Walter Schumacher drove his old, beat-up Escort toward the vivid orange spot maybe half a mile ahead of him.  As he got closer, he was able to see through the waves of heat that rose from the blacktop to the college-aged girl, who wore one of those safety vests that you see on highway workers:  fluorescent orange, so motorists will be sure to know what it is that they are about to dodge.
 Walter, cautiously coasting at fifteen miles an hour, hazarded a glance down at the lime green parking permit, for which he had surrendered three dollars to the nice gentleman in the kelly green uniform who worked in the forest green booth. The pamphlet next to it on his lap proudly announced Walter's arrival at: "Literary Land...The Park with a Style All Its Own!".  The logo, which featured large capital Ls that resembled open books, looked just like the ads he had read in his local newspaper, which had convinced him to change his destination in central Florida from his usual favorite, 30 miles distant.  The idea of a park which focused on books instead of Saturday morning cartoon characters intrigued him.  Walter was a strong believer in the traditional forms of education, including a habit of reading to broaden one's own horizons, and felt that today television was usurping the children's chances of becoming well-rounded...in any but the literal sense.  Literal?  He grinned at the irony and steered left toward a row of empty parking spaces, in response to the girl's waved instruction.
 After he had parked, Walter walked in the direction of the main entrance, clearly visible from the parking lot.  He smiled as he recognized unexpected patterns in the entrance and nearby landscape. The rows of uniform bushes growing on a slope nearby were not just decorative, but representative, being topiary; they were shaped to resemble a typewriter with letters and numbers and the other keys in the expected places, as they would appear on a standard keyboard. Farther ahead, streams of bright, sparkling water emerged from a spout that resembled a seven-foot writing pen, perpendicular to the ground, and the "ink" that fell from it collected below in a serene pool, in which floated lovely white flowers resting on green writing tablets. Walter noticed the lily pads with amusement as he walked by toward the ticket windows.  The roofs above these booths were supported by what appeared to be Greek columns, but as he took out his wallet Walter noticed the saying, "No. 2" near the base, and recognized the forms of huge pencils instead.
 The lady in the ticket booth greeted him warmly.  "Good morning, sir, welcome to Literary Land.  Is this your first visit?"
 It occurred to Walter, grinning wryly to himself, to reply that, No, he had visited dozens of places before, and many quite recently on this very road trip.  But instead he confessed, "Yes, it is". The lady seemed to want to flush with excitement.  "Oh, you're going to have a grand time today!  Your pamphlet has most of the information you may need; for additional answers, stop by the Table of Contents at the head of the Block.  Enjoy your day!"
 Having paid his fee, Walter walked forth into the park proper. Ahead of him he could see a wide street with little shops on either side.  He walked under a high arch that, in capital letters, proclaimed that he had reached "THE WRITERS' BLOCK".  Smiling, he looked over to his left, hoping to see the Table of Contents.  And there it was!--or so Walter supposed. There was a large wooden table, around which sat a number of costumed men, slouching in director's chairs.  One was yawning, and another gently rubbed his nose, engrossed in a paperback. The men were dressed mostly in black, with hats that had shining gold buckles in the front.  Short black pants, gathered at the knee, revealed the white stockings that they all wore.  Their shoes also had buckles.  As he noticed Walter approaching, the man in the center wearily stood, stretching.  He set a clipboard down on the table and spread his hands in greeting.  "We are the Bored Directors.  Welcome to Literary Land.  How can we help you?"
 Walter beamed at the "pilgrims."  "Hi," he said, "I just wondered if everything is running today."
  The man picked up his clipboard and consulted the sheet of paper there.  "Well...," he mused, "Over at Emily Dickinson's House, the Rhyming Ride is broken.  It always is.  Most of it is fine, but The Ultimate Feat is rather badly slanted.  Too dangerous, really, to let guests on the thing at all."
 One man, to Walter's left, scratched his chin and chuckled. He squinted at the table through wire-rimmed spectacles before squinting at Walter.  "Of course, the Joyce attraction is running...."  He chuckled again.  "We can't get it to stop!  It runs on and on...." He exchanged grins with several of the other men.
 The first pilgrim took one sheet off his board and handed it to Walter.  "Here, sir, take our Progress Report.  We're all very pleased with it.  It'll tell you all you'll need to know."  He sat back down, smiling and nodding contentedly to the others. Walter thanked them and continued away from the Table of Contents, toward the street ahead.  As he walked, he noticed the names of the buildings on either side of him.  One store, in whose window Walter could see fancy hats in many popular and archaic styles, was labeled, "Block Caps". Another featured stuffed doves and little metal soldiers with blunt, tiny bayonets.  The sign read, "Tolstoy Toy Store".  To his left, a shop named "The Best of Times" offered expensive watches, as well as dried herbs and newspapers for famous historical dates.
