Among the many pleasures of traveling around rural America is the likelihood of coming upon a striking monument in the middle of nowhere. Winding back roads that for miles and miles have run quietly through woodlands or along cotton fields will be suddenly marked by giant crosses or a pylon of hand-lettered signs. In the Midwest, you’ll often see a fiberglass dinosaur or other giant creature constructed by some well-intentioned civic organization and intended to draw highway traffic to local businesses. In the South, however, what you see are intensely personal creations, built by eccentric and often outcast individuals (99 percent of them men), and instead of acting as an advertising gimmick, they usually spout chapter and verse of scripture, warning about the impending Apocalypse or the inevitable coming of Judgment Day.
Among the Deep South roadside shrines, don’t miss the one that stands outside Margaret’s Grocery (601/638-1163), along Business US-61 on the north side of Vicksburg, Mississippi, at 4535 N. Washington Street. At a glance, the assemblage of huge hand-lettered signs atop various red-and-white constructions resembles a fanatical Legoland (see page 99). The biblically inspired injunctions are worth at least a pause, but caveat visitor: The friendly owners will talk your ears off if you aren’t careful.
Further east, within a short drive of US-80 in Prattville, northwest of Montgomery, Alabama, W. C. Rice constructed an intense garden of white crosses that resembles a military cemetery.
The best known of these “Gardens of Revelation,” as scholar John Beardsley has called them in his excellent book of the same name, is Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden (Mon.–Sat. 10 am–5 pm; donations; 706/857-0323), near Summerville in the Appalachian foothills of northwest Georgia. Recently famous for his primitivist paintings, which appeared on album covers by rock bands like REM and Talking Heads, Finster (who died in 2001) created a series of Gaudi-esque shrines, embedding seashells, bits of tile, and old car parts into concrete forms. Pictures of Henry Ford, Hubert Humphrey, and Hank Williams are arrayed alongside dozens of signs quoting scripture, but the spirit of the place is best summed up by Finster’s own verse: “I built this park of broken pieces to try to mend a broken world of people who are traveling their last road.” Only two hours from Atlanta, the Paradise Garden is now one of the more popular attractions in the area. To get there, make your way to Summerville, then head north on US-27 for three miles to Pennville.
These roadside shrines are by no means limited to states south of the 35th Parallel; northern states have their share as well, including two of the most intense: the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas, and the Dickeyville Grottoes in Iowa.
