WPSU

Friday, October 22, 2010

What IS It?

The sign for the cattle company in Lonesome Dove also
specifies: "Goats and Donkey's Neither Bought Nor Sold"
The October 14th  What Is It? turned out to be VERY educational. 

As you'll remember, we spotted a sign outside Murray, Kentucky, that read, "We don't rent pigs."  The hand-painted sign was a casual addendum beneath a more formal sign for a business offering artificial insemination of cattle.

The Cap'n and I figured the business owners were letting customers know they were fresh out of champion stud pigs.  

But Colin Burgess has the true answer: The pig sign is homage to the iconic cowboy novel Lonesome Dove, whose heroes advertise their business, Hat Creek Cattle Company, with a similar set of signs. 

(Read on for a new challenge!)




For his far-ranging literary knowledge, Colin has won himself a guaranteed-groan-inducing tacky postcard, sent by snail mail.  Colin, congratulations, and send your address to slowboat@emailias.com.  And to everyone else who brightened my day with groan-inducing theories about why it would be inadvisable to rent pigs, excellent work!

It's 42 feet high.  And it used to be surrounded by a moat.
And now for today's challenge:

We are in Florence, Alabama, where the land immediately next to the banks of the Tennessee River is quite flat . . . except for this  strikingly symmetrical hill.

What IS It?

If you know the answer, scratch it on the back of a Sun BD Company Portable Hybrid Solar Cooker with double-paned window, rubber seals and booster panel, and send it to . . . oh, wait a minute, we don't have a mailing address.   So use the comment function below, or send your answer to slowboat@emailias.com

And remember, SlowBoat now is posting bonus photos to Facebook, on the SlowBoatCruise fan page (tell us you like it!)


1 comment:

  1. Ooooh I know what that is!!! It's the Florence Indian Mound. I saw a TV show about it one time. It's now a museum but it used to be some sort of tribal thing. I did a quick web search to confirm my memory and ran across this tidbit from Wikipedia, it's named "Wawmanona" and was built circa 500 A.D. Whether that part is true or not remains to be seen, but I thought it was interesting.

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