At the crossroads of the country, between the humid density of the East and the vast dryness of the West, rivers have long been the primary connector of people, goods, and ideas. From the Mississippi River and her tributaries, explorers and pioneers manifested their destiny. Trading forts expanded into shipping ports connecting the exploited South to the opportunistic Midwest. This idea is captured pretty garishly by the designation of the St. Louis Arch as a National Park for its representation of the “Gateway to the West.” But of all the junctions spanning the delta, there is one peculiar intersection deep in the crux of a winding river, simultaneously in the middle of nowhere and everywhere, that found itself on a cosmic path of destiny of its own.
The first time I stopped in Paducah, Kentucky, I was on my way someplace else, as I assumed most people who visit Paducah were. I was on my final leg from Seattle back to Atlanta, having foolishly stopped in St. Louis the night before. The next morning, I added a stop to my Google Maps route by typing a simple “coffee” into the search bar in a meager attempt to find a non-chain option. At first glance of the route, I couldn’t discern if Etcetera Coffeehouse was in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, or Tennessee amid the billowing swirl of natural river borders. A quick stopover, I figured, and I’d be back on the interstate again.
I expected to see what I always see whenever I exit a major highway in the middle of nowhere: run-down gas stations, fast food joints attached to gas stations, and a variation of WalMart (also with a gas station). As a rule of thumb, the slower the speed limit, the higher my guard, and as I drove past the initial wave of chain restaurants and strip malls, I prepared myself to see the worst stereotypes of rural Kentucky. But as I continued deeper into denser roads, the small town started to transform itself into cobblestone streets, well-preserved Victorian homes, and not a name brand in sight. It’s as if the crossroad town stood at the corner of not only transportation and culture but of time itself.
Etcetera Coffeehouse was situated among single-family homes and two-story apartments clad in colorful banners and progressive slogans. It was easy to find a parking spot for the van on the street, which made it all the more surprising to see a crowd of people inside waiting in line to order. The funky art, colorful walls, and chalkboard menu reminded me of the independent coffee shop I worked at when I was 16. The juxtaposition of multi-pierced baristas and overwhelmingly retired clientele fazed no one else. I waited in quiet confusion for my black iced coffee and an everything bagel with cream cheese. On the back patio, I continued to observe the oddly idyllic town as the condensation on my plastic cup and upper lip swelled without warning. How did this place, with no sizable college or seemingly any industry, in the middle of rural nowhere, exist? With no bagel left, I’d run out of reasons to continue sitting in the sticky morning and got back to the highway. I supposed my questions would go unanswered, as I assumed I’d have no reason to ever think of or visit that place again.
But that’s the funny thing about crossroads: you may find yourself drawn to it again and again without any intention or expectation. Nearly a year later, tracking an entirely different path spanning the country, I was once again en accidental route to Paducah. And it wouldn’t be my last time.
Earlier this spring, I realized 2024 could be the year I finally saw a total solar eclipse. I’d pack up the van for an extended weekend and drive to the closest portion of the path of totality from my home base in Atlanta. Though generally cavalier about my pre-planning, as April approached, I began to worry that my normal plan to not plan would be no match for the growing interest in the celestial anomaly. Clickbait articles and regurgitated TikToks started to emerge, announcing to the general public how unique, important, and potentially life-altering this eclipse would be. “Not since 2017 has there been a totality event across the United States like this,” they would reiterate, “and it won’t happen again until 2045.” The message was clear: now, or never.
As I continued my research into the best spot to camp, the internet content machine roared on, “April 8 will mark the end of days; the eclipse will bring the total apocalypse,” they promised. Comments below would add to the fervor, “Passover 2017 until Passover 2031 is 14 years. April 8, 2024, is EXACTLY in the middle.” “The Pleiades will make contact again, even THEY can’t stop the TRUTH from being told!” “This fulfills the prophecy of darkness across America. DARKNESS WILL ENGULF AMERICA.” Maybe I’d be wise to book a campsite instead.
By luck or fate or curvature of the Earth, the most direct line between Atlanta and the path of totality would lead me right to that same southwest corner of Kentucky I’d visited on a whim a year prior. Even more serendipitously, only two weeks out from the event, there was one campsite still available on a farm just outside of town. Along with the zealots and UFOlogists alike, I booked my visit to Paducah for the impending apocalypse.
Paducah was founded by Lewis and Clark's namesake, William Clark, in 1827 as a hub for traffic at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, just upstream from another insection with the Mississippi. Steamboats from the south would bring cotton and tobacco to trade with shipments of coal from the east to fuel the growing expansion west. Throughout the 20th century, the town cycled through industries, from expanding locomotive routes to establishing and closing nuclear power plants. Employment would rise and fall and rise again as the town’s neutrality would be its greatest asset to staying relevant, if not a little contradictory.