 Seeing a store which was marked, "DerogaTypes", Walter wondered at the heinous misspelling of "Daguerreotypes".  He smiled, however, remembering the time years ago when he had gone with his family to another park.  In one store, they had dressed up in old-fashioned clothing and posed for a sepia-toned photograph.  The photo still hung in his parents' house.
 He opened the heavy door and walked in.  He looked around for salespeople or cameras, but none were in evidence. Instead, he saw ahead of him rows of manual typewriters, and, on either side, framed sheets of paper on the walls.  He examined one. "Look at that face!," he thought, admiring the words written in a fancy typeface. Gradually becoming bored, his eyes took in numerous such framed pages, skimming over Venice, roaming over Caligrapha, and wondering at Alice.  Finally he stood glaring at the last font in the row.  The words on the page had curlicues and loops everywhere: rather attractive, in a feminine way, but not too impressive.  "Just another pretty face," he grunted at the page.
 "Don't you wish you were that lucky!" the paper retorted grouchily.  "You're even more ordinary...only you're ugly as sin!" Walter stepped back, startled.  Then he peered at the frame, searching for a hidden loudspeaker or something. He moved his face near the page.  "Eewww, don't do that to me!," whined the document. "How disgusting!"  Walter straightened himself, insulted, and walked to the right wall.  "Unfit to print!..." he heard the voice remark primly, as he retreated.
 The next row of frames was labeled, "Fonts de Leon."  He found that these were more masculine, straightforward styles of type, with many good points, but all irritatingly macho in their clarity.  They wanted to be tough...but not to read.  Walter snorted in derision.  Immediately a chorus of indignant male voices came from the row of offended pages.  Getting fed up, Walter moved to throw one to the ground.  From the end of the row suddenly stepped a tall frame wearing a silver star and cowboy boots.  Walter recognized the legal sized paper and understood that this must be the Serif.  He was a strong, silent type, and wordlessly he took Walter boldly by the arm, pressing him toward the exit.
Walter, outraged, wanted to punch through the glass, but didn't feel like being framed, so he let himself be pushed out the door.  The sound of derogatory comments faded as the door clicked to a close.  Walter shuddered and strode down the street, distancing himself from the DerogaType store.
 At the end of the street, in a little parklike area, was an immense black statue.  It depicted a man in old-fashioned Spanish garb.  Walter, who was rather itinerant himself, recognized the image of the writer of the first true novel: Miguel de Cervantes.  Walter had read Don Quixote many times, and had even learned Spanish in school partly because of his desire to read the historic first novel in its original language.  The plaque under the statue read, "Writers' Gramp". Walter sighed and walked on.
 He appeared to have reached a sort of hub.  From where he stood, Walter could see various paths, spoking out in many directions.  At the end of the paths, he could see arches that read, "James Joyce," "C. S. Lewis," "Lewis Carrol," "Wm. Shakespeare," "Emily Dickinson," "J. R. R. Tolkien," and others as well.  Walter remembered that the pilgrim had mentioned the James Joyce attraction was operating.  He had struggled to finish Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in his high school days, enjoying the book, but having difficulty getting through the unusual narrative style.  Walter decided to give the attraction a try anyway, and he headed off toward the appropriate arch.
 "James Joyce" straddled the walkway like the literary giant he was supposed to be.  As he walked through, Walter observed that the arch was splitting off into two distinct ones: an obvious reference to Dublin, Joyce's favorite city. He strolled down the damp, grassy lane, feeling relaxed.  He could hear the muted roar of what seemed to be a large body of water.  Since he was in central Florida, Walter dismissed this as a special effect and leaned down to pluck a blade of the dewy grass.  On the blade was printed, "BF .0061".  Looking more closely, he could see that the whole lawn, in the moist areas, was inscribed in similar ways.  Irritated by the artificiality of the grass, he dropped the dewy decimal and went on his way.
