There are seeds in every abandoned house, in the dry rotted floorboards and the mildewy walls, in the moss on the roof where sunlight doesn’t reach. The seeds are in the windowsills, in the clawfoot tub with as many rings … Read More
Pegleg Shannon’s County
Shannon County is a synonym for wilderness, with a few small settlements scattered across the deep woods. It’s a great place to hide, or get lost. From border to border, as the Jacks Fork River slices across its face, Shannon … Read More
Two Tom Cats, the Westminster Poets
They grew up a half block from each other. Two of the world’s greatest purveyors of felinity—one associated with New Orleans cats, the other with London cats—spent their wonder years on Westminster Street. Both left this street more than a … Read More
Custerfluck
It was a butt-clenching rollercoaster ride on the Black Hills backroad to a park named for a man best-known for getting slaughtered. Halfway up the twisting mountain road to the park, our journey resembled a Custerfluck. Swollen rain clouds shrouded … Read More
A Secret D-Day Rehearsal Became The Tigers’ Most Devastating Loss
On the road between Kingdom City and Auxvasse, thousands of travelers pass a sign designating a stretch of Highway 54 as Exercise Tiger Memorial Highway. Most of them don’t know what Exercise Tiger means. It’s the story about the ambush … Read More
The Woman Who Toppled Madmen
I left grad school to take a job with Gardner Advertising, Saint Louis’ second-largest ad agency. Clients ranged from Busch Beer and the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals to Puppy Chow and Chuck Wagon dog food, to Jack Daniels whiskey. Even … Read More
The Marshfield Tornado
One catastrophic event affected 16-year-old John Boone so deeply he recounted the vivid story in nearly every concert until he died. Around suppertime on Sunday, April 18, 1880, a tornado with winds topping 200 miles per hour leveled much of … Read More
Sunrise with Coast Guard Cutter
Our sloop sailed all night across the Bermuda Triangle. At dawn we crossed the Gulf Stream. We had maneuvered into position to enter the Lake Worth cut into West Palm when a voice crackled over our ship-to-shore radio: “Westbound sloop … Read More
The Day The Capitol Burned
Sunday evening, February 5, 1911. Unusually warm. A thunderstorm approached the state capitol from the west and lightning struck the dome around suppertime. Monsignor Joseph Selinger remembers, “I was standing on the front steps of the hospital [Saint Mary’s] about … Read More