The spaces are pretty close together, and the scenic view is of the busy Interstate 49 traffic. But we have found that we aren't spending much time in the park. With four trips back to Oklahoma while the motor home was parked here, we ended up staying for two months. So this little campground is tied for our longest stay since we started this journey three and a half years ago.
We could tell stories about the Peculiar grocery store where we shop, or the Peculiar church we have attended. But we try not to succumb to such cheesy and peculiar humor. So in an attempt to edify our readers about all things Peculiar, we attended the Peculiar Sesquicentennial Festival. (We found out that's a fancy way to say 150th anniversary festival, for this little town born in 1868.) We started off with the morning parade, which was led by the Peculiar police and fire deparments. It also featured a float from the Peculiar Elementary school.
The Peculiar Meat Company also had a float. From the looks of the cow throwing candy to the crowd, their meat might indeed be peculiar.
We had to find out where this town got its peculiar name. Below is a letter about the situation in 1868, when the town was asking the state postmaster to approve its name. When they found that "Excelsior" and their next two choices were already taken, they sent another letter with yet another list of fine names. Since this process was taking so much time, they added that if these names were already taken, could be postmaster assign them a "peculiar" name. He obviously had a sense of humor, and the town of Peculiar, Missouri, was born.
The Peculiar Lions Club was running a mule-powered trolley during the festival, to take visitors from the parade grounds to their meeting house. During the day, they served up free pancakes for breakfast, free hamburgers for lunch, and free watermelon in the afternoon.
When those peculiar mules took a bathroom stop on Main Street, the crowd noticed a peculiar smell before the clean-up crew got out to accomplish their peculiar duty. (Notice the little boys looking on with interest, while the little girl in the background was holding her nose.)
After the parade, we walked through the vendor kiosks and found some peculiar animals at the petting zoo. This is a Highlander calf. A bull from this peculiar breed will only grow to about 3.5 feet in height, but will weigh in at a peculiarly large 1,800 pounds.
It was peculiar to see a baby camel in town,
as well as a Missouri kangaroo.
The llamas are more common to this area, but this guy had a peculiarly funny face.
We have driven the interstate between Peculiar and Kansas City dozens of times by now. We couldn't help but notice the water tower in Belton, Missouri, about ten miles north of here. When we saw that this was home to Tate Stevens, we had to google to see why he was "living in dream."
We found that Tate was actually Stephen Eatinger, when he was raised in Belton, Missouri. His music career was launched when he won Fox's X-Factor competition in 2012. The title included a $5 million recording contract, and instant notoriety that has made the water tower in Belton proud.
After touring across the United States, he was happy to come home to the little peculiar town just ten miles from his home town. He pulled his red Prevost bus into town, and parked it under the Peculiar water tower.
It was a big crowd for the free concert, the climax event of the Peculiar Sesquicentennial celebration. But we were still able to get a good picture of Tate Stevens performing on the stage.
We enjoyed his music, and it was fun to see the grain elevators in the background of our concert pictures. We found ourselves on the edge of the crowd, sadly close to the cigarette zone where people came to smoke during the concert. There seemed to be a peculiarly large number of smokers in this crowd--our only complaint of the day's activities. The good news is the fog in the picture below was from the mist machine cooling off the stage--not a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Part of the sesquicentennial festivities was digging up the time capsule that was buried during the centennial celebration in 1968. In church, the pastor read the letter found in the capsule that was written by the congregation's pastor fifty years ago in 1968. He talked about the tumultuous times that Peculiar was facing, with unrest in race relations and the Vietnam War. He was hoping that the young people of 1968 would lead this country to a better time. As we looked across the congregation at the white-haired members, we realized that they were those young people. We also realized that we are still living in peculiarly tumultuous times.
As we come to the end of our peculiarly long stay here in Peculiar, Missouri, we think that we will return some day. It's a great location for visiting our family here in Kansas City, and we have come to enjoy its many peculiarities.
No comments:
Post a Comment