  Ahead of him, the path turned into a bridge.  As he got closer, Walter could discern a narrow rivulet, which flowed under it.  He was surprised to notice that the path did not go all the way across the water; two thirds across, the path abruptly broke off, leaving an irritating and potentially dangerous gap of a couple of feet of open air.  He soon came to understand, however, that this was really a bridged, and such things never take you all the way over.  Grumbling, Walter realized that he wouldn't be able to reJoyce, again living the book as he had years ago; the experience would be incomplete.  With a little jump, he crossed the brook--
 --and instantly a change came over him.  He became aware of all the details of the landscape about him; he noticed sounds and smells that had remained hidden before.  Most importantly, he was keenly aware of all the thoughts that passed through his mind, frequently interrupting each other in their rush.  Walter realized, fighting the distracting, myriad ideas, that he must have crossed the well-known Stream of Consciousness that he had studied in school.  "What a marvelous place," he thought, "My day has just begun and --There are sharp stones under your left foot--already I've gained such insight into Joyce's writing!"
 To his left Walter saw a sandy beach, and decided to walk along the shore.  He thought to himself, interested. "How unusual to find an ocean here in central Florida the blinky cow makes moo moo sounds as the oak tree leans over my the sun is shining brightly.  As the water laps at my feet.  When the truck arrives I greet the schoolmaster and give him an apple meanwhile papa shouts about the icky sticky oatmeal oh papa, how the day flies in school when religion is the root of all knowledge and my uniform Boolky warnishes the parnophonic satsmo pinkertonshoe as my Ilpy swarshes the Ignatz under fog rolls in from the shore and papa rolls under the table into the moo moo cow with its green coat for christmas in the.  Oh here's a big green arch coming toward the pooing spritz while my feet step by the blankey whistle in immediately line--" Crossing under the exit arch, Walter felt a mental snap, and he reverted to his normal level of consciousness.  He looked about, and found himself standing on a short, paved path that faced the back of a large, black statue.  As he oriented himself, he realized that he was facing the hub of the park once more.  Not wishing to revisit that area which had made him so angry, he decided to head away from Ireland.  He stumbled back toward the image of Cervantes with a wave of relief.
 Suddenly weary, Walter decided to sit for a spell, and to this end he set himself down on the grassy base of the statue. This soon proved to be a bad mistake, for once again he felt an uncontrollable power grasp his mentality and he was compelled to speak.  "Omega. O-M-E-G-A, omega.  Frustration, F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-O-N, frustration.  Schenectady, S-C-H-E-N-E-C-T-A-D-Y, Schenectady.  LemmeGo, L-E-M-M-E-G-O, LemmeGo.  Gottastandup, G-O-T-T-A-S-T-A...Yurrgh!" Wrenching himself free of the mindhold with a great effort, Walter was able to stand up.  He no longer felt compelled to spell anything.  Although he was a good speller, he preferred to enter a bee with adequate preparation, not like the cold spell he had just finished.  Walter was no longer sure he liked this park; he was having a unique new raft of experiences, but he felt like his mind had been violated, and longed for a good brainwash to get rid of his dirty-mindedness.  He decided to try sampling an area of Literary Land which featured a writer he liked more, and scanned the horizon for names to choose from.  His eye fell on the sign which read, "Arthur Conan Doyle".  Capital!
 Walter walked, slightly warily, toward the Doyle arch.  He didn't want to face anything unpleasant again!  As he walked beyond the arch, he saw that Doyle Land resembled a foggy London street.  There were the expected horse-and-carriages, he noticed, and every time a horse reached the end of the street the driver hit a carriage return to bring the whole affair back to where the road began. Relaxing, Walter admired the quaint Victorian dwellings on both sides of the street.  Reflecting, he thought that, since he was at a theme park and not really London, the uniform flats that lined the sides of the streets were probably really just flats, not actual apartments.  He observed the rather unkempt gardens outside several adjacent apartments. It occurred to him that the maintenance crew should take better care of the grounds; then he saw one garden of unparalleled beauty and grace.  In it grew roses, zinnias, daffodils, and petunias.  Excited, Walter looked up to the flat's number, curious as to who would keep their garden so well.  The lettering on the door read, "221 B Baker Street".  Of course!  This, then, would be the master detective's own home...as he should have guessed.  After all, the Better Holmesian Gardens were world-famous.
 Down the street, Walter noticed a small group of young boys playing and jumping rope.  Their presence disrupted the orderly pattern of dreary white flats.  Therefore, he deduced, these must surely be the Baker Street Irregularities...or some such. The atmosphere made Walter feel more ingenious than usual, probably because of its association with Sherlock Holmes.  Among the boys, a grown man dressed in black was skipping rope too.  Walter decided to try to intuit who the man was.  He was definitely getting into it!  At first, he guessed that the gent was Morey Amsterdam, since he was skipping the rope in the double Dutch style.  Then, warming to the puzzle, he revised his decision: since he was in the Holmesian section of the park, it was more likely to be Professor Moriarty.  That made sense.
