August 2011


Mount Rushmore souvenirs that don’t look like Mount Rushmore

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Girl, you know it’s true. Mount Rushmore is empty-calorie patriotism, but it’s pretty. Local concerns overbuilt the amenities so much in the 1990s so that they’re still paying them off. Merely parking a car costs $11. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum took extreme care in rendering his four subjects accurately, but the piles of tourist junk hawked… Read more »



Thrifty rental car requires your gas receipt now

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When I rented a car at the Tulsa airport, I knew I was dealing with an officious company when I told the clerk my phone number and said she needed two. “I only use a mobile phone,” I lied. “We need two. It’s policy. In case you don’t return the car.” (“I could just give… Read more »


On the scene at the World’s Longest Yard Sale

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I traveled to rural Tennessee to cover a uniquely American shopping experience: a yard sale, annually held over the first weekend in early August, that spans some 675 miles of one highway. It’s called, not undeservedly, the World’s Longest Yard Sale.

We can feel comfortable that the Chinese are unlikely to covet this world record and swipe it from us, partly because they made most of the junk for sale at this one.