“To say it very simply, freezer burn may very well 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 a 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 in the world today,” —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 whole lot to get
excited about, you know?” —Dan Moretz, on celebrating the
day the sun sets in the middle of the railroad tracks in
Hanlontown, Iowa.
“It’s like drilling for oil;
sometimes you come up dry.” —Gay Balfour, who sucks
problematic prairie dogs out of 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 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 floor sweeper, the police chief, and I have
the books for the cemetery, if someone wants to buy a plot.”
—Elsie Eiler, the sole citizen of Monowi,
Nebraska.
Celebrated roving correspondent for CBS
News Sunday Morning and bestselling author Bill Geist
serves up a rollicking look at some small-town Americans and
their offbeat ways 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 say the Texaco, 'cuz the Shell don't have 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 the Road, a hilarious
and compelling mix of stories about the folks featured in
Geist’s segments, along with observations on his twenty
years of life on the road. Written in the deadpan style that
has endeared him to millions, Geist shares tales of
eccentric individuals, such as the ninety-three-year-old
pilot-paperboy who delivers to his far-flung subscribers
by plane; the Arizona mailman who delivers mail via
horseback down the walls of the Grand Canyon; the Muleshoe,
Texas, anchorwoman who delivers the news from her bedroom
(occasionally wearing her bathrobe); and the struggling
Colorado entrepreneur who finds success employing a sewer
vacuum to rid Western ranchers of problematic prairie dogs.
Geist also takes us to events such as the Mike the Headless
Chicken Festival (celebrating an inspiring bird that
survived decapitation, hired an agent, and went on the road
for eighteen months) and Sundown Days in Hanlontown, Iowa,
where the town marks the one day a 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.