 As he watched, the man lost his footing and fell crashing to the cobblestones.  Leaping to his feet in a rage, the man raised his fists in a fighting stance, and called to the boys who had been swinging the rope.  He roared that he was prepared to take them all on at once.  Seeing the man's bushy whiskers and mustache, and his portly figure, and considering his recent actions, Walter once again rethought the problem and guessed that the man was in fact the other adventurous Doyle character, Professor Challenger.  A strong feeling of success came on Walter, and he inadvertantly blurted out, "Deduce!"
 Whirling around, the fierce-looking man with the whiskers turned to face Walter, who became acutely embarassed. "De deuce, you say!" he returned, with some unidentifiable accent.  "Can't you see I am having the argument here with these children?  I beg of you, sir, be gone from my seeing!  You I don't like!"  Walter thought it best to leave at once, and so he turned back to the gate he had entered through.  As he was leaving, a young man with a baseball cap pulled crookedly across his head and a red windbreaker jacket sauntered onto the street past him.  Walter thought that the rapper, whom he recognized from flipping past MTV and from popular magazines, looked grossly out of place in Victorian London.  The youth swung his arms about, making "love" gestures with both hands.  He called to the angry foreigner in a familiar, rather whining way.
 "Yo, Homes !  The coast is clear, man.  Dude!"  He remarked, noticing the man's outfit.  "Lookin' dope, Homes!  Real fly.  But let's get outta here, man.  The game is, like, afoot." Grandly, the older man doffed his whiskers, and removed the pillows from his middle, and the familiar form of Sherlock Holmes was revealed to Walter!
  In a much more polished, refined voice, the figure answered, "Thank you, Watson, old man.  But now we must fly, for those poisoned crumpets must never reach Lord Chomondley.  Away!"   Holmes and the rapper hailed a very handsome cab and sped off into the distance.  Walter cursed himself for not realizing that the foreigner was really Holmes in one of his famous disguises.  But he figured that they were famous for one reason: they fooled others: particularly those villains who had never read the Sherlock Holmes stories before.  The radically unusual casting choice for the part of Watson bothered Walter slightly, but then he was out of the area and ready to try a new one.
 As he left the realm of Sherlock Holmes, he noticed a hand cart, wheeled by a female employee who was middle-aged and plump, wearing a Victorian woman's garb and a tag that read, "Little Buttercup". She was selling a sizeable pile of Holmes and Challenger paperbacks in her Doyley cart.  Walter decided not to buy any.
 He was feeling refreshed and happier, and went straight toward the next gate his eye fell upon.  It read, "Geisel". "Whatever..."Walter thought indifferently.  "It's bound to be interesting, no matter what author I choose." The arch that marked the entrance to the Geisel attraction was composed of two oversized brass instruments that leaned across the path with their bells touching at the top.  The instruments were very like tubas, but not exactly the same. "Could Geisel be a musical composer instead of a writer of literature?" Walter wondered.  He walked through the gates after showing his Poetic Licence to the guard just outside.  He did not quite know what to expect.
 As he stepped 'cross the border, a change came on Walter;
 He stood on some wood o'er a tub full of psalters.
 He perched on the edge and looked down at the ground,
 But of ground there abs'lutely was none to be found.

 As he scratched at his head he started to wonder:
 "What kind of magical spell am I under?
 What kind of magical thing-um-a-critch
 Would put me in such an uncomforting sitch?"
 
 He looked all about, hoping that he would find
 Some comforting clue that would bring peace of mind.
 And he finally found, in the top right-hand corner,
 A sight that gave hope to this unhappy mourner.

 'Twas the Cat in the Hat!  And some elephant, who
 Cried to a spot of dust, "Grinch, just let them be, you!"
 And Walter, who finally saw through this ruse,
 Called in a tremulous voice, "Doctor Seuss!"

 Abruptly, Walter found himself back outside the "Geisel" gate.  With his new understanding, he was able to place the names of the large brass instruments before him: Sousaphones.  He was startled from his musings by a man nearby, who unexpectedly shouted, "I am Doctor Seuss!  The great children's book writer! Come over here and buy a book!  My recent ones even preach to adults as well as kids, so go ahead and buy!î  Walter looked at the man, who was wearing a uniform from the National Institute of Mental Health.  He wore a set of trays, held onto his body by a sort of suspender affair.  The trays were filled with familiar Dr. Seuss books.  The man smiled disarmingly at Walter. "Hot and thirsty, sir?"
