My husband and I were driving down I-65, still in Tennessee but near the Alabama border, when a statue of a giant chicken caught my eye.
我和丈夫開車沿著I-65號州際公路行駛時,在田納西州、但靠近阿拉巴馬州邊界的地方,我看到了一個巨大的雞的雕像。
It was standing in front of a truck stop near Elkton.
它矗立在埃爾克頓附近的一個卡車站前。
I am grateful to be married to a man who will instantly pull off the highway when someone says, "Hey, let's take a selfie with that chicken!"
我很感激能嫁給這樣一個男人,他會在某個人說“讓我們和那只雞拍張照片吧”的時候,立即駛離高速公路。
That particular chicken is an advertisement for the Shady Lawn Truck Stop's fried-chicken plate. It is wearing a chef's hat.
那個特別的雞的雕像是陰暗的草坪卡車站的炸雞的廣告。它戴著廚師帽。
Its wings hold a giant fork and a giant carving knife underneath them. The combination makes for a troubling message:
它的翅膀下夾著一把巨大的餐叉和一把巨大的切肉刀。這一組合傳遞出了一個令人不安的信息:
chicken as both dinner and diner. It is also covered with graffiti, mostly people's names but also an exhortation to "Read More."
晚餐和用餐者都是雞。它也布滿了涂鴉,大多是人們的名字,但也有“多讀書”的勸誡。
Unlike the existential conflict at the heart of the chicken's identity, that's a message I had no trouble decoding.
不像既存的雞的身份的核心沖突,我輕易地就把這個信息破解獲取了。
Between Nashville and the Alabama Gulf Coast, where my husband and I were heading, there are quite a few unusual roadside attractions.
在納什維爾和我丈夫和我要去的阿拉巴馬海灣沿岸之間,有一些不尋常的路邊景點。
An actual NASA Saturn rocket, all 168 feet of it, is posed as if for blastoff at the Alabama welcome center near Ardmore.
在阿德莫爾附近的阿拉巴馬歡迎中心,一枚真正的NASA土星火箭,全部168英尺長,擺出要發射的姿勢。
The Ave Maria Grotto, where a Benedictine monk built 125 miniature replicas of famous buildings, religious sites,
圣瑪利亞石窟,一位本篤會修道士在這里建造了125個著名建筑和宗教遺址的微型復制品,
and shrines—all made in part from found objects such as cold cream jars and toilet floaters—occupies a four-acre park in Cullman.
還有神龕——部分是由發現的物品制成的,比如冷奶油罐和馬桶漂浮物——占據了卡爾曼一個四英畝的公園。
Fifty-five miles south of this "Jerusalem in miniature," in Birmingham, the cosmology goes back even further.
在這個“迷你耶路撒冷”以南55英里的伯明翰,宇宙學可以追溯到更遠的地方。
Rising above the city is a mammoth statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge.
矗立在城市上空的是一座巨大的火神雕像,即羅馬的火神和鍛造之神。

It is the world's largest castiron statue, but during the years when I was growing up there, its fame lay primarily in its peculiar attire:
它是世界上最大的鑄鐵雕像,但在我在那里長大的那些年里,它的名氣主要來自它獨特的服裝:
Vulcan is wearing nothing but a blacksmith's apron and knee-high sandals, and his bare buttocks shine a moon right at the adjacent city of Homewood.
火神只穿了一條鐵匠的圍裙和一雙及膝的涼鞋,赤裸的屁股正對著霍姆伍德附近的城市閃耀著月光。
Perhaps because that image is still fresh in mind by the time drivers on I-65 reach Chilton County, center of the Alabama peach-growing region,
也許是因為司機在I-65州際公路上行駛至阿拉巴馬州桃樹種植區的中心奇爾頓縣時,那幅畫面依舊清晰,
it's hard not to see a connection between Birmingham's famous landmark and Chilton County's water tower, which was built in the shape of an authentically cleft peach.
所以,人們不難領會到伯明翰的著名地標和奇爾頓縣的水塔之間的聯系。水塔是以一個真正的裂口桃子的形狀建成的。
Ten miles down the road, as if to punish such thoughts, there's a billboard directing motorists to "GO TO CHURCH or the Devil Will Get You!"
沿著路再走十英里,會出現一塊廣告牌,上面寫著“去教堂,否則魔鬼會抓住你的!”這仿佛是為了懲罰剛才的想法。
that graced the interstate near Prattville for many decades before a storm knocked it down in 2016.
這個廣告牌為靠近普拉特維爾的洲際公路增色不少,直到2016年一場暴風雨把它刮倒了。
In 2017, heavy rains kept the surrounding soil too wet for the necessary repairs.
2017年,大雨使其周圍的土壤過于濕潤,無法進行必要的修復。
"The devil is trying to knock it all down, but we're going to get it back up," the son of the Montgomery man who first erected the billboard told a reporter.
第一個樹立廣告牌的蒙哥馬利男子的兒子告訴記者,“魔鬼想把他們全部擊倒,但是我們想把它再次立起來。”
Satan apparently lost the battle last year: The sign is now back in place, the original red-tailed devil intact.
很明顯,撒旦在去年的戰役中失敗了:“這個標志又重新立了起來,原來的紅尾魔鬼完好無損。
And the monstrous red scythe the devil is holding could surely take even the Elkton chicken's carving knife in a fight.
而手持巨大的紅色鐮刀的魔鬼,在一場戰斗中,甚至可以奪走埃爾克頓雞的切肉刀。