St. Louis, MO - "Oh it’s absolutely us versus them out there. I mean that’s not ideal but we drive by and people just stare. I try to be a nice guy and wave and all that but it’s really tough.”

It’s two in the morning on Thursday and Mike, David’s brother-in-law and beat cop for the city of St. Louis, is describing what it’s like to go on patrol.

“I’m alone in the car but I have this button on the top of my radio and I push that and every guy just stops what they’re doing and floors it to wherever I am. Even traffic stops I make sure someone else is there. You just never know.”

I finish my beer in silence, trying to imagine what the world must look like through the windshield of a police cruiser.

¶ Two days later, we pull off the highway and up to a tired little row of buildings along the edge of the woods. Dividing them from the road is a white wooden fence, against which leans a long white sign - easily fifty feet in length - that spells out N O S T A L G I A V I L L E , U S A in big block letters. The buildings are pink and white and peeling and look gaudy the way your grandma might after powdering her cheeks with too much foundation.  This in stark contrast to their actual design, which brings to mind a dusty old prospecting town from the turn of the century.  We park in front of a sign that reads: “Elvis Fan Parking Only - Violators will be all shook up", get out of the car and wander in under an awning speckled with pink plastic flamingos.

Nostalgiaville, USA is a single room that has been packed floor to ceiling with collectable figurines; the most important of which (ie. those from the major entertainment franchises of the early thirties and forties) having been arranged  in glass cases like a taxidermy display. I find myself walking very slowly past each one; trying to commune with a past that, on some level I guess, is supposed to be mine. Five levels of Betty Boops sit beside a whole long shelf of mint-condition Elvis statuary; row upon row of snow-globe scenes - containing everyone from Snoopy to Superman - surround a gaggle of pewter princesses, each of them singing down to a row of delicate little lumps that it takes me a moment to recognize as a quartet of forest fauna singing back. A row of identical I Love Lucy coffee mugs are gathering dust on the top shelf across the aisle from a short stack of Frank Sinatra placemats. And oldies station croons from hidden speakers and I consider who in my family would enjoy getting a John Deere lunchbox for Christmas.

The nostalgia is diluted somewhat as I move towards the back wall, where the curator of all this concentrated pining has decided to mix posters from the new and old schools of gun promotion. Poking out amongst the old hand painted  Remington and Winchester ads are a few photoshop printouts that feature drawings of handguns below slogans like : “I’m all for gun control … I use both hands!” or “Don’t tread on me … OR THE SECOND AMENDMENT”. There doesn’t appear to be any attempt to make these additions nostalgic in the slightest, and the lack of explanation suggests that anyone wandering through is expected to just understand or not notice.

¶ We drive in to Kansas City under a dim gray sky: soupy and lightless and strangely layered, as though ash is finally descending from some distant explosion. While the city center is still a distant silhouette, David pulls off the freeway in search of a pit stop.  We turn left at a big columned courthouse where every one of the twenty american flags out front are fluttering lightly at half mast. It takes us all a moment to realize that they’re flying low to honor the 20 children shot down this morning in Connecticut. Across the street from the courthouse sits a big construction sign that reads “ROAD WORK” and then after a few seconds, a more chastened “PARDON OUR DUST”. Two guys with shaved heads and patchy gray beards are manning the register at the Stop-N-Go and, once I’ve purchased some caffeine, they buzz us one by one in to the bathroom. We decide to stand for a few more minutes before getting back in the car, and while Mary and I hang out by the front door discussing psychotic violence, David talks quietly in to his phone over by the novelty snacks.

¶ David needs a radar detector and I need shampoo and as we pull up to Wallmart, Mary, who has been following the Connecticut story all morning, tells us that the killer began with his mother. I check facebook, where my Bulgarian friend Alek has just posted a picture of a futuristic looking assault rifle with the caption “This is the gun used in today’s school shooting. It is legal to own one in the US.” Inside WallMart, in the back of the store where the TOYS and AUTOMOTIVE sections meet we find a plastic version of the same gun being sold for $99.90; a special Christmas markdown. One aisle over, the section for girls toys is so densely packed with bright pink plastic that the white floor tiles have taken on a weird, fleshy incandescence that David and I both try to capture with our iPhones cameras, only to discover that the phone color corrects automatically. As we walk back across the parking lot I notice that Wallmart’s gardening area - over to the side of the building and surrounded by a high black fence - has been converted in to a holding pen for their holiday selection of huge inflatable lawn ornaments. A grubby Frosty sits hunched on the wet pavement while Rudolf stands above him; leaning for support against a red-cheeked Santa Claus who appears to be gripping the bars.