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Most every time I enter Waldo, I am headed either north or south on Wornall. In the last three years, I have been to or through Waldo many times. But in each case that I stopped, my purpose has been limited to one of three possibilities: I was either there to visit a friend’s home, eat food, or buy tires.

Despite these mundane services, this neighborhood with a name I’ve never quite gotten used to defies the lack of eccentricity that I associate with the typical suburb. It is fitting that the neighborhood’s peculiar name brings to mind a personality rather than a place, as Waldo has a quiet and shifty vitality that is unlike the relatively static nature of most neighborhoods. Unlike many places nearby, the outlying southern neighborhood annexed by Kansas City in 1909 is a person of a place, and is hard to pin down.

The name may refer the historians among us to the prospects of Dr. David Waldo, and youngsters like myself may think of an unfashionable hiker with a penchant for red and white stripes. Both descriptions — or some mixture of the two — are apt. In that spirit, my excursions to Waldo retain the qualities of portraiture rather than narrative. My experiences there are distinct and fleeting and they gather in my mind as Waldo.

There is a bar called Swagger on Wornall and 85th that evokes subtle sensations of the bizarre from the moment one arrives. First one must turn into the simple yet puzzling parking lot, which is essentially another lane of traffic above the curb and a long row of parallel parking spots that feel oddly out of place compared to their sub-suburban environs. Inside, black gypsum ceiling tiles occasionally feature smiley buxom brunettes — vinyl-affixed — holding weirdly flat and gravity-defying steins of Miller High Life in each hand (one for me, one for you). The fact that neither the beer-drinking babes nor their breasts aren’t magically falling from their two-dimensional frames to the floor wouldn’t be so perplexing if it weren’t for the beer that has seemed to escape its vessel, both represented and real. There are the many glistening drops of frosty beer mixing artfully with the beer babe’s neck, chest, and torso sweat (how she managed to make such a mess and remain happy is anyone’s guess).

Then there is the sticky feeling at your feet — beer turning from escaped libation to hardened resin, and work for someone in the morning. On the wall perpendicular to the ceiling women, alongside typical neon beer signs, the interior design consultant at Swagger evades easy definition by featuring a most curious and unexpected object — a Pabst Blue Ribbon skateboard, a glossy collector’s item in supreme condition. From there, things continue to be tamely weird and worthwhile (if one ignores the one-two punch that is a credit card machine that doesn’t work “tonight” and an old-fashioned ATM machine with fees that rival your credit card’s).

The times that I feel I am truly “in Waldo” are those that I am on or near Wornall, between 75th and 85th streets, at places like Swagger or taking on the crude and charming blend of storefronts and signs in the aggregate. Dottie Mae’s Costume Shop and its dealership-style streamers flank an open-late Signature Loans. Sitting in one of their shared parking spots, I idly imagine the unlikely afternoon in which someone did business at both. Looking south from there, I can see a dozen ugly signs that together have a latent and eye-pleasing cuteness. The fading horizontal colors of the Irish flag reminding Murphy’s patrons that they’re at an Irish “pub," the half-out Christmas lights strung across its patio with economic effort. The small square sign with an arrow pointing downward to a larger sign, advertising the $5 deal to be had at the car-wash below. The unlit shapes for stores that are either closed or dead with the brightened curved tips of the McDonald’s arches even further south. The floating beer brand logos that greet drivers from the bar windows, as if bar-goers truly shopped for pints from the road. And the darkened rectangles, power lines, and steely supports that tower upward from the darkness against a fading sky, creating a plain-stated latticework of American shapes.

The charm of such a thing is hard to channel, and perhaps not universally appreciated. Like an ambling and enigmatic individual, Waldo is difficult to determine or describe. One of the most suitable descriptions I can offer is a likeness I thought of on my very first visit, some three years ago. Waldo is like a long-closed carnival or abandoned fairgrounds. It is alive with a kind of past-tense activity, charged with both memories (or the lack thereof) and the reality of people from different times and places.

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