After traveling for nearly six hours, my boyfriend Michael and I arrived at the campground on Saturday evening, just before dark. I booked the last open spot on HipCamp, an Airbnb-style website where hosts can detail their unique amenities. This one was a women-owned farm specifically highlighting their location along the path of totality, which meant they’d somewhat haphazardly listed a few extra “spots” to accommodate more guests on the property. I would have been irritated by the price gouging, but beggars can’t be choosers, and if I’m going to get ripped off by anyone, it might as well be rural Kentucky lesbian farmers.
We settled into a gravel pull-off next to the barn just as the sun began to set. Walking around the farm to orient ourselves in the darkening night, we made a point to say a friendly hello to anyone we passed on the otherwise quiet farm. This is how I first met Summer, a middle-aged woman with long, coarse hair staying alone in a makeshift tapestry tent. She directed us to the outhouses and offered her help if we needed anything else. “I expect it’ll get weird out here pretty soon,” she smiled, “who knows what the eclipse will bring out.”
The view the next morning felt as Kentucky as it could get: morning dew rose across a rolling hill of greening pasture as a couple of horses meandered their way up the opposing field. In the daylight, the side of the barn displayed five rainbow-clad flags, the center of which featured a purple flag sporting a white double-sided ax in the middle. A quick, cautious Google revealed they were all lesbian pride or lesbian ally flags, and I sighed in relief. After a walk around the farm and a few more hellos, we drove into town to find a spot for brunch.
The small hub had steadily declined since the 1970s as enriched uranium plants lost fashion over time. Paducah could have easily become just like the countless other middle American cities that faded into ghost towns through the midcentury, unable to replace the economic benefit of its flagship industry with anything lucrative. Not even the 1988 invention of Dippin’ Dots from a Paducah garage could turn the whole town around. The one thing that might have single-handedly preserved this town from certain obsolescence? The National Quilt Museum, established in 1991. From humble beginnings, the museum began to attract artists from the region. Less than a decade later, the city established the Lower Town Artist Relocation Program, incentivizing artists to make their homes and studios in the dilapidated buildings in the town’s center square for as little as $1. In the first year, eight artists signed up; in the second year, sixteen. Little by little, corners previously known for buying women and crack were transformed into those charming, well-maintained Victorian homes I’d noticed a year prior. By 2013, UNESCO inducted Paduach into its Creative Cities Network for Crafts and Folk Art, representing alongside only one other American city, Santa Fe. With a revitalized artistic district of mixed-use amenities, the entire downtown buzzed with activities the day before the eclipse.
Broadway, downtown’s main thoroughfare of restaurants, galleries, and independent storefronts, was closed off for three blocks from 4th St to the riverfront to make way for the official eclipse street fair. Kiosks selling special UV-filtering glasses, funnel cakes, alien t-shirts, and boozy lemonade lined the brick walkway. On one corner sat a man holding a handwritten sign that read “6 years, 6 months, 6 weeks, and 6 days between totalities.” And then I realized why the event was disproportionately large for such a small town – these people had come before, for the most recent apocalypse.
“There’s really not much t’do ‘round here,” our waitress admitted, pouring fresh coffee into our mugs. “But people seem pretty excited for this eclipse. It wasn’t this big last time. ‘Course, I wasn't workin’ here then, but my friend Mandy said there were some crazies out. Anything else I can get y’all to drink?”
We continued jotting down unsolicited local recommendations from Denise as we polished off a round of spicy Bloody Marys. This is the best way to visit a new town, by the way: through the forced advice of disgruntled residents. She told us where to get dinner, what attractions to avoid, and where to buy weed across the river in Illinois. “And you have to check out Metropolis,” she added, “where Superman is from.”
“Wasn’t Superman from Smallville?” I asked sincerely.
“Krypton, technically,” Michael added.
She shrugged. “It’s where Superman is from,” and she handed us the check. The church crowd rolled in just in time for us to leave.
Back out on the street, we continued walking through the buzzing festival to the waterfront. More vendors selling crystals and DIY screen-printed astronomy shirts lined the closed one-way street. The air smelled like turkey legs and river water as we moseyed along the offerings, considering which eclipse glasses were legit and which would cause a cornea burn, as if we could tell the difference. Tented kiosks peddled rapture fiction on one end of their booth and alien eyewitness accounts on the other. One way or another, people wanted to get beamed up.
