读者文摘:美国最棒的路边景观(1)（在线收听）

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.

我和丈夫开车沿着I-65号州际公路行驶时，在田纳西州、但靠近阿拉巴马州边界的地方，我看到了一个巨大的鸡的雕像。

It was standing in front of a truck stop near Elkton.

它矗立在埃尔克顿附近的一个卡车站前。

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!"

我很感激能嫁给这样一个男人，他会在某个人说“让我们和那只鸡拍张照片吧”的时候，立即驶离高速公路。

That particular chicken is an advertisement for the Shady Lawn Truck Stop's fried-chicken plate. It is wearing a chef's hat.

那个特别的鸡的雕像是阴暗的草坪卡车站的炸鸡的广告。它戴着厨师帽。

Its wings hold a giant fork and a giant carving knife underneath them. The combination makes for a troubling message:

它的翅膀下夹着一把巨大的餐叉和一把巨大的切肉刀。这一组合传递出了一个令人不安的信息：

chicken as both dinner and diner. It is also covered with graffiti, mostly people's names but also an exhortation to "Read More."

晚餐和用餐者都是鸡。它也布满了涂鸦，大多是人们的名字，但也有“多读书”的劝诫。

Unlike the existential conflict at the heart of the chicken's identity, that's a message I had no trouble decoding.

不像既存的鸡的身份的核心冲突，我轻易地就把这个信息破解获取了。

Between Nashville and the Alabama Gulf Coast, where my husband and I were heading, there are quite a few unusual roadside attractions.

在纳什维尔和我丈夫和我要去的阿拉巴马海湾沿岸之间，有一些不寻常的路边景点。

An actual NASA Saturn rocket, all 168 feet of it, is posed as if for blastoff at the Alabama welcome center near Ardmore.

在阿德莫尔附近的阿拉巴马欢迎中心，一枚真正的NASA土星火箭，全部168英尺长，摆出要发射的姿势。

The Ave Maria Grotto, where a Benedictine monk built 125 miniature replicas of famous buildings, religious sites,

圣玛利亚石窟，一位本笃会修道士在这里建造了125个著名建筑和宗教遗址的微型复制品，

and shrines—all made in part from found objects such as cold cream jars and toilet floaters—occupies a four-acre park in Cullman.

还有神龛——部分是由发现的物品制成的，比如冷奶油罐和马桶漂浮物——占据了卡尔曼一个四英亩的公园。

Fifty-five miles south of this "Jerusalem in miniature," in Birmingham, the cosmology goes back even further.

在这个“迷你耶路撒冷”以南55英里的伯明翰，宇宙学可以追溯到更远的地方。

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，即罗马的火神和锻造之神。

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:

它是世界上最大的铸铁雕像，但在我在那里长大的那些年里，它的名气主要来自它独特的服装：

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.

火神只穿了一条铁匠的围裙和一双及膝的凉鞋，赤裸的屁股正对着霍姆伍德附近的城市闪耀着月光。

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,

也许是因为司机在I-65州际公路上行驶至阿拉巴马州桃树种植区的中心奇尔顿县时，那幅画面依旧清晰，

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，人们不难领会到伯明翰的著名地标和奇尔顿县的水塔之间的联系。水塔是以一个真正的裂口桃子的形状建成的。

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!"

沿着路再走十英里，会出现一块广告牌，上面写着“去教堂，否则魔鬼会抓住你的!”这仿佛是为了惩罚刚才的想法。

that graced the interstate near Prattville for many decades before a storm knocked it down in 2016.

这个广告牌为靠近普拉特维尔的洲际公路增色不少，直到2016年一场暴风雨把它刮倒了。

In 2017, heavy rains kept the surrounding soil too wet for the necessary repairs.

2017年，大雨使其周围的土壤过于湿润，无法进行必要的修复。

"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.

第一个树立广告牌的蒙哥马利男子的儿子告诉记者，“魔鬼想把他们全部击倒，但是我们想把它再次立起来。”

Satan apparently lost the battle last year: The sign is now back in place, the original red-tailed devil intact.

很明显，撒旦在去年的战役中失败了：“这个标志又重新立了起来，原来的红尾魔鬼完好无损。

And the monstrous red scythe the devil is holding could surely take even the Elkton chicken's carving knife in a fight.

而手持巨大的红色镰刀的魔鬼，在一场战斗中，甚至可以夺走埃尔克顿鸡的切肉刀。