During the week, the Schlueters are pulling in the field. On the weekends, they’re pulling in the dirt.

The Schlueter family is part of The Outlaw Truck and Tractor Pulling Association. Most weekends during the summer, Clem Schlueter, along with his son Chuck and grandson Cory, can be seen making passes at the dirt tracks of the Midwest on souped-up John Deere tractors.

Clem began pulling in 1972, competing in the pro stock class. When his son, Chuck, was old enough, he pulled in the super stock class. Both used the same tractor, “Old Smokey.”

“It was a stock 4020 John Deere,” Clem said. “After a couple of years of pulling, we started souping it up.”

In 1981, Chuck won the Missouri State Points Championship in the super stock class. Clem won the Pro Stock Championship that same year with the same tractor.

“We probably had as many friends in the pulling area as we did in school,” Chuck said. “We spent all summer with them.”

Springfield, Missouri

Thirty minutes until the show begins and the backstage area is empty. Everyone hurries in while the lighting and sound technician, the box office clerks and friends flit in and out of the room to wish the comedians luck. As they prepare for the show, their preparation does not include memorizing a few well thought out punch lines, however. Instead, the performers talk about their day, tease each other and wait until it’s time to throw on their black shirts, take a glance in the mirror and run on stage yelling, “Welcome to The Skinny Improv!”

Founder and executive director Jeff Jenkins looks comfortable on stage speaking to an audience that can reach up to 140 people. He performed improvisational comedy professionally for more than 10 years after studying at the iO Theater, formerly known as ImprovOlympic Theater, in Chicago, Illinois, which claims alumni Andy Richter, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Chris Farley.

After further training and traveling with several other improv groups, Jenkins decided to settle down. He moved to Springfield, Missouri in 2002 to finish his education at Evangel University, but he said he missed the thrill of being on stage. He began to discuss forming his own improv group with a few friends.

“There were seven or eight people who kept bugging me about it saying, ‘Hey, when are we going to do this?’” he said. “So those were the ones I took first. We started performing whenever and wherever we could.”

Five comedians present shows each weekend, including MainStage Show, the Ten Spot, the Jeff show and the Mystery Hour.

Knoxville Raceway, Knoxville, Iowa

The sharp smell of gasoline and a sound like rumbling thunder fill the air.

It is a Saturday night at Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway and everyone is either in the stands or listening as the race’s soundtrack echoes across the small town. Sprint cars race by, one after another.

“Anyone who lives here knows that the track was here first,” said Lori DeMoss, a resident of the city of Knoxville.  “So when it’s loud on the weekends, you just accept it because it is a way of life around here.”

The racetrack can hold up to 24,000 spectators despite Knoxville’s population of only 7,536. Visitors come from as far away as Australia. Because the small town does not have enough hotels and campgrounds for all of the visitors, the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce initiated a housing program. The chamber compiled a list of residents that were willing to host families during the races. Some people host families for a fee, and some end up housing visitors for free.

“You end up making friends with the people that you host and they end up returning year after year to stay with you,” DeMoss said. “Knoxville has proved that not only are they all about the races, but they are all about the friends and people.”

Chester Ray Stadium, Brookfield, Missouri

Nell White sits on the wooden bleachers at Chester Ray Stadium in the middle of the Brookfield faithful. Kickoff for the annual Bell Game rivalry between Brookfield High School and Marceline High School is still two hours away, but White is anxious. 

“I am sick to my stomach,” she said. “The Bell means a whole lot.”

She wears a blue T-shirt with “Brookfield High School” written in white letters. White also has two photo buttons pinned to her shirt. One is a picture of her daughter, Bulldogs cheerleader Tiffany White, and the other photo is of her son, Brookfield running back Dustin White.  

Dustin, a key contributor for the Bulldogs in their 14-13 Bell Game win in 2005, has looked forward to the contest since football camp started in the summer. 
Throughout the entire week, the White household has been preparing for the Bell Game – an annual maelstrom of football and tradition that feels like Homecoming and a state championship game all rolled into one.

Upper Limits Rock Gym, Bloomington, Illinois

Kate Ewing couldn’t stop to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. She was hanging by her fingertips on a vertical face nearly 65 feet above the ground.
No problem.

Ewing caught the rock-climbing bug on a mission trip to Morocco. Then a friend took her to the Upper Limits Rock Gym in Bloomington, Ill. – and she was hooked.
The gym, a converted grain silo, boasts some of the tallest climbs in the nation. The cylindrical inner walls, once buried in grain, are now spotted with multi-colored handholds.  

“I remember that first night – by the end of the night my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t even hold onto the wall,” she said. “I couldn’t grip the holds. It was like my mind wanted to keep climbing, but my body couldn’t.”

Since that day five years ago, she’s been back to the gym nearly 400 times.

