America's Roadside in Smyrna, Delaware.

On the roadsides of America, you will find many attractions, signs, and statues. It's the ones that are of past years that always seem to stick out. However, as our little towns of Smyrna and Clayton grow, it gets new owners, new buildings, and new businesses. The old gets moved, cleaned up or transformed. Recently, in Smyrna we had two landmarks recently move. Smyrna residents, would mention these "marks" when giving directions to visitors.

1. The Smyrna Diner offers all the dinner classics, from the all-day breakfasts to liver and onions to belly warming chicken and slippery dumplings. It recently moved up the road to a larger location, but it still offers that delicious diner food.

The original diner was a 1965 Paramount trailer, which replaced a 1954 smaller diner. Later the diner's future exterior was covered with wood. Located in Cleveland, OH, A collector of vintage diners purchased it to restore, then to resell.

So many people here have great memories of being in this place. My memory was from the blizzard of 1978. We were visiting Dad for the weekend and he was delivering us back from his apartment in Newark. By the time we got to Smyrna, the roads were impassible. We had to stay in the diner for a few hours before the snowtrucks came. We stayed in the Sheraton in Dover overnight. They didn't plow the backroads of Smyrna (only 5 miles away) until the next day.

The new location is right off our highway bypass route to heading to the beaches.

2. Once a small travel agency named Traquility Travel, now an Antiques store, had a very strange looking statue just outside its doors. The 3000 pound 11 ft. fiberglass horned statue with red eyes, seemed to the same size as the 12 foot tall small brick 2 room building. Only Smyrna townspeople knew what is was from where it came.

It came from Hollywood's set of the 1955 movie The Prodigal starring Lana Turner. It's supposed to be a Babylonian
Fertility God Demon. After year of environmental wear and tear, the snake head has fallen off.

However, it was sold for $4000 to a town in Lumberton, New Jersey. It seems that the new neighborhood doesn't care for it as much as Smyrna, DE.

According to the which newspaper you read it is either a god of fertility, rain, or a giant demon. Either way, it is definitely Pagan and people are up in arms about it. They have referred to it as "despicable" "demonic" and "an eyesore". Even though its head can only be seen over the fence, which extends out near the side of the property, it is not wanted. One neighbor even complained that it scared the horses that are stabled next door. In fact, the township has ordered the new owner to remove it and place it in his backyard where its head can not be seen by passersby. However, the owner wanted to use it as a tourism attraction. Curiously, the local paper mentions that is wonders why the item was located next to a travel agency in the first place, or why the new owner spent $6000 to move it a neighborhood where he knew it would piss off his neighbors.

In Smyrna, the statue was a landmark, with a lovely plastic palm tree right beside it, located across the road from the only Delaware Rest Area built in 1937. There was only a picnic table and a place to park.

I mean, who wouldn't want to travel to some remote island and find that in the jungle, right?