When you hear the term “ghost town,” what comes to mind? The Old West, or perhaps settlements that once sat upon abundant resources – oil or mining, for example – that are long since exhausted. Abandoned farming communities, industrial towns, and entire cities could all fit under the all-encompassing term of “ghost town.” Geotab has worked to compile a list of over 3,800 ghost towns throughout the country, organized by state. It’s a truly remarkable list, and so thoroughly researched and presented that the towns’ brief descriptions give you a very real vision of what life must have been like…
Author: Ralph DiMatteo
Imagine yourself landing in a little area of the country in 1853 that was soon to become the little town of Conrad, Iowa and the first thing of note was the rich, fertile black soil that would ultimately become the town’s claim to fame. Think any one of those early settlers could have seen that coming? Here is how it all came to be. What’s So Great About Iowa Soil? J. W. Conrad and a hearty band of travelers landed in an area filled with very little to see but vast grasslands. Even though that was literally all there was as…
Ever wonder what happens to all the lost luggage in the United States? If you’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of having had an airline lose your luggage, or if you’ve forgotten to claim a piece of luggage, it may very well have ended up in Scottsboro, Alabama at Unclaimed Baggage, which proclaims to be the nation’s only retailer of lost luggage. This facility buys unclaimed baggage items from various airlines and then offers them for resale at rock-bottom prices. Upwards of 7,000 new items a day end up here; the building needed to house everything takes up an entire…
If your dream of playing professional sports has come and gone, maybe we can help keep the flame alive with competitive cherry pit spitting. One of the biggest events in this arena was the International Cherry Pit-Spitting Championship, which was held every year at Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm in Eau Claire, Michigan until 2019 (more on that later). The Cherry-Spitting Championship began at the Teichman family farm in 1974 and was rapidly considered to be the official international competition of this unique talent. Herb Teichman originally started the event to not only promote his farm, but the region’s tart cherry harvest…
When you think of Mother’s Day, what comes to mind? Is it breakfast in bed, doing your chores without being asked, or perhaps a homemade card that expresses all your feelings about Mom that you somehow cannot seem to remember to show throughout the year? I think we can all agree that our moms are definitely taken for granted at times, and that may very well be part of what inspired Anna Jarvis in 1908 to become the founder of Mother’s Day, that annual tradition of thanking moms all over America for all they do and sacrifice for their families. When…
Okay, full disclosure: I am most definitely NOT a Gen Z’er (more accurately I could be described as a Gen Geezer), but that doesn’t mean I cannot be fascinated by what attracts the current class of the youngest adult generation to something on TikTok like a proverbial magnet. The latest example of which is the trend of eating grapes under a table for good luck in the coming new year. Will Eating Grapes Under the Table Actually Bring You Good Luck in the New Year? If you’re scratching your head, this isn’t a story seen or heard via one of the…
For me, Christmas is truly Christmas when two things occur. One is the traditional one-time watching of White Christmas that can only occur between December 1st and December 25th, and the other is upon hearing the Andy Williams version of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of Year” for the first time and changing the lyric a bit to “It’s the Most Wonderful Time for a Beer.” Cracks me up every time. But did you know the holiday season was actually once considered much scarier than cheery? In the above-mentioned song, there is the line that “there will be scary ghost stories…
Ah, long-beleaguered fruitcake, the butt of many a holiday joke. Okay, so think of the best fruitcake joke or personal fruitcake story you have ever heard and I guarantee it won’t hold a candle to this long-forgotten Christmas tradition that doesn’t seem to be upheld anymore. I’m talking about the one that involves leaving a fruitcake under your pillow – that’s right, your pillow. As the tradition goes, during the holiday season, it was said that if you ate a piece of fruitcake (no thanks), then put the rest of said fruitcake under your pillow, you would dream of the…
Unless you are the nerdiest of historians, the names Archie Lee and Haddon Sundblom are probably going to stump you when asked, “What are they best known for?” You’ll definitely be forgiven for not knowing that these two gentlemen may very well be responsible for the most common imagery we hold dear about jolly old St. Nick himself. Coca-Cola started running print ads of Santa Claus in the early 1920s with a version of Santa that looked somewhat stern and not particularly jolly. Truth be told, at that time Santa was depicted in ads and images in a wide variety of…
I happen to be one of those people who has never gotten the joke about fruitcakes at the holidays. I tend to think literally and it has always seemed to me that if they truly were that awful, why in the world would people continue to give them as gifts? The research into this “holiday” of National Fruitcake Toss Day – held every January 3rd and sometimes on the first Saturday of January – has answered the question for the most part. People seem to agree that fruitcakes are generally very heavy, way too sweet and the century’s biggest holiday joke, and…