This train travels the longest stretch of railroad track on earth without a turn — 299 miles.  There’s a bank car, theater car, grocery store car, a car filled with doctor’s offices, one that has a chapel.  Sixty train cars.  A mile long.  Most do not have a passage way between them, so people who work in one seldom see those who work in another. The “Tea and Sugar” meanders more than a thousand miles across South Australia, stopping whenever someone waves it down.  Its arrival in remote places is the social event of the week.  All the families linger for hours buying impulsively, trying to extend the moment when there is laughter and community.  

  • Last Mail Boat 
    Jamie James was the only postman in the country who still delivered the mail, house to house, by boat. Six days a week, Jamie churned the remote coastal creeks of southern Alabama. He made his 25 mile run in a boat not much bigger than a bathtub. Low hanging branches near shore kept him from using a more comfortable conveyance. His neighbors, the 175 families who depended on him, say he came when others did not, conveying the news as well as the mail.
  • Time not Sliced Too Thin for Thought
    Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, is a little piece of sand and trees near Savannah, Georgia. A thousand people once lived there, until the oyster beds died and the forest grew back. By the 1980’s there were only 85. There were no paved roads. No street lights. No bridges to the outside world. The island was so remote, the mind can be your best friend. Only the very old and very young lived there. Teenagers moved to the mainland to finish there education. The island’s elementary school had 11 kids. They put together a magazine of their thoughts. Not so unusual really, except the publisher, Shannon Wilkinson, who was working on a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission, printed 800 copies by mistake. All 800 were sold by word of mouth, nationwide, in less than ten weeks.
  • TV Wrestling Class 101
    There was a time when television wrestling shows in Memphis, Tennessee, pulled in more viewers than 60 Minutes. They were in TV’s Top Ten. That called for some study. College students in Blytheville, Arkansas, did just that.
  • Youngest Tycoon
    The youngest members of the Hunt, Texas, Chamber of Commerce run a $20,000 a year business. Their corporate limo is a school bus.
  • Stream Saver
    Out where the mountains spill their boulders in the sun, flies sing out on nylon wire and catch a bit of heaven. Rich McIntyre is one of those blessed folks who gets to play where he works. He and his wife Sandy started a company to restore damaged trout streams. His small staff of scientists and engineers don’t just restock streams. They rebuild them, so that native fish will return naturally to Montana.