St. Peter’s Church casts its short shadow beside the cemetery, awaiting parishioners from Monroe City and Perry, Spalding and Rensselaer, as it has ever since the church was built back at the beginning of the Civil War. Nowadays, the faithful … Read More
The Source
Hidden Waters Nature Park, the headwaters of the Niangua River. Headwaters are sacred, and townspeople have preserved this spot where the Niangua breaks into daylight. The water rushes from its spring and splits the park in half, cascading downhill at … Read More
Joining Lewis and Clark
“Hands!” the sergeant barked at me. “Let me see your hands!” I stuck out my palms, and the sergeant inspected them for calluses. Seeing none, he dismissed me with a grunt. “Yer too green to make the crew. You’d never … Read More
The Ghost of a Roadside Inn
Took a nap beneath this sign, sharing space with the ghosts of travelers who stopped here long ago to add a sticky chapter to their Route 66 journey. It was a time when cars had crank-down window air-conditioning and tube … Read More
Crewless from Seattle–Columbia Channels Olympic Royalty
You don’t see this every day, not on a Midwest neighborhood side street. In one of Columbia’s stately old neighborhoods, a sweet spot tucked behind Garth and Rollins streets, populated by eighty-year-old trees and the professors who planted them, the … Read More
Harry’s Walks
After he left the White House, locals saw Harry almost every day during his morning walks from his house. What a house. The fourteen-room Victorian home sits in an old neighborhood not far from the town square. Today it’s preserved … Read More
The wild animal in my life
The ancient ash tree in our back yard reaches halfway to Orion, where its loftiest branches fork and fork again to throw new shoots toward the sun. Tucked into those soaring ash cradles—not big enough yet to make Louisville Sluggers, … Read More
The Candy Bomber
A cold corridor in the Truman Library recreates Berlin’s postwar reality: refugees who didn’t freeze to death had nothing to eat. Enter the Berlin Airlift. A photo captures the spirit of that humanitarian armada: an American plane flies one hundred … Read More