Gumby Jesus blesses the van, 2016 Eureka Springs, Ark. (Jon Sall photo)
You cannot outrun the road.
It took a while for me to get there. Route 66, Highway 61, Mississippi River Road, Pacific Coast Highway, Lincoln Highway. Nice memories and lots of pictures. Hair blowing in the wind on the way to Key West. Now I don’t have much hair. The high beams are closer than you think.
This marks the 10th anniversary since my blue Ford Transit Van rolled out of the Kansas City Assembly plant into my merry fate. This was the same factory that produced the van for “American Pickers.” In 2014 Ford invested $1.1 billion into [...]
COLUMBUS, OHIO—The mid-century modern breeze of Columbus makes for one of my favorite tropical getaways.
Part of that comes from the fact I spent time as a kid on North Star Road in the suburb of Upper Arlington. Summer nights were long and songs were short. There were wide-eyed trips to the since-razed Kahiki Polynesian Supper Club, an architectural and cultural classic of tiki life.
And beyond the horizon, there was the South Wind Motel, a place I had not heard about until I visited Columbus over the summer.
The South Wind opened in 1959 at 919 S. High St. in the German Village section of Columbus. It went through some funky times [...]
The Historic Red Rooster as the Hillsboro Hotel in the early 1900s.
We are privileged to have our “Beacons in the Darkness: Hope and Transformation Among America’s Community Newspapers” book party become the first public event at the Historic Red Rooster Inn in Hillsboro, Il. The town of Hillsboro (pop. 6,100) is a town of wonder and it is about an hour’s drive south of Springfield, Il.
The Red Rooster building turns 120 years old on Nov. 21. It opened as the Hillsboro Hotel and the initials were carved into the anchor post of the lobby staircase. They can still be seen today. The free event begins at 7 p.m. on Nov. [...]
A Tesuque Pueblo player during a pickup game on July 4, 2021 at the Pueblo in Santa Fe, NM. The Tesuques play in the All Indian League, an adult baseball league that includes pueblos across New Mexico. (Courtesy of Jean Fruth)
Grassroots baseball players have always been highway gypsies.
They travel from diamond to diamond with jewels of their trade: bats that are needles of a mystic compass, gloves that try to catch all that goes by, and cleats that are as down and dirty as road tires. And when the journey is realized, the gypsy is safe at home.
The new Jean Fruth book “Grassroots Baseball: Route [...]
