Towering over the Elvis Is Alive Museum, the sixteen-foot plywood Elvis cutout stood resplendent in his high collared jumpsuit and jet-black pompadour, bent toward his interstate fans, holding a microphone to his curled upper lip. As far as plywood Elvis … Read More
Highways Have Souls
Erifnus carried me without radar, sonar, Pixar, Pulsar, Dagmar, Bolivar, Telstar, Avatar, NASCAR or a minibar. We relied on maps. Compared to GPS, maps are lazy and they won’t work on their own, preferring to doze, folded tight as a … Read More
Surprise, Missouri
As I paddled down the Eleven Point River, I knew that within the better part of a county in every direction, I was a population of one. This is the Irish Wilderness. Along the river there used to be a … Read More
A Tale of Two Stacked Ladies
Jack Dawson, I’m calling you out. 1961. The first photo I ever took, long before the selfie craze. My photo op was dramatic only to me. Steaming across the Atlantic, the Queen Mary’s three smokestacks poured a layer of smoke … Read More
Stars and Stripes born in the Bootheel
Tucked in gentle rolling hills on the brink of the Bootheel, the Bloomfield Cemetery tells a story. The chapters unfold one-by-one on the white tombstones of Confederate soldiers from around Bloomfield who died during the Civil War. Many are now … Read More
My First Tropical Storm
And now, no wiser, I found myself in another bad situation. I had no idea that the winds outside were approaching 200 miles an hour, a nascar made of wind. With debris smacking the outside of the cabin, I slunk … Read More
Head Games
We launched a johnboat from the conservation access point and motored upstream along Big Muddy, upwind, toward a sprawling sand bar a mile away. Our most experienced hand assured us that the river, though deserving of respect and awe, is … Read More
Dancing on the Edge of the Storm
Our bow cut a frothy wake as Scotoplanes bit through four-foot swells, rising to meet the front of each swell, gliding down the backside of the wave into the trough, then rising again. Fixed at the center of both sails, … Read More
Murder and Rebirth on the Prairie
Highway 13 cuts through a rogue’s gallery of America’s most brazen killers. The most ruthless killer in this area was a government employee: General Philip Sheridan. A Union General during the Civil War, Sheridan led a mostly unsuccessful raid on … Read More