The view of the river was obscured by a massive retaining wall. The wall was built after the Ohio River flooded in 1937, the watermarks of which are still noticeable on some of the historic downtown brick buildings. In pure Paducah fashion, the flood wall is now covered in an expansive multi-panel mural depicting key moments of the town’s history. Boy Scouts, churches, switchboard operators, riverboats, pioneers, and “Atomic City” were among the represented vignettes of the city’s surprisingly sprawling history.
“Wait,” I paused. “Didn’t she say Metropolis was Atomic City?”
“She said Superman was born in Metropolis, I don’t think she mentioned Atomic City,” Michael responded.
We looked up at a mural of the riverbank before the port or retaining walls or town even existed: a horse-drawn buggy hauled three large wooden barrels directly up the slick, muddy hill from the raw riverbank. Walking around the wall, the river on the other side was just as thick and ruddy as its portrayal, now with concrete loading docks and a well-lit walkway. What was once the town’s primary connection to the outside world was now largely a parking lot for empty recreational boat trailers. After the obligatory inspection, we turned to walk back to the festival, now gaining full steam.
The cacophony of face-painted children and beer-guzzling arose as my enamorment began to wear thin. Crowds accumulated around street performers in the narrow walkways, alternating our route away from the main drag as we returned to the van. The further from the center we moved, the more egregious the eclipse signs became. “JESUS WILL RETURN TO THE CROSS” one well-printed sign read. I intended to breeze past it until I saw the accompanying image up close: it was a map of the United States. Overlaid across the country were two darkened bands, one stretching from Portland to coastal Georgia and the other displaying the current eclipse path. It was the two eclipse paths from 2017 and 2024 – and they crossed perfectly, narrowly over the tiny town of Paducah.
There were only about 9,000 square miles of crossover between the two already rare events. Astronomers use a complex yet repeatable measure of time called a saros to quantify the number of lunar months (approximately 6,585.3211 days) between such events. The last eclipse cross appeared in Turkey in 1999 and 2006; the next one will occur over the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Japan in 2035 and 2042. In the span of Earth’s entire calculable existence, the event is an infrequent phenomenon; in the span of a bible-thumping American’s existence, the event is a once-in-a-lifetime sign from God.
“Maybe that’s why they have so much eclipse stuff already – they’re just reusing leftovers from 2017,” I thought aloud. I bought one t-shirt that listed the cities in the path of totality on the back like a concert tour relic.
“We should go see where Superman is from,” Michael added, sensing my tension in the growing crowd. “Seems about as bizarre as anything else out here.”
Back in the van, we crossed the Ohio River into Illinois and were greeted by two landmarks. The first was Fort Massac State Park, where Lewis and Clark made camp on their 1803 expedition. The second was Thrive, a large building with a line of people out the door, which we assumed to be a church but was, in fact, the cannabis dispensary.
The main street of Metropolis was even smaller and more time-capsuled than Paducah. Cars moved slowly down wide streets oriented around a cluster of two-story brick buildings known collectively as “downtown.” Half of the storefronts were cartoonishly painted small businesses, while the other half stood abandoned. At the center sat the Massac County Circuit Clerk’s office and the statue in front of it, a 15-foot-tall bronze painted statue of Superman. What their eclipse festival lacked in size, it more than made up for in camp.
The people of Metropolis know that Superman was never canonically from their town. In Superman #92, a villain named Massacre arrives in the small Illinois town, having mistaken it for the real Metropolis, and harasses the town people into giving him correct directions. That doesn’t stop them from having their 45th annual Superman Celebration; or managing their museum featuring the “world’s largest collection of Superman” (non-specified object); or keeping multiple antique and collectible stores open for comic book enthusiasts year-round. Whether the 1950s Powerglide Chevy parked out front is “real” or not doesn’t really matter to Metropolitans.
Superman, created by two Jewish teenagers in 1938, was originally modeled after Moses. It’s not until the first movie in 1948 that we see a storyline similar to that of Jesus: a child raised by a humble, laborer father and mother named not Mary but Martha. Both characters are simultaneously human and celestial in nature (a point of contention for each). By the post-war patriotism of 1950s America, Superman fully operated as America’s Jesus. A fabricated character of a real man with fictionalized powers. The more the lines blur between reality and story, the easier it is for us to fill in the gaps of understanding with our own beliefs. And as I stood at the feet of a 15-foot tall Christ figure mere hours from the end of the world, I understood the comfort people feel when they imagine a superhero swooping down to save them.
