You Think Your Home Town's Cool?

Well, your home town's got nuthin' on mine...

Everybody's proud of their home town.  Thatzafact.  'Cause that's where "home" is.  Or was, if you decided to bail on it and head out to "The Big City."  Like me.  But no matter, it was, and shall always be, your home town.  

But very few home towns are special due to some reason or other.  Like Boston is special because of that whole "Founding Fathers" and "Paul Revere" and "Tea Party" and "Freedom Trail" thing.  And Chicago's famous for being really windy while boasting the most murders in America.  And San Antonio for the Alamo.  And Seattle for the Space Needle.  But for every Boston or Chi-town or San Antone or Seattle, there's a Pumpkin Center, Missouri.  I know.  I used to drive through it to get to my college town.  And it was one of those "don't blink," wide-spot-in-the-road, one stop light places, for if you did, you'd miss it entirely.  

It was a dark and stormy night.  Oh wait, that's another story.  For this one we'll focus our attention on small towns and for what they are known...if anything.  Most are bucolic, comfy little unimportant burgs which mean nothing at all except to the people who live there.  But my home town is one of those "special places" from whence neat little things have happened. And my home town, Chillicothe, Missouri, was special for an unusual reason.  Ready?  Sliced bread was invented there.  Really...

It was 1928.  An Iowa inventor named Otto Rohwedder moved to Chillicothe, a small, quiet, 10,000 population farming community in the Green Hills of northwestern Missouri.  Perturbed that bread came in a big loaf, forcing somebody desirous of a slice of bread to, ummm, slice it for themselves, he decided to take matters into his own hands and invent a solution.  He came up with the Rohwedder Bread Slicer.  And forever after our puny little lives were changed.  No longer did we need to rip off a chunk of bread into which we dunk our au jus, we now had a way to create a one-handed meal.  In fact, I could argue that this one invention was why America became the Great Country it has.  Think of it.  We all know that fully 90% of all our goods and merchandise is ferried by trucks.  And we know that a truck driver can drive his big ol' truck down the highway at flank speed while holding his double ham and cheese in one hand.  If he had to pull over and stop to grab some grub, he would no longer be productive, robbing us of his productivity until his gut was filled.  Not good, 'Murica!

So, not knowing about this Earth-shattering invention, Chillicothe continued upon its merry way for almost 90 years.  And then someone sort of mentioned that, maybe, sliced bread was invented there, and the town came to life.  The Sliced Bread Corporation was put together back in 2003 to capitalize upon this momentous discovery.  And, aided by Rep, Rusty Black (R-Chillicothe), and the State grant that the City was awarded, the building where the bread was first sliced is being restored and prepped as a museum.  

So, my friends, and you ARE my friends, Chillicothe has formally adopted the slogan, "Home of Sliced Bread."  I ask, can your hometown stack up against mine?  I doubt it, Pilgrim.  Every time I pull a couple of slices of bread out of the wrapper and prepare to make a sandwich, I'm reminded that I came from a wonderful place that can boast about a bit of its past history that has impacted everyone's life.  And, if you ever find yourself in Northwestern Missouri, please stop by and pay your respects.

I hear you thinking that sliced bread isn't all that important.  But how'd you like to call Cawker City, Kansas your home town?  It's known as the home of the "World's Biggest Ball of Twine."