Wow. I’d never heard of “Action Park.” This amusement park was so dangerous the owners were forced to buy additional ambulances for the local hospital. Lemur King mentioned it here, with additional links here, here and here.
Above: The Hav-Mor Family ca. 1947. They performed at county fairs advertising fertilizer produced by The Tennessee Corporation. (Jack “Pop” Pettett is on the right blowing smoke; Ray Courts on banjo.)
The Foxfire Project began in the early 1970s to preserve the folklore and knowledge of elderly rural Appalachians. Through taped and written interviews, high school students amassed enough stories for several volumes of pure Americana. They’re available in .pdf format here, other sources here. (The files are huge, might take some time to download.)
[Important announcement: The wiener of the runoff competition is Planetross by almost a 2:1 margarine. Thanks to all of you for tolerating the behind the scenes flamewars between Planetross and Wheels. They're both good peeps, but when you toss a free sweatshirt into a crowd there's likely to be some blood involved.
Thanks also to the folks at CafePress for donating THE COVETED PRIZE. So here's another plug:
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Revolver Maps is a cool widget, spotted at Plate O' Fish. Unfortunately it doesn't work on WorpDress for some reason, so we added a button at upper right above the blog counter instead.
Although the story is likely fabricated, this one from 2004 is still funny. On the other hand, This Diary is likely true.
That’s our juvy possum who comes around every night to clean up the catfood messes that the cats leave behind. Not counting the tail, he’s about a foot long, maybe about a year and a half old. Although they don’t see very well, after a few camera flashes this one was seeing nothing but red dots when he trundled off.
Small town crime: troublemakers in New Castle Pennsylvania 1930s – 1950s. Mug shots were rescued from the trash, and the blogger researched the stories from newpaper clippings.
Shannon asks the wrong guy to do a missing cat poster. [Update 20 July 2010-- David Thorne's website is here. Expect to be entertained for the next few hours.]
Jack Harrison, the last survivor who participated in The Great Escape of WWII passed away on 4 June 2010. There’s an interesting interactive illustration of one of the tunnels here. [h/t to Wheels.]
