This FLASHBACK to our summer roadtrip is linked to SIGNS SIGNS. Thank you Lesley for hosting!
As Dorothy remarked to Toto in "The Wizard of Oz", I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. But we were there in June. On last summer's roadtrip we stayed overnight in the town of Liberal....in the middle of Kansas, which is in the middle of the country.
(The pamphlet explained that Liberal is named after an old friendly expression, where people instead of saying "thanks a lot" would say "that's mighty liberal of you." I'd never heard of that expression before, but oh well.) When we checked into the RV Park, the host/owner handed us this Chamber of Commerce pamphlet. She said "Don't worry -- Liberal isn't named that because of it's political leanings." I said "Oh, that's too bad, because that's why we decided to stay here." (It wasn't really ... we just stopped because it was time to get off the road for the night ... but I hated that she apparently assumed our politics would be conservative.)
Liberal claims to be the town where Dorothy lived with her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. (Really, the town isn't named in the book or movie, all we know is that is in Kansas.) Since both book and movie were childhood favorites, "we" had to drop by the town's theme park on our way out of town the next morning. (Well, I had to and Bill had to drive me there.)
I was sadly disappointed (I don't know what I expected from a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere the country) but I guess cardboard cutouts and yellow-painted bricks with sponsors' names on them just didn't quite live up to my expectations.
So we were quickly off following our own yellow-brick concrete road on the way to the next stop.