades of red. Wilma came over. “I dunno,” she said. “We did that last year though.” Then Wilma hollers “DEBBIE! ARE WE DOING THAT DRIVE THROUGH VOW RENEWAL TENT IN THE PARKING LOT AGAIN THIS YEAR?” The line is backing up as Debbie comes over. “Yep, we had to order extra roses for it,” she says and walks away. “Debbie is a manager,” Wilma says. “You can probably get more info over in customer service,” the cashier says.

Well now, after all that, I gotta. So I go to customer service, and ask the woman behind the counter if she knows anything. She doesn’t but calls over a guy who is either gay, or merely acts and looks gay. I’m not sure – a gay Walmart manager in the Ozarks? I feel like this guy is for sure going to know that I’m not married and that even if I was I would probably not be into renewing my vows in a Walmart parking lot. Sheepishly, I cover my left hand with my right as he tells me, yes, indeed: on Valentine’s Day, there will be a tent in the parking lot, and you and your other half can drive through and, without leaving the comfort of your car, renew your marriage vows, and get a certificate of renewal and a single red rose. I thanked him, stifling a “wow, that’s SO romantic,” and walked away, out of the Twilight Zone and into the winter dusk.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 7:37 am and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.