Last week I was on a video shoot with B.J. We arrived at our destination about 20 minutes early, so rather than surprise our hosts before they were expecting us, I turned the car around and headed to a little roadside rest I remembered passing just a few miles back. It was one of those little areas alongside a state route, just a patch of gravel and a picnic table. I pulled in and parked the car, ready to check email and go over my notes for the shoot once more. But then I saw a little marker off to the side of the parking area. It looked like a memorial marker and I could see from the car that it had some sort of inscription. My historical curiosity had to know what was on the marker, so I got out of the car to check it out. In well-worn letters, it read: Tip Top Notcher Grand Champion St. Louis 1904 Well now I was very curious. This sounded like some sort of livestock-related marker, but I didn’t know what would have been in St. Louis in 1904. Enter Google. Tip Top Notcher was the name of the champion boar at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. A gentleman named George Seckman of Brown County, Illinois, exhibited the boar. (Our video shoot that day was in Brown County, Illinois.) Before winning the World’s Fair in 1904, the boar had won classes at the Illinois State Fair and the…
Continue reading You never know what you might find
Leave a Comment