The Greatest Saunter
Part V: The Giant Sombrero in The Sky
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an ongoing series about setting out to hike 32 miles around the island of Manhattan in a rainstorm and the thousand-mile road that led there.
Part II: Men’s Wearhouse and Mount Everest
If you get the chance to ride an elevator to a giant sombrero 200 feet in the sky, take it.
I don’t remember when the billboards for South of the Border started and I wasn’t even entirely sure what they were advertising, but, in the end, they worked.
I stopped.
The detour, I reasoned, could coincide with a bathroom break and a gas stop. Plus, this was just too odd, too strange, too batshit crazy to pass up.
Pedro, the mascot of the place, is a cartoonish and unquestionably, inescapably offensive representation of a Mexican bandit — complete with a large mustache, a poncho and a sombrero. At South of the Border, Pedro — both in the form of statues and on massive, soaring signs (one of which is 104-feet tall) — and those sombreros, are everywhere. On the South of the Border Wikipedia page, P. Nicole King, who, as the author of Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina's Tourism Industry, is uniquely qualified to talk about this sort of thing, is excerpted, writing that Pedro looks like a “southern Jewish guy in brown face.” The suggestion is that the mascot was drawn up in the image of Alan Schafer, who founded this utterly ridiculous place back in 1949.
Originally, it was an 18-by-36 foot beer stand, taking advantage of the fact that, unlike in South Carolina, the adjacent Robeson County in North Carolina was dry. It had taken me far too long to recognize the cleverer half of the double entendre, that the South of the Border moniker was a reference to the literal border of the Carolinas. Once upon a time, according to a 1979 profile in The Washington Post, this was a $15 million-a-year business. That was before the rise of air travel supplanted the long-distance drive, crushing Schafer’s so-called “Cadillac trade.”
It’s shocking that Pedro has not yet been canceled. The mascot lands with a resounding thud in 2022, but Schafer, who died in 2001, was far from some bigoted buffoon. The proprietor was always known for hiring workers of all races, and his one-of-a-kind establishment has, from its inception, accepted all travelers — even if the driving motivation was self-interest rather than altruism.
“. . . We were the first major motel/restaurant south of Washington who from the start always had an open door policy — first come, first served,” Schafer told the Post. “And also we checked only the color of their money, not their skins."
As I pulled off the road, it was like South of the Border was a whole little town, or, at least, its own exit. I was stunned to see an official green freeway sign with SOUTH OF THE BORDER written in white text in all capital letters. I immediately headed for the giant, yellow tower festooned with an enormous sombrero at its top. The faux-Mexican theme, as embodied by the outlandish tower, appears to have been originally inspired by a long-ago business trip Schafer took to Mexico.
I figured there had to be some stairs I could climb to the top of the sombrero. Inside, the ground floor housed an arcade. There didn’t appear to be anyone in there. In fact, it didn’t look like there had been anyone in there in decades — until I spotted a lone employee behind the counter.
Four dollars — cash only — to take the elevator up to the top of what was officially known as the Sombrero Tower. The Post piece says it was built for $1.5 million — at some point in the late 1970s, as best as I can tell. The official website, which, incidentally, includes a fantastic virtual tour, allowing one to travel all over the 350-acre sprawl from the comfort of one’s computer, boasts that the tower “rises 200ft above the flat Dillon, South Carolina countryside surrounding South of the Border like the Space Needle rises above Seattle.”
Unfortunately, I’d have to wait until 5:30 p.m. — about 15 minutes — because the lone employee’s coworker was still on break. Oh, and he added, the elevator had just gotten stuck at the top. In such situations, the only way down is to walk.
I still had to drive clear across North Carolina and halfway across Virginia, but there was no way I could pass up this absurdly bizarre adventure. I went to fill up some gas to kill time. On the screen where the price and the gallons were displayed, someone had placed a sticker of Joe Biden — comically photoshopped with his face mid-maniacal scream — exclaiming, “I did that!”
It still wasn’t 5:30. So, I continued down the road to the Reptile Lagoon, which I had previously seen advertised amid the parade of billboards lining I-95. At its height, there were 250 billboards from Philadelphia to Daytona Beach — all designed by Mr. Schafer.
