Put Up a National Parking Lot

Our family just took a trip to Glacier National Park. It was beautiful, gorgeous, breathtaking and all that sort of thing. But it did get me wondering about how/why we name things the way we do. Does Glacier National Park have glaciers? Sure.

But did we see more bears than glaciers? I think even the Chicago football team would have to tip their helmets to the amount of bears at Glacier NP. It was enough bears that if you were to look at a pie chart of the amount of Bear Spray sold at Glacier NP versus how much is sold elsewhere it would resemble the same pie chart as how much Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider is sold in Utah for New Year’s versus elsewhere. In that same vein, do you want to know how much Glacier Spray was being sold? Yeah. I could not find a single one. That tells us all we need to know about how misnamed the park is.

However, I did start to wonder if all it takes to have a National Park is to have a bunch of something—Glaciers, Arches, Sand Dunes, Stones that are Yellow, etcetera—then we could probably have a lot more National Parks than we already have. Since Logan Canyon boasts a prodigious amount of rock climbing spots, why not make it Rock Climbing National Park?

That’s just a start. Cache Valley could get the Cheese Factory National Park designation. Imagine having some park rangers quietly point out the cheese workers in their natural habitat, while the gift shop could have cool shirts all the dads would buy that say: “I Cut the Cheese at Cheese Factory National Park.”

Remember, if we’re talking prominent things about a place, there are way more options. Main Street Logan could be Bumper-to-Bumper National Park (the bumper sticker for it would be so meta!). The nice thing about that National Park is that the line to get in would also be a part of the attraction.

Now, those are all ideas about “parks,” but if you thought I would be limited there, then you vastly underestimate my free time and mind-wandering capabilities. The whole idea about a quaint concept like a city park with park benches and playgrounds, but then turning it into a national attraction is so cool that we shouldn’t stop at just national parks.

What other things do cities offer on a small-scale that we could make big-scale NATIONAL? The Library of Congress already covers the whole national version of a city library, so we can forget that one (though it’d be cool to have the fines at the Library of Congress go towards paying off our debt—and we’d just encourage a bunch of multi-billionaires to check out as many books as they like).

Though less exciting than city parks, cities are also in charge of some local parking lots around town. Think of it: besides a clever name, a National Parking Lot could be a huge attraction. First of all, parking would be intensely easy. Plus you could have a history of parking that would take us from modern aircraft carriers parking fighter jets to the chariots of the Egyptians finding stalls next to the pyramids.

Another prominent city administrative jurisdiction that could be made national are the city utilities. This could range from National Water Meters (could be a pretty cool water park idea), National Garbage Days (“Putting fulfillment back in landfills!”), to National Power Grid attractions (which would be hounded by solar bros trying to boost their solar panel sales).

But the most potent in the small-town utilities category would be taking a city sewage department and putting it at a national level! The National Sewage attraction has a crapload of … er, sorry, a bunch of possibilities that—in case the reader happens to be eating—I will refrain from getting into details at this time.

However, I think we can all agree that it will be located in Washington D.C., and there would never be a want for resources.

Marty Reeder is a young adult author and high school English teacher. Please direct all criticisms to the National Sewage, where most of my ideas are formed, or you may email writingreeder@gmail.com.