by RICK DANLEY // November 11, 2017 On July 25, 1946, at 8:34 a.m., 95 unmanned warships floated idly atop the aqua-blue waters of the Bikini Atoll, a secluded lagoon at the far reaches of the South Pacific. These were the target ships. Just beyond this flotilla, a ring of 150 support vessels, containing nearly … Continue reading Bikini Kaboom
by RICK DANLEY // September 22, 2016 There’s a certain type of American male for whom the Hollywood Western acts upon his system like a comfort food. It’s consolingly basic, composed of the same ingredients every time, and is — aside from a handful of artful exceptions — relatively easy to digest. Looking across the Atlantic … Continue reading Keaton & the West
by RICK DANLEY // January 20, 2018 In 1890, fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg — a little man with a high forehead and kind, close-set eyes — knelt alone atop a chalk outcrop in Western Kansas, and, with his pick and his brush and with the fervor of a man who’d been fossil-crazy since he’d arrived … Continue reading Shark Week
by RICK DANLEY // September 27, 2017 To the list of classic movie quotes — “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” (“Gone With the Wind”); “We’ll always have Paris” (“Casablanca”); “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” (“The Godfather”); “You’re going to need a bigger boat” (“Jaws”) — I’d nominate another. … Continue reading The Bloody Benders
by RICK DANLEY // February 3, 2018 Forty years ago, a small boy in the remote hills of western Nepal waited with the men in his village to welcome the first motorized vehicle to ever enter their town. The approach was a slow one, the vehicle a tractor. When it arrived, the boy’s father and uncles … Continue reading Big Bang, Small Beginnings
by RICK DANLEY // November 10, 2016 The stage direction for Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” are simple: “No curtain. No scenery.” Wilder believed that the theater of his day had become too obsessed with spectacle. Directors loaded the stage with period furniture and elaborate costumes and realistic set design — what Wilder called the … Continue reading ‘Our Town’
by RICK DANLEY // September 21, 2016 One local gentleman, having shuffled off his mortal coil about a week ago, is doing more to influence county policy from the Great Beyond than he was ever likely to manage in his lifetime. Iola’s Feuerborn Family Funeral Service is in possession of a deceased individual whose sister is … Continue reading Bring Out Your Dead
By RICK DANLEY // June 6, 2018 Billy Ray Hayes was born and raised on a Cherokee reservation in eastern Oklahoma. When he was old enough to join the service, the U.S. government shipped him to Hawaii. At the end of his military tenure, Billy Ray stayed on in Hawaii, but eventually his money dried up. … Continue reading Billy Ray Hayes, Leaf Weaver
by RICK DANLEY // September 13, 2017 Skeeter has a theory. Here it is: the Midwest produces more and better clowns because the Midwest — lovely though it can be — is, for the most part, dull. Kids here, says Skeeter, are compelled, by the encircling boredom into which they’re born, to create their own kinds … Continue reading Meet Skeeter
by RICK DANLEY // July 14, 2017 In 1976, the Register published a three-paragraph notice concerning “pot corner”: “Nobody knows for sure how it was started, but a country road intersection east of Moran has been known for years as ‘pot corner.’ … The landmark gets its name from four chamber pots, one sitting on a … Continue reading The People of Pot’s Corner
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