Download Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America AudioBook Free
“To say it very simply, freezer burn might easily have set in.” —neighbor on the frozen dead guy kept on ice in a backyard shed in Nederland, Colorado.
“Everybody loves a parade; we were just geographically challenged.” —David Harrenstein, organizer of an parade in tiny Whalan, Minnesota, where viewers are in motion and the “marchers” stand still.
“We haven’t lost anyone off these switchbacks in at least ten days” —Mailman Charlie Chamberlain, leading us on horseback 2,500 feet down the sheer walls of the Grand Canyon.
“Ours are the finest cow chips nowadays,” —Kirk Fisher, enthusiast, in Beaver, Oklahoma, world cow-chip capital and cow- chip exporter.
“We live out in the middle of the corn and bean fields, and there’s not a good deal to get excited about, you know?” —Dan Moretz, on celebrating your day the sun sets in the middle of the railroad tracks in Hanlontown, Iowa.
“It’s like drilling for oil; sometimes you appear dry.” —Gay Balfour, who sucks problematic prairie dogs from the ground with a sewer vacuum in Cortez, Colorado.
“All you have to do is beat the flies to it,” —Michael “Roadkill” Coffman on the secrets of cooking with roadkill outside Lawrence, Kansas.
“I ain’t gonna brake ´til I see God!” —driver named “Red Dog,” taking the track at a figure-eight school bus race in Bithlo, Florida.
“It’s a gift; you either first got it or you don’t.” —Lee Wheelis, world watermelon-seed-spitting champion, Luling, Texas.
“I am the mayor, the board, the secretary-treasurer, the librarian, the bartender —that’s my most important title —the cook, the ground sweeper, the police chief, and I've the books for the cemetery, if someone wants to buy a plot.” —Elsie Eiler, the only real citizen of Monowi, Nebraska.Celebrated roving correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning and bestselling author Bill Geist delivers a rollicking take a look at some small-town Americans and their offbeat means of life.
“In rural Kansas, I asked our motel desk clerk for the name of the best restaurant in the area. After mulling it over, he answered: ‘I'd have to state the Texaco, 'cuz the Shell don't possess no microwave.’”
Throughout his career, Bill Geist’s most popular stories have been about slightly odd but loveable individuals. Coming on the heels of his 5,600-mile RV trip across our fair land is Way Off of the Road, a hilarious and compelling mix of stories about the people featured in Geist’s segments, along with observations on his two decades of life on the road. Written in the deadpan style that has endeared him to millions, Geist shares tales of eccentric individuals, including the ninety-three-year-old pilot-paperboy who provides to his far-flung subscribers by plane; the Arizona mailman who provides mail via horseback down the walls of the Grand Canyon; the Muleshoe, Texas, anchorwoman who provides the news headlines from her bedroom (occasionally wearing her bathrobe); and the struggling Colorado entrepreneur who finds success having a sewer vacuum to rid Western ranchers of problematic prairie dogs. Geist also takes us to events including the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival (celebrating an inspiring bird that survived decapitation, hired a realtor, and went on the road for eighteen months) and Sundown Days in Hanlontown, Iowa, where the town marks the main one day each year when the sun sets directly between the railroad tracks
Along the wacky and wonderful way, Geist shows us firsthand how life in fly-over America can be odd, strangely fascinating, hysterical, and anything but boring.
