After I left Lawrence, Kansas, yesterday, I had no particular place to go---the winding-down icing on the cake of my six-week vacation/reportage/sabbatical/furlough. So, when a map showed me the town of Peculiar, Missouri more or less in my southeastern trajectory, I thought I'd go there. It is a wonderful word to me, "peculiar," moi having been blessed with a few quite peculiar friends and family of the Southern gothic variety. I do so hope they count me on their short lists of same.
Anyway, what was most peculiar about Peculiar was that no one seemed to know for sure exactly how it got its name. The vet tech was from "off," so she didn't know. Next door to the vet in the strip shopping mall, no sign of life in the magistrate clerk's office, only a mid-eaten lunch. The cops next to that had the blinds pulled. A peroxide laundromat chick walking around the block with her paperback opined that a train conductor back in the day announced this town with no name as "peculiar." A mechanic two blocks behind the laundromat moved two steps out into his driveway to respond "No clue," without moving his face at all. Peculiar, indeed.
If you can't make up your own cutlines for this batch, I can't help you.
I had to leave Peculiar in a hurry on account of some serious electrical stormage bearing down on a southwesterly track (thank you for being specific, nice lady at Pyro City fireworks and gas station).
So, here's what Google and Wiki tell us:
"One tradition says Peculiar got its name by a spiritualists who declared it 'peculiar' that he had seen the site in a vision.
"Peculiar received its name in 1868 when the first postmaster, Edgar Thomson, had his first choice, Excelsior, rejected because it already existed in Atchison County, Missouri. Several other choices were also rejected. The story goes that the annoyed Thomson wrote to the Postmaster General himself to complain saying, among other things, 'We don't care what name you give us so long as it is sort of "peculiar",' (with 'peculiar' in quotation marks). Washington approved that name. The post office was established on June 22, 1868."
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peculiar,_Missouri)
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