Weird America
by Jim Brandon
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It''s never good to start a book with a glaring factual error - this one managed to evade even the most rudimentary proofreading on page 1 when it placed the capital of Alabama in the northwest corner of the state and the Mississippi border in the center. Most of the entries are on the order of "In 1876 a newspaper here reported fish fell from the sky!". Being something of an aficionado of this sort of thing, I was surprised to find only four entries for my home state, none of which I'd heard of, and none very interesting - not even the dead crocodile in the Wabash in 1946. I made it as far as Kentucky before I just couldn't take it anymore. According to the inside cover I must've picked this book up used some years ago for a quarter. I show more overpaid. show less
Published long before Weird New Jersey or Roadside America, Weird America lists locations in all fifty states that have experienced unusual or unexplained events, from rains of frogs and mysterious string to burial mounds and monster sightings, supernatural and scientific oddities mixing with folklore and urban legend. Some of the sites listed are merely where events once occurred and offer no current landmarks to witness, but you'll find less muffler men or tourist traps in this book, and more things like geomancy locales and dowsing hotspots.
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Common Knowledge
- Epigraph
- "We live in the most wonderful of lands; and one of the most wonderful things in it is that we as Americans find so little to wonder at. Other civilized nations take pride in knowing their points of natural and historical int... (show all)erest; but when we have pointed to our marvelous growth in population and wealth, we are largely done, and hasten abroad in quest of sights not a tenth part so wonderful as a thousand wonders we have at home and never dream of... Let me tell you briefly then of a few of the strange corners of our country which I have found---which I hope you will some day be interested to see for yourselves." - Charles F. Lummis, Some Strange Corners of Our Country, New York, 1898, pp. 7-8
- First words
- There are many utilitarian mileage calculators and road-sign guides for those who only want to roll down the freeway with the least effort to the next tourist attraction. But this is a field manual for the "shunpikers," as be... (show all)aters of the backcountry used to be called.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I suppose it's true. But I must confess, I was a little sorry to read it.
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