by Robin Furth
GEORGIA (STATE OF)
II:198
GERMANY
VII:276
BERGEN-BELSEN: A Nazi concentration camp located in northwest Germany, near the village of Belsen. VII:698
BUCHENWALD: A Nazi concentration camp located in eastern Germany, near the village of Buchenwald. VII:698
HAMELIN: In Wolves of the Calla, EDDIE DEAN compares ANDY, CALLA BRYN STURGIS’s duplicitous Messenger Robot, to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Eddie draws this comparison because the children of the Calla love Andy and follow him everywhere, but another, more sinister meaning is behind Eddie’s statement. According to the old folktale, the town of Hamelin was afflicted by a plague of rats, and the people of the town could not get rid of the terrible, flea-bitten rodents. However, just as they were about to go out of their minds, along came a piper in a parti-colored suit who agreed to solve their problem as long as they paid him what he wanted. The Pied Piper and the townsfolk agreed on an amount, but once the rats were gone, the stingy folken refused to honor their pledge. The Piper left, only to return the following Saint John’s Day. This time when he played his pipe, he charmed the children away. None of them were ever seen again. Only two little children remained in the village—one who was blind and could not see the Piper to follow him, and one who was lame and could not keep up with his playmates. Like the Pied Piper, Andy steals children. He doesn’t do it himself—the WOLVES of THUNDERCLAP do it for him—however, he is every bit as guilty as they are. V:586–87
GINELLI’S PIZZA (FOUR FATHERS RESTAURANT)
See NEW YORK CITY: BROOKLYN
GRAND ARMY PLAZA
See NEW YORK CITY: BROOKLYN
GRAND CANYON
See ARIZONA (STATE OF)
GRAND COULEE DAM
See WASHINGTON (STATE OF)
GRAND RIVER MEN’S WEAR
See MICHIGAN (STATE OF): DETROIT
GRANT PARK
See NEW YORK CITY: BROOKLYN
GREAT PLAINS
III:171
GREAT SMOKIES
SUSANNAH DEAN/ODETTA HOLMES’s AUNT BLUE had her honeymoon in these mountains.
II:236
GREEN BAY
See WISCONSIN (STATE OF)
GREENWICH VILLAGE
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
GREYMARL APARTMENTS
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
GUTTENBERG, FURTH, AND PATEL
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
GUYANA
The Reverend Jim Jones established the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. Almost one thousand people committed suicide there by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. While they downed their final drinks, the reverend stood on his porch and, holding a bullhorn to his lips, recounted stories about his mother.
III:378, VII:211
H
HAITI
II:58, II:186
HAMELIN
See GERMANY
HAMMARSKJÖLD PLAZA (2 HAMMARSKJÖLD PLAZA)
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN: SECOND AVENUE
HAMPSHIRE
See ENGLAND
HARRIGAN’S STREET CORNER
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN: SECOND AVENUE
HARVARD
TED BRAUTIGAN attended Harvard.
VII:212, VII:273, VII:276
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL: VII:126
HAWAII (STATE OF)
V:48, V:89
HENRY’S CORNER MARKET
See NEW YORK CITY: BROOKLYN: DUTCH HILL
HIDDEN HIGHWAYS/HIGHWAYS IN HIDING
See HIDDEN HIGHWAYS, in PORTALS
HOBOKEN
See NEW JERSEY (STATE OF)
HOME
Home was a wet shelter for homeless people located on FIRST AVENUE and FORTY-SEVENTH STREET in MANHATTAN, NEW YORK. The owner and chief supervisor was PERE CALLAHAN’s friend ROWAN MAGRUDER. Unlike many of New York City’s shelters, Home accepted both men and women and allowed in people who were drunk as well as sober. At Home, the drunks weren’t locked up, the booze was. If somebody came in suffering from the d.t.’s, he or she would be given a shot of liquor, and probably a sedative chaser to keep him or her quiet. Despite—or more probably because of—its unusual policies, Home became one of the city’s most successful, and highly regarded, shelters. In 1977, Mother Teresa visited it, and in 1980, Magruder was named Man of the Year by New York City’s Mayor Ed Koch. (Magruder even made the cover of Newsweek.)
After his terrible encounter with the VAMPIRE BARLOW, Pere Callahan traveled to New York and ended up at this shelter. Although he began as a resident, he ended up as an employee. Pere worked for Home from October of 1975 until June of 1976. However, in June of 1976, just after his friend and fellow Home employee LUPE DELGADO died from AIDS (contracted through the bite of a TYPE THREE VAMPIRE), a distraught Callahan went back on the booze. Pere left Home and—bottle in hand—began his inebriated journeys along America’s HIGHWAYS IN HIDING.