 Surprised, Walter looked up at the man.  "No, not really."
 The man appealed, "But look, sir, these are delicious.  They're popsicles that you're supposed to toss onto the ground and leap on before you eat them.  They're delicious!"  Walter looked baffled, so the fellow explained, "They're a tie-in to one of my most popular children's books."  He held out a copy of one of the books Walter had enjoyed as a youngster:  Hop On Pop.
 Walter felt a chill, even in Florida's summertime heat. "No, thank you.  But I have a question.  Did you really write all these charming books?"  The man grinned toothily and nodded at Walter.  "Well, you say your name is Dr. Seuss. Why does this arch say "Geisel"?
 The man leaned forward confidentially.  "Geisel's my real, true name, but I don't tell the kiddies that."  He indicated his Institute uniform.  "That's why I'm using my pseudonym.  Shh, don't tell, will you?"
 Walter promised he'd keep mum.  Seuss warmly replied that a strong family relationship was indeed important, and that Walter was on the right track.  Walter drifted back toward the hub to take a break.
 As he stood by the statue, thinking, Walter's attention was distracted by a number of boys in what resembled medieval messengers' uniforms.  They were running toward the hub, fleeing, it seemed, some unseen menace.  No, he realized, they were running to Walter himself!  The boys ran up to Walter, throwing themselves at his feet, and they cried, "Save us, save us!" Walter asked them what was wrong. One boy sobbed, "Oh, sir, we are messengers from Adrian, the bookmaker.  He wants to put us into one of his books!"
 This attitude seemed to Walter to be rather cowardly.  He said, "Boys, that sounds splendid.  Won't you be pleased when people from all over read about you?"
  The first boy shook his head vigorously.  "No, sir, you don't understand.  He wants to Put Us Into A Book!  We'll be a part of a real leather book!  We're afraid of such a pressing engagement."
 Walter smiled comfortingly.  "Now, that won't be so bad, I'll be bound."
 The boys interrupted, "No, mister, WE will.  Auugh!"  This last was uttered as a huge man ran into view from around a corner toward the group.  At the last moment before he seized them, one boy screamed, "Chills are running down my spine!" Then the man was on them.  As he touched them, the children reverted to yellow pages, as Walter had suspected all along.  He held a leather hard cover to a book, and shoved them in.  They were really in a bind now! When all the kids were trapped, Adrian looked learnedly at the complete book.  He seemed to find it a bit too big, so he reached in and, accompanied by a horrible, wrenching, ripping sound, he pulled out the appendix; it didn't seem too necessary anyway.  The oversized man smiled smarmily and waddled away with his new list.
 Walter, dismayed, decided to quit the park once and for all. He walked out through the Writers' Block, through the ticket booth, and past the fountain pun.  He got into his Escort and drove away.

 
                     (Yes, I know it ends really screeches to a halt, but them's the brakes....)
 

 Before he had left the parking lot of Literary Land, Walter reconsidered.  He had paid good money to attend the park!  Leaving prematurely would make all his travels to central Florida more or less just a waste.  So Walter turned his Escort back around and was able to find his parking spot again.  Locking his car door, he paused to consider which themed lands he wanted to visit before closing time.  He took out his pamphlet and scanned the list of possible areas to choose from.  There were sections of the park devoted to Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, E. E. Cummings, Franz Kafka, Geoffrey Chaucer, and many others.  A wide selection, but Walter was not sure if he really liked any of the authors enough to rush out to their section of the park first.  He decided to stop by a few of the stores he had seen on his entrance to the park, before choosing an author to explore in the main area of Literary Land.
 Walter was stopped on his way back into the park by the woman who had taken his money earlier that morning.  She required Walter to show her his hand stamp.  Walter considered, and spied a gardener a few feet away, tending to a begonia plant on the ground by the pencil-shaped column closest by where they were talking.  Walter, wishing to show his hand stamp, raised his foot over the gardener's gloved hands, smiling at the gardener apologetically, and made to step on him.  Alarmed, the gardener cried, "Begone, ya!"  The woman who gave Walter the ticket originally rushed from her booth and assured that a hand stamp was unnecessary; he could enter the park without it. Walter walked onto the merchants' block, thanking her graciously.  Better to be sacrificed on the shopping block than to be stamped out!
 Starting on the other side of the street from the last time he had been there, Walter gazed down the avenue.