Cool Places

For a Plumper Tomato Museum

editor — Fri, 8 Aug 2008 09:05:06 -0700

Drawing by Carol Frizzell
Tomato Museum Art Gallery
Crystal Springs, MS
Photo: Art Gallery Mississippi

If you added together the weights of all the apples, bananas, grapes, and oranges the world eats in one year, it wouldn’t come close to the weight of all the tomatoes we consume. Billions of tons of tomatoes are grown each year. In fact, the tomato is the world’s most popular fruit.*

In homage to the tomato, Crystal Springs, Mississippi (population 5,939 ) hosts a lively Tomato Festival every year that climaxes on the last Saturday in June. Located just south of Jackson, MS on I-55, the town is easy to find and convenient to visit. There are other small-town tomato festivals in the South: the Avery Tomato Festival in Avery, Texas (population 462), the Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival in Warren, Arkansas (population 8,143), and the Grainger County Tomato Festival in Rutledge, Tennesseee (population 1,270)—to name but a few.

Letter from Langdon: County Fairs Cruise through the Generations, 12 MPH

editor — Fri, 1 Aug 2008 11:43:21 -0700

Lining up for the main event, the parade, Nodaway County Fair
Maryville, Missouri
(The charity Abby's Hugs gives stuffed animals to children in hospitals)
Photo: Richard Oswald

County fairs are great places to gain public exposure if you’re a politician. You can shake hands, kiss babies, pass out literature, and try to make some friends. Over the hill from Langdon in Nodaway County they even put on a Candidate Forum at the courthouse. All the candidates on the primary ballot have a chance to strut their stuff and answer questions from the gallery.

But there’s more to fairs than politics. In fact, county fairs bring out the best of communities in a whole variety of ways…like parades. They’re always well attended. Churches, civic groups, businesses, and clubs have a great time decorating floats. Saddle clubs get to show off their best horseflesh, and the young folks lining the parade route make a killing on candy hand-outs.

There's a definite order to county fair parade. Generally the floats and cars go first because they have to be judged. The politicians follow the floats (they’re judged in August and November), with incumbents toward the front and challengers toward the back. (Maybe it’s the Republicans and then the Democrats. Around here I’m never sure.)

It seems like they always pick on the livestock, because the horses follow the politicians.

Pop's Pool Hall — If Bricks Have Memories

editor — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:40:22 -0700

This pile of bricks used to be Pop's Pool Hall, the pride of Clinton, Kentucky.
Photo: West Kentucky Journal of Politics & Issues

The Beast sleeps; its work of ripping and tearing at the lifeless bricks no longer a playful sport.

Giant ribbed feet bear down on the mountain of debris as the Beast positions itself for yet another day of tasting mortar and bricks in its oversize metal bucket mouth.

For now, the Beast slumbers.

I stand twenty feet away from it, trying to make sense of the emotions I feel. My boots rest atop the dust and broken bricks of what had been a special place of my youth. In this moment of fading light, of day casting long shadows over my vision, the night rose up to claim its domain over the Beast’s handiwork. I feel like a time traveler, stranded between the years.

As I close my eyes, I could almost hear the sounds of a hot summer night in 1964, when Pop Johnson would call out, “Cheeseburger’s ready.” Gilbert “Pop” Johnson owned the Clinton Pool Hall here in far western Kentucky. During this time, it was the center of Clinton’s night life.

If That Don't Beat OZ: Kansas Architecture

editor — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:25:49 -0700

The Cooper Barn outside Colby, reportedly the largest barn in Kansas,
built in 1936
Photo: Marci Penner

People thought we were a little crazy when we started our 8 Wonders of Kansas project. Everyone knows about the Seven Wonders of the World so they were a little amused, or thought we were confused, when we decided to go for one more.

Why eight?

In 1990 my dad, Milferd Penner, and I toured the state and put together our first guidebook, Kansas Weekend Guide. When we’d stop in a city and ask what it had to offer, often people would chuckle. They’d tell us there was nothing in their town that a visitor would want to see. We heard this too many times—and it started to hurt!

So we came up with eight things that every town has, no matter the size. The eight categories are architecture, art, commerce, cuisine, customs, geography, history, and people. In combination, they are our definition of rural culture. Maybe the physical evidence of one or more of these things has disappeared in a town, but a story remains. Looking for any of those elements helps you focus and see a town more clearly.

We then formed the Kansas Sampler Foundation to help educate Kansans about Kansas and we’ve been using those eight rural culture elements ever since.

Benton's Hams Wait and Take Wing

editor — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:18:02 -0700

For the past 35 years, Allan Benton has been quietly perfecting the art of slow curing ham at his smokehouse/store, Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams in Madisonville, Tennessee. Benton's hams and bacon are shipped to some of the finest restaurants in the country, places like Luke in New Orleans, Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York, Five & Ten in Athens, GA, and closer to home Blackberry Farms in East Tennessee. Chefs from New York to Los Angeles use Benton's ham exclusively. The bacon is the thickest I've ever seen, and the most intense. You taste pig, salt, and smoke (definitely not in that order) in every inch of every strip.