V:106, V:266–68, V:271–82, V:287, V:292, V:308–9 (Magruder and Hitler Brothers), V:422, V:424 (flophouse), V:425, V:426, V:427, V:428–29, V:443, V:445, V:452, V:466, VI:332
HUDSON RIVER
See NEW YORK (STATE OF)
HUNGRY I
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
I
ILLINOIS (STATE OF)
CHICAGO: V:423
GREENTOWN: To Ray Bradbury fans, Greentown is a well-known and well-loved place. Based upon Bradbury’s hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, it represents all that is best in small-town America. However, in the Dark Tower series, Greentown becomes a sinister place.
According to SUSANNAH DEAN, the DEVAR-TOI (or BREAKER prison) is reminiscent of Bradbury’s idealized Midwestern town. Its cozy Main Street and nearby college campus look like snapshots out of an album of Americana—places where there is no crime, where girls wearing dresses with hemlines safely below the knee kiss their boyfriends a chaste goodnight and then return to their college dorms early so that their dormitory moms (as well as their actual mothers) will think well of them. Its low buildings and friendly streets make the viewer daydream about a time before the world moved on—an era predating world wars and cold wars, when the sun always shone and old folks sat happily on their porches, drinking lemonade.
However, as our tet knows all too well, the apparent friendliness of THUNDERCLAP’s Greentown is an illusion. The sun is an artificial spotlight, run by a technological egg timer. The town is surrounded by barbed wire and all of the citizens are prisoners who have become so accustomed to their lot that they no longer question the terrible job that they have been brought here to do. In truth, the psychic residents of the Devar-Toi are eroding the BEAMS so that the DARK TOWER—the linchpin of existence—will collapse. The instability of the multiverse is being generated from this outpost owned by the CRIMSON KING.
VII:209
INDIA
CALCUTTA:
BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA: In the annals of imperialist history, the Black Hole of Calcutta is infamous. Following the capture of Calcutta by Siraj-ud-Dawalah, nawab of Bengal, in 1756, 146 British defenders were placed in this narrow, airless dungeon, twenty feet by twenty feet. According to the story, only 23 survived the night. The actual details of the event remain controversial, and many historians believe that the true number of Englishmen jailed was probably smaller. However, as SUSANNAH DEAN discovers when she is imprisoned by MIA, the Black Hole of Calcutta remains a fairly accurate description of the horror and desperation a person feels when she is imprisoned without hope of escape or rescue. VI:124
NEW DELHI: VII:127
IOWA (STATE OF)
V:192
DES MOINES: VII:279
IRELAND
II:371, V:465
DUBLIN: The crucifix which FATHER CALLAHAN used to stave off the VAMPIRE BARLOW in ’SALEM’S LOT, MAINE, originally came from Dublin. Callahan’s mother bought it in a souvenir shop, probably at a scalper’s price. During his confrontation with Barlow, Callahan learned that the trappings of religion h
ave no intrinsic worth if the one wielding them does not have faith. V:459
ISRAEL
JERUSALEM: See also MAINE (STATE OF): JERUSALEM’S LOT. V:192
ISSAQUENA COUNTY
See MISSISSIPPI (STATE OF)
ITALY
II:133 (Old Country)
PISA:
LEANING TOWER OF PISA: The Leaning Tower of Pisa, whose official name is Torre Pendente di Pisa, is an Italian bell tower which was built between A.D. 1173 and 1350. As can be deduced from its name, it lists to one side, a problem that architects through the ages have not been able to rectify.
The Dark Tower series refers to this famous tower in two different contexts. First, in The Drawing of the Three, we learn that the neon sign marking BALAZAR’s bar and headquarters is in the shape of this historic monument. Much to EDDIE DEAN’s alarm, the first time Roland sees this sign he thinks he has arrived at his destination—the DARK TOWER itself.