I gladly parted with $8 and walked out of the gift shop and into the Lagoon, an absurdly hot and dark space. I saw a fat alligator. It didn’t so much as move. In fact, none of the reptiles in the displays I walked past, did. Now a slender snorted crocodile. Also dead — or entirely fake, or stuffed. All of them looked extremely fake, but, paradoxically, just real enough that I had to pause and consider if these reptilian creatures were actually alive.
And, just as I was thinking that — after all, why would this roadside attraction house real, live alligators and crocodiles — I jumped because a small pile of American Alligators started to move. They were surprisingly skinny, maybe three feet long. They must have been juveniles. And they were literally stacked on top of each other as they began to jostle about. Perhaps, they had noticed me.
Patronizing this roadside alligator and crocodile farm — or whatever the hell this place was — felt, all of a sudden, spectacularly unethical of me.
I saw a Cuvier’s dwarf caiman, pig-nosed turtles and dwarf crocodiles among the many reptiles trapped in small tanks. One animal looked like a monster, an alligator snapping turtle. I later learned they can bite through a broom handle and are almost entirely carnivorous, feeding mostly on fish, but sometimes on birds, other turtles and even small alligators. I saw an insane-looking hybrid crocodile — 75% Nile and 25% Cuban — which was missing a tail.
I saw a King Cobra — I have no idea if it was real — and an absolutely massive Burmese python, the second-largest snake species in the world, by weight, two stalls down. Next door was a green anaconda which is the largest snake in the world. A green anaconda can weigh up to 550 pounds, according to National Geographic. There was an eastern diamondback rattlesnake after that, and then two large yellow anacondas.
The final animal I saw before I hit the exit was the largest snake I’ve ever seen. A reticulated python. It looked like it would have easily been able to eat me — if it was so inclined and if not for the pane of glass between us. When you google this snake, the top question asked is whether a reticulated python can eat a human. The answer is resoundingly, unequivocally, emphatically yes — yes, they absolutely can. In 2018, an Indonesian woman, who’d merely gone out to check on her garden, was swallowed whole, according to a story from the BBC.
The sign reputed that these snakes can grow 25 to 30 feet long. Terrifying. This display case couldn’t have been half that length. This snake could never fully stretch out. Its eyes appeared frozen, dead — as the snake stared off into the abyss. On the wall, about four feet away, a supposed jungle scene had been painted.
The sign on the exit door claimed that the Reptile Lagoon is one of the largest donors to crocodile conservation… and you helped! I hoped.
Walking back up the steps to the arcade, I noticed there was a small sign on the door with a friendly reminder not to bring firearms inside. The coworker still wasn’t back which left the lone employee to ponder what to do. At first, he resolved to send me up alone — which is insane — before deciding to come up with me and leave his post behind.
“Holy shit this is cool,” I thought to myself, as the elevator smoothly climbed, revealing an impressive landscape — the sprawling parking lots, grounds, buildings, Pedros and sombreros of South of the Border and the forests beyond.
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Once we got to the top, I was thrilled — if slightly concerned — that I could disembark and tour around the sombrero, which offered 360-degree views of the gas station turned amusement park turned campground turned motel turned fireworks depot turned Pedro’s Steakhouse (naturally, shaped like a sombrero) turned Reptile Lagoon that lay some 200 feet below. I snapped a video and some photos, even though the giant metallic brim of the sombrero, which doubled as the railing, somewhat obscured the view.
I was effusive in my praise, but the young elevator operator was unconcerned or uninterested — simply offering, “yes, sir” time and again. This was just another day at the office.
When we got back in and pressed the button to go down, the elevator went nowhere. But, before I had too long to grapple with the possibility of having to climb the steps back down to earth, my tour guide opened and closed the doors, pressed the button again, and we were on our way. I was back in the arcade in what felt like seconds.
I’d just lost an hour — and still had nearly four hours to go — but what a detour that had been. As I sped away, music blaring, I felt triumphant, euphoric. Like, did that just happen? Maybe, I’d fallen into a time warp or some alternate reality.