The Bridge to Nowhere

I was running late. Hannibal was still an hour away. So I took a short cut. My Pontiac was making good time on the backroads, slicing down straightaways that squeeze between flat soybean fields, fallow before spring planting. Oncoming cars … Read More

Driving Wild

Cresting a hill we began our descent, curving and swerving downhill, face to face with vistas through the tall pines and hardwoods. Along this highway at the tips of its gravel spines, springs and waterfalls push to form their own … Read More

Curves

Sometimes the road gets tough.

On A Pedestal

Sometimes a photo jumps at you. This one had my name on it.

12,000 Poles Down: Bootheel Disaster

Long before The Weather Channel began naming continental storms, this one will be remembered as The Ice Storm of ’09. Its widespread devastation covered Missouri’s Bootheel like a glacier. In the two counties that form the heel of the boot, … Read More

But the greatest of these…

Painted olive green, Hartville’s water tower earns style points as it sticks out from the old red brick buildings like a garnish on the swizzle stick in a giant bloody Mary. I know that image isn’t the town’s intent. But, … Read More

Under a spell

We passed a sign that pointed to a Cemetary [sic]. 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 … Read More

12,000 Poles Down

The storm spread a path of destruction through northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. In two Bootheel counties alone, the ice toppled 12,000 telephone poles.