The next time we see the Leaning Tower it takes the form of a photograph (or as Roland would say, a fottergraf) pasted to the last page of JAKE CHAMBERS’s English Comp essay entitled “My Understanding of Truth.” Though he didn’t realize it at the time, the Leaning Tower (which he had covered in black crayon scribbles) was his unconscious mind’s version of the Dark Tower. See also NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN: LEANING TOWER (BALAZAR’S OFFICE). II:121, V:56
SICILY: II:114
J
JAFFORDS RENTALS
See MAINE (STATE OF): OXFORD COUNTY: EAST STONEHAM
JAPAN
SAPPORO: VI:226
JERUSALEM
See ISRAEL; see also MAINE (STATE OF): ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS AND THE STATE OF MAINE: JERUSALEM’S LOT
JERUSALEM’S LOT
See MAINE (STATE OF): ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS AND THE STATE OF MAINE: JERUSALEM’S LOT
JFK AIRPORT
See NEW YORK CITY: QUEENS
JOHN CULLUM’S CABIN
See MAINE (STATE OF): OXFORD COUNTY: EAST STONEHAM
JONESTOWN
See GUYANA
K
KANSAS (STATE OF)
The state of Kansas (initial setting for The Wizard of Oz) plays an important part in the Dark Tower series. At the beginning of Wizard and Glass, BLAINE the Insane Mono crashed into an alternative version of our world’s TOPEKA. The Kansas that our tet is forced to travel through is both subtly and not so subtly different from our Kansas. Unlike the Kansas of our world, this Kansas seems still to use the old ATCHISON, TOPEKA, AND SANTA FE RAILROAD. Its former residents drove Takaru Spirits and ate at Boing Boing burgers—cars and fast-food joints we’ve never heard of—but worse yet, they’ve all been wiped out by the superflu, the same disease that killed most of America’s population in STEPHEN KING’s novel The Stand.
Like HAMBRY—the MID-WORLD town where Roland, CUTHBERT ALL-GOOD, and ALAIN JOHNS battled the BIG COFFIN HUNTERS and the other traitors to the AFFILIATION—this alternative Topeka contained a THINNY. The sight and sound of this warbling DOORWAY BETWEEN WORLDS enticed Roland to tell his new friends about the trials he faced in Hambry, and about his ill-fated love affair with the beautiful young SUSAN DELGADO. Also in this alternative version of Kansas, our tet entered the GREEN PALACE and confronted OZ the Great and Terrible—a wizard who turned out to be none other than Roland’s longtime nemesis, WALTER (aka RANDALL FLAGG).
Kansas continues to play a significant role in the final books of the Dark Tower series. In late winter of 1982, PERE CALLAHAN reeled drunkenly through the city of Topeka and landed in a JAIL CELL there. While incarcerated, he had an alcohol-related seizure. Although Callahan joined Alcoholics Anonymous and managed to sober up, he was not destined to settle in this state. In the fall of that year, Callahan saw the first of the LOW MEN’s “lost pet” posters advertising for information about his whereabouts. Callahan left Topeka for DETROIT.
II:229 (Dorothy), III:139–45 (Charlie the Choo-Choo), III:258, III:287 (concrete silos), IV:62–112, IV:335–37, IV:615–51, IV:658, IV:660, V:35, V:106, V:296, V:447, V:456, VI:298, VI:401
ATCHISON: Atchison is a town in Kansas famous for being the birthplace of both Amelia Earhart and the ATCHISON, TOPEKA, AND SANTA FE RAILROAD. IV:68
DODGE: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dodge had a reputation as a rowdy frontier town. III:258, III:373, VII:811
KANSAS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: IV:75
LAWRENCE: VI:401
PHILLIP BILLARD: IV:75
TOPEKA: In the children’s story Charlie the Choo-Choo, Topeka is the MID-WORLD RAILWAY’s final destination. It also happens to be BLAINE’S destination as well as the place where Mid-World ends and END-WORLD begins. See entry under ATCHISON, TOPEKA, AND SANTA FE RAILROAD. III:139–45, III:199, III:266, III:400, III:404, III:409, III:411, III:413, III:419, IV:62–112, IV:335–37, IV:615–25, V:36, V:106, V:440, V:445–49, VI:25, VI:103, VII:531
BERRYTON ROAD: IV:74
BOING BOING BURGERS: IV:92, IV:617
CRADLE OF TOPEKA: Like an outdoor LUD. Looks Western. IV:67, IV:72
FORBES: IV:75
FORBES FIELD: IV:74
GADDISH FEEDS: Grain-storage tower. IV:95
GAGE BOULEVARD: IV:83, IV:84
