Side Dish: The Corn Palace 5/25/14

London. Paris. Rome. Mitchell. South Dakota, as if you had (or cared) to ask. The proud as a peacock home of a Prehistoric Indian Village that may or may not be as authentic as a ride at Disneyland. A prairie oasis of fat, fatter, and begging for a series on TLC. A windswept diversion off the interstate that inexplicably features a "George McGovern Legacy Museum" for the man who, to this day, remains the biggest loser in the history of presidential politics. Given these testaments to the forgotten and the damned, it stands to reason that, at the center of town, bursting at its corn-cobbed seams, is the real reason any red-blooded American crosses that city boundary: The World's Only Corn Palace. If its description reeks of self-importance, never you mind. It has earned it the hard way: daring to consume its city block much like the dutiful, gorging masses who've kept it a centerpiece of Roadside America since 1892. Fine, its lofty status wasn't even possible until the Eisenhower Interstate System, but you get the idea. If you're going to be more than a dying hamlet in flyover country, you'd better have a gimmick. A hook. A reason to stop the damn car other than dynamite beef jerky. For the Corn Palace, that reason is - wait for it - corn. Millions of ears over the years, fashioned into delightfully gawdy murals, messages, and patriotic banter. So what if it looks like it belongs in Moscow's Red Square.

Let's be clear: if you're a mover, a shaker, a doer, or anyone even remotely forward-thinking, the Corn Palace is bound to offend. There's an inherent silliness, of course, to its mere existence, but more than that, its continued survival challenges our very concept of progress. If it lives (and it does, if the teeming masses on this day are any indication), it is solely through attrition. That, and our capacity to preserve the very thing that is killing us softly on any given day. We've moved on, from iPhones to Twitter, yet the old-fashioned, garishly idiotic continues to challenge that sense of advancement. When we can communicate instantly with a loved one across the globe, why on earth would anyone be awed by 275,000 ears of corn, per the brochure, "sawed in half lengthwise and nailed to the building following patterns created by local artists"? Because, despite the blips and burps of technology, we remain a cartoonish people. And for that, I thank the very stars that mock us with their indifference. For if, one day in the not-too-distant future, we suddenly upped and burned our Corn Palaces to the ground, I'd leap upon the conflagration without a moment's hesitation or regret. Because, let's face it, the loss of the Corn Palace would not represent us moving on, only its pretense. And if the great monument at 604 N. Main Street symbolizes anything, it's the truth. Not partial, end-around truth, but the whole damn thing. I've said it before: there's more Americana in a singular roadside atrocity than a thousand well-scrubbed museums. And we're at our best when we come clean about it.

 

And what is that truth, you might ask? That if anything defines us, it's the need to be distracted at all costs. For a minute, for an hour; increasingly, for a lifetime. At one point, a place like the Corn Palace did the trick, but now that it's long passed the authenticity stage, pausing briefly at irony, only to double back to a post-ironic authenticity that approaches farce, it will take much more to keep us interested. Or will it? Why, after all, do so many come? Because the atlas tells us to? Because we want to feel superior to such blatant kitsch? Because this is the one and only time dad gets to make a decision while on vacation? All of the above, and more, though I suspect 9 in 10 couldn't provide a coherent answer. But one by one, as if on cue, we arrive, we stare, we snap photos, and without fail, buy cheap crap we couldn't possibly want or need when not seduced by the romance of the road. Take the t-shirt: who but a madman would wear such an admission of failure when not among the strangers of a distant locale? And what's really behind the drive to consume a corn-shaped sucker, massive popcorn ball, or a strip of venison jerky that could double as a meter stick? Perhaps, at the end of the day, we're paying the ultimate respect to high-fructose corn syrup, the very thing most responsible for our sagging frames and clogged arteries. Like tributes before a god.

So is that it, then? Staring at "corn art" and the waddling maniacs who spent a small fortune to share the stage? Perhaps, but the Corn Palace is more than mere eye candy. As a fully functional piece - a concert hall on one hand, a gymnasium on the other - it's Mitchell's social center, in addition to being the siren song for the big, blobby blur of roadside rubbish. Still not a believer? What if I told you that William Jennings Bryan gave a speech here during his 1900 presidential campaign? Or that Lawrence Welk brought his bubbles - not once, not twice, but thrice? And then there's Louie Anderson. And Kenny Rogers. Willie Nelson, Eddie Rabbit, Charlie Daniels, Weird Al Yankovic, and in August of this year, Pat Benatar. It's where the stars came (and come) to shine. For the locals, a place to graduate, play a ball game, or chat about hog futures. No mere relic gathering dust in the corner, the Corn Palace lives and breathes with the people themselves; a South Dakota marvel that happens to bring the country together like little else in the region. On this relatively quiet May afternoon, one can't help but summon the sights and sounds of one of these bigger Mitchell nights; a time when the trappings of farmer and grease monkey alike yield to the more unifying, clarion call of cheesy goodness. As it should be.