Pair of Kings

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

Fuzzy Fables

“That there’s not a skunk,” the guide pointed to one animal pelt on a table, “That’s genuine Alaskan sable.” It was a skunk, the guide admitted, but to the European fur market in the early 1800s, the term Alaskan sable … Read More

Missouri’s Unknown Superstar

Next time you sit down with the kids to watch Disney’s Pinocchio, listen to the cricket. He was born here. At least, his voice was born here. When that loveable bug sings “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the voice … Read More

Insanity

St. Joseph. Jesse James died here. And the single most unsettling image–of a vengeful John Brown–hangs in the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. But no unsettling emotion compared to the final stop on my self-guided tour. The first thing I saw … Read More

Silver Wings

I left Route 66 and motored north from Rolla. At Vichy, a tiny fork in the road, I passed three familiar friends, three old birds that stood in the darkness a mile away. Even though I couldn’t see them, I … Read More

English Teacher Hell.

Graveyard for Naughty English Teachers

Imagine any English teacher buried there, eternally damned to lie under a misspelled word. Then again, maybe the sign was painted by one of her students, in which case she shares some of the blame.

On Seeds

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

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