i generally spend one meal a week on the new york state thruway and although there are fancier rest stops ("service plazas") out there, ones shaped like items of local importance or ones overlooking grand parts of america, i find the stops in new york more curious than most and the stop at milepost 33 northbound on the thruway uniquely strange. to begin with, there is a farm market on the sidewalk near the multilevel parking structure. in the middle of nowhere. really and truly nowhere. not a huge market, but a serious one. a real one with options ranging from seasonal fruit and vegetables to pies and other sassy pastries. there are jars of jam. i have never seen anyone buy a thing. there is also a hexagonal history kiosk chock full of lore of the hudson valley. in an attempt to include as much as possible, the building's interior columns are made to look like those in larger subway stations, white tile, ornamented with replicas of actual fancy tile images from real live subways.
just as there are two stories to the ridiculous parking garage, there are two stories to the building housing the food and other goodies. the second floor, accessible by elevator or escalator, is some sort of internal balcony hung from the edges of the building, leaving the center open. most people standing under it are getting napkins and straws from a little food accessory station, two bustling floors below. which is why it was not until this last trip while i was waiting for the sweetie that i stared off into what i expected to be empty, anonymous space and noticed a rather impressive octagonal atrium in the center of the second floor ceiling, sectioned off with large wood beams like a pie cut for eating. each slice is painted the blue of the american flag and each slice is sprinkled with stars. or laid out, maybe. they're in neat rows, staggered just like they are on the flag, twenty five to a section. i have not yet found anything like an explanation.
but back to this second floor. you can look down from the railing onto the glory that is the food
court- starbucks, quizznos, sbarro, burger king. or you can turn around and revel in the fact that this floor is home to what might be nine hundred vending machines, including one that sells only pringles and two with a variety of kosher snacks, two penny smashing machines (we have a smashed penny for each of the options except the serenity prayer, which makes me want to punch people when i see/hear its folksy self) and restrooms. now these restrooms are cavernous, at least the one for women is, which generally allows me to sample the joys of six or seven stalls before i find one equipped with both a pee-free toilet area and an actual roll of real live toilet paper.that is just fine, though. because the quest for a cleanish toilet led me to the final stall in the second alcove of the restroom and when i closed the door, "I BELIVE IN A WORLD OF ENDLESS POSSIBILITY" stared at me from the door in black sharpie. pretty big. pretty emphatic. endless is a strong statement. i don't know about endless. but next to the assertion in equally strident scribbling was "TOO BAD YOU CAN'T SPELL" which made me think of the middle sister and her passion for yelling out car windows at farm stands, businesses and teen carwashes when their signs aren't up to her grammatical code. she despises overuse of apostrophes, and rightly so. it always seemed to me if you have a message you want to put out there and it's important and fairly small, you can check to make sure you've got it right. quite a bit of the rest of the world appears to be more forgiving because further over, a third party, clearly trying to vindicate the "beliver", scrawled "TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BELIEVE" but this was not the end. and although there were a few of those someone was here or someone loves some other person type writings, a good part of the rest of the bathroom door was taken up with discussion about whether it was more valuble to have faith or knowledge.
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