Missouri Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff

by Josh Young

Overview

The definitive collection of Missouri's odd, wacky, and most offbeat people, places, and things, for Missouri residents and anyone else who enjoys local humor and trivia with a twist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762758647
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/15/2010
Series:	Curiosities Series
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,035,845
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Josh Young's newspaper column, Dang Near Native, has garnered awards in the humor category from the National Newspaper Association two years running.

Read an Excerpt

(SIDEBAR)
Ozark "Go Get'ers"
In most of America, if you hear someone referred to as "a real go getter," you can be assured he (or she) is a hard working, energetic individual. The same phrase, uttered in the Ozarks, is actually a homonym, with almost the opposite definition. An Ozark "Go Get'er," for generations, has described a fellow whose wife was hired on at the garment factory, the chicken plant, or (many years ago) the tomato canneries. That man might "run" a few cattle on his unfenced land, and certainly he hunted coons with the boys at night, but his main money making activity derived from driving his wife to work in the morning, and "going to get'er" at night.

Table of Contents

Introduction v

Chapter 1 St. Louis and the River Heritage Region 1

Chapter 2 Mark Twain Region 57

Chapter 3 Northern Prairie 77

Chapter 4 Around Kansas City 103

Chapter 5 Central Lakes 125

Chapter 6 Ozark Mountain Heritage Region 169

Index 228

About the Author 232

Editorial Reviews

The Show-Me State deserves to be seen. Missouri is teeming with fascinating characters, offbeat events, and weird destinations off the beaten track. For example, have you ever visited Reeds Springs' Museum of the Unexplained, a little-known repository for UFO memorabilia and debris? Or crossed paths with St. Louis's lovable "Queen of the Crypts," Connie Nisinger? Using his descriptive skills and his apparently insatiable curiosity, author Josh Young introduces us to Missouri's hidden assets, but he doesn't ignore popular tourist spots such as Mansfield's Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum and Mark Twain's boyhood haunts in Hannibal.

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