054 - Fifty-Four

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[TRANSCRIPT]

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I stopped in at a gas station when I got over the Colorado border and there were some brochures about, you know, various stuff in the area, including a petrified wood building. So that’s where I am now.

It looks like it was actually a gas station itself, or an auto shop, or something. There are a bunch of broken down cars here at least. And it’s...it’s weird—yeah, it’s weird. I wish I could show it to you. It doesn't look like wood at all, it looks like someone very haphazardly mortared together a bunch of misshapen rocks.

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It’s...(laughs) it’s ugly if I’m honest. There’s something charming about that. According to the sign in the front, it’s made of wood that’s 175 million years old. The fact that something that ancient and incredible—I mean, what is petrified wood, even?—has been made into something so...mundane and unappealing is...I don’t know. There’s something very American about it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very, very cool. There’s almost a castle-ish quality to it, the way it’s all jagged at the top. Or like it, I don’t know, like it grew up from the ground.

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I wonder what compelled someone to build this? Where did they get all the wood. Why did they choose this of all things as the purpose to put that wood to.

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No postcard to get this time, so I’ll just have to commit to memory. And maybe you can too, and it’ll be like we both saw it.

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