peoplesriverstories
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Kentucky Breakdown: Truck-Stop Angels (3/3)
About 12 miles up the road I turn into a truck stop. Next door: a big-rig shop. Maybe theyâll recommend a mobile mechanic. The tech says, âOh, we can go get it and fix it here. Lemme call the boss.â After a cigar and a little rye, the bossâBobbyâcrunches into the lot at speed and…
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Kentucky Breakdown: The Hinge Breaks (2/3)
If your tires are where the rubber meets the road, your hubsâthe things youâve probably never thought aboutâare where your vehicle meets the spinny bits. Inside are steel bearings carrying the whole rig while the wheel spins. Big job, big heat, so they live in a bath of heavy grease to keep them happy. What…
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Kentucky Breakdown: Smoke Signals (1/3)
This is a tragi-comic story that begins in King City, California in 2019 and ends with me alone and desperately stranded on the shoulder of a busy-yet-remote Kentucky highway, less than an hour from Cincy, with smoke pouring from a sizzling, popping trailer wheel hub. But letâs back up. After 35 years Iâm leaving my…
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A love letter to New Orleans on the hour of my departure
From the moment I stepped off the boat, you tangled me up in your rhythms. You overwhelmed me with trumpet blasts and pot liquor, with the way your air clings sweet and heavy, like a whispered secret you donât want to forget. You fed me oysters and red beans and offered up chance meetings like…
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The Last Second Line Before the Storm
I caught the tail end of a protest by second line organizers pushing back against proposed NOPD crackdowns on parading. Wouldnât have known about it at all if not for my photographer buddy Sophia Germer, who mentioned she was covering it. Iâd all but given up hope of seeing a second line this tripâturns out…
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Liz Williams on Food as Story
Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Liz Williamsâfounder of the Southern Food & Beverage Museum and someone who thinks about food not just as sustenance, but as story, culture, power, and identity. We talked about the rich tangle of foodways in Louisianaâthe contributions of Indigenous, Black, Spanish, French, and Acadian communitiesâand the way race,…
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Every River Has a Story. Tell Us Yours.
Peoples River Stories is a participatory new media project, a web-based map where anyone can drop a pin and share a memory, confession, observation, dream, or historical fragment about a river they know. It expands the world of Secret History beyond our shantyboat and beyond U.S. bordersâinviting people everywhere to claim space for their own…
