Traveling Feast

I tend to be a bit incredulous on my way to the bathroom at most travel centers.  Why?  It is the nick-nacks offered for sale.

Yesterday though I decided to take a more studied approach to travel center commerce.  On the way from Spokane over to my parents home on Flathead Lake, I determined to try find the MOST OUTRAGEOUS food-related item offered for sale wherever we stopped to visit the loo.  I did just this, took pictures, and intend to let you vote on what you think should be #1.  Yet just the idea of looking for the most outrageous item on display gave me a new clinical distance that offered up general observations as well as some real kitsch contenders.

Observations First: Travel kitsch tends to fall into categories.  There are all the locally-branded items from tee-shirts to mugs and shot glasses.  My favorite in this category yesterday was the Montana mug trying to impersonate a tree trunk.

Most of this seems to be made in China, but is intended to evoke a sense of place far far from Shanghai.  Second there are all the vanity items embossed with your name.  My son Peter’s name is always available on key chains, pens, pipe bombs and the like.  Daughter Megan’s name is equally popular.  It is only our third child, Brendan, who is left out.  Apparently there are enough Brandons in the world to justify a print run, but the Brendans are out of luck.

The third category is the humor category: items intended to make you laugh enough to forget you have no place to put said sign or item when you get home.  For some reason a high percentage of the travel kitsch in the humor category seems to skew toward the crude.

Fourth comes the cheap home decor category with a line up of items destined to gather dust on mantle pieces (much of it with a country/folk/old fashioned feel).

Fifth are the toys guaranteed not to break only until at least the next exit on the Interstate.

Sixth: jewelery.

Seventh: unique local items… often food like hot sauce, jams, candy, and a pancake mix supposedly made by Aunt Alice.  In the case of western Montana, apparently the critical ingredient is a huckleberry.  Maybe in Minnesota it is a walleye trout.

What I’m curious about at the moment is what categories I might have missed.  The specific kitsch from St. Regis should show up for comment soon, but right now let  me know what classic travel kitsch categories I’m missing.

A new category for periodic posts has surfaced recently that offers real potential alongside our Fortune Cookie Files and Food Service Typos.  This category is Food Kitsch.

Kitsch is a classic German/Yiddish word that typically refers to art that is “excessively garish or sentimental… usually considered in bad taste” according to WordNet.  Other definitions toss in adjectives like vulgar, trite, melodramatic, lowbrow, and tasteless. Some of what is clearly kitsch is simply offensive, but there are also examples of kitsch that are curious, over-the-top, and even wonderful in an odd or disturbed way.

Kitsch shows up everywhere, but one place with a particular affinity for kitsch is the kitchen.  We consider this a true delight, and from time to time we’d love to pass along a few examples.

Today, that is a product about to hit the market called Season Shot.

What is it?  It is food-grade ammunition for your shotgun.

I can’t say it better than the Season Shot website itself: “Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact seasoning the meat from the inside out. When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird. Forget worrying about shot breaking your teeth and start wondering about which flavor shot to use!”

One of their slogans is: SHOOTS, KILLS, SEASONS.

Season Shot also celebrates the fact that their shot brings down your bird without any damage to the environment, and will be available in five delicious flavors: Cajun, Lemon Pepper, Garlic, Teriyaki, and Honey Mustard.

The target market?  (chuckle)  Men equally happy with large fire arms and oven mitts.

FOOD KITSCH METER: 7.5

Major interstates provide very little local color.  You have to get on smaller roads or venture deeper into little towns off the exits to find much that doesn’t duplicate what you will find at the next off ramp and the next.  Yet heading west to Long Beach and then up the coast we’ve found a few fun specimens.  Possibly my favorite thus far drove by us tonight.  It was a decked-out car tonight in Cannon Beach that with all sorts of plastic skulls, antennas, and the like on the hood, roof, and trunk as well as other items glued to the doors.  The driver was past before I could whip out the camera, but it looks like the auto is a moving local landmark.  Next time you are in Cannon Beach, look for it.

A few items worth of the term ‘kitsch’ include this giant metal spider halfway up the Oregon coast…

An interesting use of shrubbery near the pump…

And the take of one local artist in the Redwoods of Bigfoot…