Pipestone

Pipestone

"It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for objects."

Imagine a small Midwestern town of about 5000 people, too big for everyone to know everyone, but not too big for everyone to want to know everyone. That was Pipestone. I'm sure bad things happened there. But it felt like they didn't.

Several people (actually two) had mentioned that the National Monument in Pipestone was worth seeing. This surprised me. Though I was a certified former resident of Minnesota, I had never heard of Pipestone. And strangely, no one could ever really explain to me what Pipestone National Monument was a monument to. So I was curious.

When I got into town, I turned toward the McDonalds. I can always find the McDonalds-that is my sixth sense, evolutionary compensation perhaps for the lack of other directional abilities. I grabbed some French Fries and a SUPERSIZE coke, out of habit more than hunger since I was still full from the Waffle House. It was a clear hot weekend morning and the restaurant was filled with mini-gangs in Soccer uniforms. The noise level was deafening. And heartening.

Slightly intoxicated by the whims of a small town Saturday, I drove a few blocks into the heart of Pipestone. Signs guided me (street signs, not mystical portents) as I searched for Pipestone National Monument.

I got to know Pipestone better and better as I combed the village for signs of Federal Institutions. Once, twice, three times, I drove up and down, end to end, on the street where the monument was supposed to be.

I found city hall.

I found the library.

I found the museum.

I found a tall church of dark red stone and the sun-blanched and rickety remains of a wooden frame paddock or enclosure.

But I couldn't find the monument.

Any monument.

I knew what monuments looked like. I had lived most of my life near Washington DC. Monuments are tall and pointy-shaped like...a monument. You can't miss the Washington monument.

So I drove all over Pipestone looking for something carved in marble, draped in bunting, illuminated by eternal flames with brass plaques on the walls intoning interminable phrases (like this one). There were none to be found.

Finally, I returned to base camp. I soothed my frustration with more French Fries and another SUPERSIZE coke. The Soccer gangs had been replaced by adolescent gender-segregated hordes in skateboard giggling mode.

I munched and thought. I had clear reasons to leave:

I was frustrated.

I was still in Minnesota.

Pipestone was a pipe dream.

Nevertheless, Coke in hand, I again went searching for the monument. Why did I go looking again? There's that old joke:

Q:     Why are things lost always in the last place you look?

A:     Because you stop looking when you find them.

Maybe the answer should be:

A:     Because you only find them when you stop looking.

But then it wouldn't be a joke.

Not expecting to find anything, but also not willing to give up or ask directions, once more I roamed the byways of Pipestone, wandering the same roads I had traversed before, encountering the same buildings, and sometimes the same people, who probably concluded I was casing the city but felt secure in the knowledge that no Outsider could ever descry their monument.

The tumbledown wooden structure again drew my close attention. It might once have been a fort. But it certainly didn't look like a monument.

It wasn't.

The monument was on the other side of the street, marked by a sign three feet high in a wide-open field that stated (in bold red letters):

Pipestone National Monument

I had missed the sign six, maybe eight times, each time enamoured by the ancient wooden fort. Tricky of these inscrutable Midwesterners to hide their monument behind a sign.

When you decide what you're looking for, you decide what you can find.

 (This article was exerpted from Fools'Paradise: A Transcendental Comedy by Stephen Evans, which has been rejected by many of the finest publishers)