GAGE BOULEVARD AMTRAK STATION: IV:75
GAGE PARK: IV:86–91, V:291, V:449, VII:335
HEARTLAND LANES: IV:92
HEARTLAND PARK RACE TRACK: Disposal pit for superflu dead. IV:74
JAIL CELL: FATHER CALLAHAN was held here for assaulting an officer. While incarcerated, he had an alcohol-related seizure. V:445–49
KANSAS CITY: V:36
KANSAS TURNPIKE (I-70): IV:62, IV:63, IV:71, IV:91–112 (ka-tet follows. Directly mentioned on 92, 94, 104), IV:623, IV:625, IV:629, IV:635, IV:660, V:35, V:36, V:291, V:516
OAKLAND BILLARD PARK: Disposal plant for superflu dead. IV:74
REINISCH ROSE GARDEN: In Reinisch Rose Garden (home of the infamous toy version of CHARLIE THE CHOO-CHOO) PERE CALLAHAN saw some of the LOW MEN’s “lost pet” posters, offering a reward to anyone who could disclose his whereabouts. Callahan left Kansas in a hurry. IV:86, IV:87–89 (and Charlie the Choo-Choo), V:449
SOUTHEAST SIXTY-FIRST STREET: IV:74
ST. FRANCIS HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL CENTER: IV:74
STORMONT-VAIL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER: IV:74
TOPEKA STATE HOSPITAL: IV:92
TOPEKA ZOO: IV:89
WAMBEGO: IV:75
KAW RIVER NUCLEAR PLANT (KAWNUKE): IV:75
WICHITA: A town in Kansas accessed by a branch line of the ATCHISON, TOPEKA, AND SANTA FE RAILROAD. Roland sees a sign for it in the alternative TOPEKA that he and his ka-tet travel through in Wizard and Glass. See entry under ATCHISON, TOPEKA, AND SANTA FE RAILROAD. IV:72
KANSAS CITY BLUES
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
KANSAS ROAD
See MAINE (STATE OF): CUMBERLAND COUNTY: BRIDGTON
KATZ PHARMACY AND SODA FOUNTAIN (SUNDRIES AND NOTIONS FOR MISSES AND MISTERS)
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
KENTUCKY
While traveling along the HIGHWAYS IN HIDING, CALLAHAN worked as a grave digger in Kentucky. His shovel-buddy was a digger named PETE PETAKI. Pete had a taste for seventeen-year-old jailbait. However, the girl who caught his eye turned out to be a TYPE THREE VAMPIRE. Callahan destroyed her before she could sink her teeth into Petaki’s all-too-willing throat.
V:302
ROUTE 317: V:302
KEYSTONE EARTH/KEYSTONE WORLD
See KEY WORLD/KEYSTONE WORLD, in PORTALS
KEYWADIN POND
See MAINE (STATE OF): OXFORD COUNTY: EAST STONEHAM
KEZAR LAKE
See MAINE (STATE OF): OXFORD COUNTY: LOVELL
KIDZPLAY
See GUTTENBERG, FURTH, AND PATEL, in CHARACTERS
KING’S CHILDHOOD BARN
See entry in PORTALS
KING’S HOUSE IN LOVELL
See DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS: CARA LAUGHS, in PORTALS
KLATT ROAD
&n
bsp; See MAINE (STATE OF): OXFORD COUNTY: FRYEBURG
KOREA
VII:280
L
LA GUARDIA AIRPORT
See NEW YORK CITY: QUEENS
LAS VEGAS
See NEVADA (STATE OF)
LAWRENCE
See KANSAS (STATE OF)
LEANING TOWER (BALAZAR’S OFFICE)
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
LEANING TOWER OF PISA
See ITALY
LEBANON
BEIRUT: IV:87
LEWISTON
See MAINE (STATE OF): ANDROSCOGGIN COUNTY
LIGHTHOUSE SHELTER
CALLAHAN worked at this wet shelter (located in DETROIT) from the late autumn of 1982 until December of 1983. According to Pere, it was an almost exact replica of the HOME shelter he’d worked at in NEW YORK CITY, although one without ROWAN MAGRUDER to manage it. Callahan’s workmates at Lighthouse were WARD HUCKMAN and AL McCOWAN. In early December of 1982, Ward received a letter from the SOMBRA CORPORATION, saying that Lighthouse had been awarded a million-dollar grant. However, when the three men arrived at Sombra’s corporate headquarters to discuss the details of their windfall, they discovered that the whole thing was a setup. Huckman and McCowan were knocked unconscious by electrical stunners, and Callahan was left to face the evil RICHARD P. SAYRE and the other servants of the CRIMSON KING alone. Rather than submit to the bites of Sayre’s HIV-infected TYPE THREE VAMPIRES, Callahan jumped out the window of the TISHMAN BUILDING. He died in our world only to awake in MID-WORLD’s WAY STATION.
V:270, V:449, V:450–57 (up to Sayre’s trickery), V:466
LONDON
See ENGLAND
LOS ZAPATOS
See MEXICO
LOT, THE
See LOT, THE, in PORTALS
LOUISIANA (STATE OF)
NEW ORLEANS: V:305, V:621
LOVELL
See MAINE (STATE OF)
LOWELL
See MASSACHUSETTS (STATE OF)
M
MACY’S
See NEW YORK CITY: MANHATTAN
