Illusions Postscript

After posting Illusions All Around Us yesterday, I got up to wash the lunchtime dishes. There was a 14-foot U-Haul truck parked in the driveway. Could it be the same one I had seen at the intersection? From my window I saw the U-Haul name, an advertising slogan on the trademark orange stripe – My friend Moby, who worked for U-Haul, said that the company's management asked employees to "bleed orange" – and, on the little cubby-area that extends over the cab, the witty words "Mom's Attic." A tree blocked the artwork. I went out on the balcony and saw … a rhinoceros. Had the new tenants driven from Africa?

I went to the U-Haul website. In 1998 they changed the theme of their artwork. Here is what it says:

Come with U-Haul on a pictorial adventure through North America that will stimulate your senses and challenge your mind. These images – and the stories they tell – have been created to bring you to new places and things. There are mysteries to solve, and wonders to be discovered. It’s now up to you …

For each state they chose something in nature that typifies that state. Nebraska’s animal is not a rhino; it is a Teleocerus discovered at the Ashfall fossil beds. Vermont’s is the mythical, so far, Lake Champlain Monster. My Jell-o rings are colorful plants that grow on coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, 100 miles off the shores of Texas.

Sometimes, discovering the reality behind an illusion doesn’t destroy the magic.