Before rounding out our time in Metropolis, we walked inside one of the antique stores specializing in midcentury nostalgia. They had every iteration of the superhero short of a rosary in his honor. Included in the fanfare were real Cold War propaganda posters, like “duck and cover” instructions and anti-Soviet cartoons. With its equally colorful appeal, it was difficult to distinguish which were a parody of which.
Michael and I settled on a set of collectible NASA glass cups, each with its own Apollo mission description. We also picked up the most official-looking eclipse glasses we could find, which happened to be in a box from Moon Pie, including two pairs and four mini-moon pies. The older man at the register paused his conversation with another man at the counter to complement our selections. “I hope they never change Moon Pies,” he smiled fondly. “They change too much these days.”
I nodded in agreement and noticed the man's shirt next to him. Under a peaceful image of Jesus with his hands raised to the sky, the caption read: THE END IS NEAR. We paid, the cashier thanked us, and the other man smiled earnestly and declared, “See you next time!”
The last morning on the farm, we sat out in the dewy Kentucky grass next to the van. With the eclipse only a few hours again, the other campers emerged from their sites to claim an unobscured view of the sky. Summer, clad in a baja hoodie and chain-smoking, walked by the van to initiate conversation. “Do you travel anywhere?” she asked.
“I did for a while,” I lightly explained, “but lately, I travel for events like this. Seeing this eclipse feels so magical to me,” I admitted to my fellow hippie.
She continued, “I bet it feels great to just get out on the road. And find people who get you.” I murmured in agreement as she took a drag of her cigarette and kept going, “I feel like you’re someone who gets it.”
My curiosity for what she thought I “got” was answered when she pulled out her phone. She began explaining how she’d been “doing her own research” and learning about ancient Sumerians, simulation theory, and sightings of biblically accurate angels. And she was there, on a lesbian farm in the middle of nowhere, to witness something. If not a miracle, then at least a sign. When I asked her what kind of sign, she grinned and shrugged, “It’s up to him to decide.” And she continued on her way.
As the moment approached, Michael and I walked to the valley of the bright, open field with our camping chairs. The whispy morning clouds had finally evaporated in seemingly perfect time. Though the campsite was booked, everyone spread a respectable distance to allow quiet space for observation. We sat silently in our paper Moon Pie Eclipse glasses as the sky darkened deceptively slowly. The air turned cold. The hum of crickets began to swell. And then, all at once, the sky went dark.
Standing in the perfect shadow of the moon, I removed my glasses and stared directly at the sun. For a few brief moments, the source of all life on Earth seemingly ceased to exist. Horses and cows on nearby farms cried out as the locust droned louder. Distant gasps from fellow observers echoed in the valley. While my brain marveled at the magnitude of the once-in-a-lifetime event, the base of my gut fluttered wildly like a bat caught in a bag, panicking in uncertain terror. My mind and my body, disconnected in their assessment, left me frozen in the middle of the apocalypse. Neither Jesus nor Superman could save me from the magnitude of the moment. It was just us, alone in space.
And then, just as quickly as it was hidden, a sliver of the sun burst out beyond the moon. I snapped into action and refitted my glasses onto my nose. The air around me warmed again, the sounds of animals receded to normal, and everyone clapped as if the star had taken a bow. The End had ended.
The mood shifted quickly when the sky resumed normal activity. People packed up their sites and headed for the interstate, where we would all be stuck for the next several hours. We walked out of the field and back to the van, still quiet and shell-shocked by the experience. A group of older women showed us the art they’d created in the crescent of the sun’s shadow. They acknowledged grimly that this would likely be their last eclipse, either together or forever. At least, their last on earth. At least, their last in this lifetime.
I looked around for Summer, but she was gone. Her whole camp was gone. Maybe she left before the traffic got bad. But maybe - and in some ways, hopefully - she actually was beamed up and now inhabits a place where people “get” her.
The world does, in fact, end for us all, in one way or another. The idea that someone, god or man, mythologized or real, might swoop down to take us away from our impending end is such an appealing hope. What we are left with when the world doesn’t end, though, is a book full of puerile stories and the actual humans we surround ourselves with, who we have to continue forward with. Until, at least, the next apocalypse.
In the middle of nowhere and everywhere, I kept running into Paducah over the years. It’s difficult for me to avoid on any westward-bound trip nowadays. As it sits on the cross between north and south, east and west, reality and fiction, Paducah continues to be a fixture in my life. In fact, I left Paducah five days ago on my most recent cross-country trip. Those stories from the road are still to come; join me next week as I continue my drive through the Midwest and all the way to California. Next time, on Stories from the Road.
SHE’S BAAAAACK!!!
It’s so fun to see you write about Paducah. A handful of really dear friends I worked camp with lived there and talked about it all the time.