“I just kind of kept climbing,” she said. “People come and go, but there seem to be the standard gym rats that are always there.

“The nice part about good climbers is the really good ones and the really passionate ones love to teach people how to climb. They’re really patient with you. They welcome you in.”

Rosenblatt Stadium, Omaha, Nebraska

Bruce Henrickson sits with his two sons in the left-field bleachers at Rosenblatt Stadium on a beautiful June afternoon.

The three of them sit only 10 rows from the field, drinking in the University of Texas and University of Florida players warming up beneath them. Fans dressed in Longhorn burnt orange and Gator blue and orange fill in the seats around them, cheering on their players and teams.

In a few hours, Game 1 of the Div. I college baseball national championship will begin – and for the fourth time, Henrickson and his family have traveled from Grayslake, Ill., to Omaha, Neb., and paid only $8.50 to attend.

The national championship caps off the two-week event known as the College World Series, an eight-team tournament played every June.

“Rosenblatt comes close to echoing Wrigley Field,” Henrickson said. “The competition, the people and the atmosphere is what makes it great. I would be really upset if they ever moved the tournament from Rosenblatt.”

Over the past few years, Henrickson’s sons have chased batting practice home-run balls, met the 2004 national champion University of California St.-Fullerton players and held the CWS-winning trophy – but this day will yield a new memory.

Friday Night Jamboree, Rockbridge, Missouri 

A sandstone-colored ’94 GMC backs into the grassy parking lot, muffler growling, checkered race flags adorning the rear window. The blue-jean-clad driver hops out into the cool Ozark dusk, moving swiftly but unhurriedly toward the bed of the pickup. Dropping the tailgate, he reaches into the back and deftly removes a large, black object with an unmistakable shape.

A double bass.

It’s Friday night, and for some Southwest Missourians, that means only one thing: the weekly gathering at Athel Jackson’s barn – the Friday Night Jamboree.

Tucked away in the Ozarks – the definitive region that belongs to itself more than any particular state – jam sessions are a tie that links a rocky history to the rocky terrain.

Somewhere between hardship and dignity, with roots in religion and war, tradition emerges in the form of a distinct and sometimes ancient musical repertoire.

Over the past 10 to 20 years, the traditional Ozark jam session, centuries in the making, has experienced an inexplicable revival. Jam sessions fill old schoolhouses, barns and homes five nights a week across southwest Missouri. Yet, the passing of a generation threatens to bring an end or at least a decline in not only the music but also a way of life.

Underground Railroad, Alton, Missouri

Among the winding brick side streets and towering Victorian homes of Alton, Illinois, lies a silent railroad.

“There were about seven different lines of the underground railroad running through Alton at different times,” said Eric Robinson, a history professor at Lewis and Clark Community College who gives tours of the city’s most prominent historical sites.

Bordered by the Mississippi River, Alton is only 30 minutes from downtown St. Louis, and on a clear day the city skyline is visible from the crests of the hills. Of more interest, however, is the amount of history that exists in and around the spectacular views and stunning architecture in Alton.

Outside the Steiger Haus Bed and Breakfast, the cobblestone streets of St. Genevieve, Missouri, are silent. Late afternoon sunlight filters through lace curtains onto hardwood floors, illuminating an antique buffet and several bright landscape paintings.

The stillness is broken as the door opens and a small crowd of people filter in, filling the front room and moving back into a dining area with separate groups of tables and chairs. Dave Thompson, one of the first to enter into the sunlit sitting room, laughs and gestures to the staff, saying, “I’ll give someone 100 bucks to tell me who done it.” A few mysterious smiles light in response, but no one can answer.

Within the next few hours, he and the other guests at the bed and breakfast will take on different personas, enact a fictional art auction and witness deception, drugs and murder. By lunchtime the next day, they will have explained it all.

For the last 18 years, more than 55,000 guests from around the world have taken part in one of more than 72 murder mysteries written by the owner of Steiger Haus, Rob Beckerman, who writes under the alias J. Masterson.

Beckerman, who grew up in the original Steiger Haus location (at its peak, the murder mysteries were run out of three separate houses), converted the house into a bed and breakfast and was searching for a way to increase winter reservations when he heard of another hotel running murder mysteries for guests. So he wrote a mystery and tried it.

Despite the 20-degree weather, Kate Fuller and Kevin Michael couldn’t wait to get their hands on the ice.

As students at the Kirkwood Culinary Arts School at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Fuller and Michael took instructions from Dave Dettman on how to make snowflake ice sculptures as part of the Winterfest in Amana, Iowa.

One of four major festivals at Amana, Winterfest began only three years ago, said Brenda Koehler, co-chair of the festival and manager of the Amana Society Main Street Complex.

“Winterfest really grew out of the hopes to create something to promote the Amana Colonies in the winter months and to let people know there are more things than shopping,” she said.