Customers walk up to the counter at Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque in Kansas City, Missouri, expecting of a pile of smoked meat and a mound of fries.

The cook tosses two slices of white bread on the counter, grabs a bulging handful of meat, piles it five inches high on top of the bread and slathers the meat with the customer’s sauce of choice. To top it off, the cook adds a hunk of fries and throws them on a plate for eat-in orders or rolls everything up like a burrito for to-go orders.

“There’s a few things [that differentiate us] — the smoke, the service and the ‘Original Sauce’ is totally unlike anything you’ll taste,” Manager Willis Simpson said. “Most barbecue sauce in Kansas City is sweet, but the original is tart and tangy.”

For customers who aren’t fans of “Original Sauce,” Arthur Bryant’s also offers “Sweet Heat” and “Rich and Spicy” barbecue sauces.

Simpson said they prepare the meat by putting rub on the fat side of the brisket and smoking it in the pit at 225 degrees for approximately 10 hours. The slower the meat is cooked, the better, he said.

Arthur Bryant’s has had a reputation for great barbecue ever since author Calvin Trillin said, “The single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque at 18th and Brooklyn in Kansas City” in an article for Playboy magazine. Since Arthur Bryant’s death in 1982, the restaurant has aimed to maintain his standards.

The history of Arthur Bryant’s dates back to the 1920s when brothers Charlie and Arthur Bryant worked for Henry Perry, the “father of Kansas City barbecue.” When Perry died in 1940, Charlie Bryant took over the business, Simpson said.

Columbia, Missouri

A young girl plays with a plastic toy cat and a Lord of the Rings action figure. No, she isn’t at a day care or a playground. Rather, she is sitting at a table in a vegetarian cafe, where instead of order numbers or vibrating beepers, customers are given toys. Quirky details like this, along with fresh food, environmental responsibility and a close community combine to create Main Squeeze Natural Foods Café, in Columbia, Missouri.

All of the menu items at Main Squeeze are vegetarian or vegan.  Main Squeeze owner Leigh Lockhart said most of the produce is organic and comes from Missouri farmers. The menu boasts wraps, rice and vegetable dishes, sandwiches, homemade smoothies and juices. The smoothies are 100% natural and dairy free, with names like the “Strawberry Manilow” and “Give Peach a Chance.” Juices like “Elvis Parsley” and “Vitality” aren’t typically found on supermarket shelves.

Mirroring the brightly colored food and drinks are the dynamic walls and decor. One wall is covered in white plaster handprints.

“That wall was really crooked, and we couldn’t afford to take the whole wall down and re-do it,” Lockhart said. “We just smeared plaster all over it. I had a party for all the people that loaned me money and they came and put their handprints in it.”

Lockhart said she hangs art from local artists to decorate the walls, as well as to provide a place for the artists to sell their work. The community and environment are both important ingredients in the Main Squeeze business recipe.

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.

At the entrance to the Lessman Farm in Topeka, Kansas, a metal statue of a man and woman, each holding a hand in the air, greets visitors. The piece is hardly more than stick figures welded from metal rods, but it gives an early glimpse into the experience awaiting guests. Artist Ron Lessman said the statue can imply different things to different people.

“That’s me and my wife either flipping you off or waving you on,” Lessman said.

His cynicism comes from more than a decade of fighting with Shawnee county. Lessman has never been one to lie down in the face of adversity, a characteristic reflected in his art. In the mid-1990s, the county ordered Lessman to “pick up” six broken-down trucks that his pigs were using for shade. Lessman did just that, placing each truck at a roughly 45-degree angle off the ground with over 4,000 pounds of concrete.

“I can’t say it any better than what the county said: ‘a cynical attempt to get around the law,’” Lessman said. “You told me to pick my trucks up. I did my patriotic duty and did what I was ordered; I picked my trucks up.”

The piece, named “Truckhenge,” is the most well known of Lessman’s exhibits. Lessman later created its compliment, “Boathenge.” The trucks and boats are painted with phrases reflecting Lessman’s views on society. One truck says, “If these trucks can’t stand, why do we fight the Taliban?” while another reads, “Rise up. Excuse me while I touch the sky.”

Still another reads, “Freedom isn’t lost,” a point that Lessman said is proved by the fact that visitors can come drink a beer and fish at his pond, in contrast to city parks where alcohol is banned.

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.”

Cobden, Illinois

Five years ago Gerardo Jimenez was speaking at a conference in Illinois when his wife Carol fell in love with a nearby plot of land. The couple purchased the property, and today peppers of all different shades of green and red spot the land the Jimenezes named Rancho Bella Vista.

Gerardo and Carol Jimenez’s farm is located in Cobden, Illinois. The Jimenezes had always grown peppers as a hobby, but after retiring they decided to develop their pastime into a business, Darn Hot Peppers. Today, they grow 21 varieties of peppers that they use to make salsas, jellies and seasonings.

Gerardo Jimenez said he learned about agriculture as a child and his experiences helped shape the way he runs his farm.

Growing up in a family of migrant farm workers, Jimenez said he labored alongside his brothers and sisters. The fields were sprayed constantly with herbicides and pesticides. After watching the people he knew become ill because of the chemicals from the fields, Jimenez said he decided he would produce crops without the aid of harmful herbicides and pesticides.

“I wanted to be able to walk to the fields, see a good pepper, pick it up, take a bite and be comfortable knowing that the peppers have not been sprayed,” Jimenez said.

Growing peppers without chemicals is difficult work. Jimenez said he wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning to pull weeds and maintain the farm.

“You really have to love what you are doing,” Jimenez said.

In his efforts to maintain a natural farm, Jimenez uses techniques such as crop rotation. He also uses garlic and fish for fertilizer and to deter insects. He said a local high school boy’s soccer team works in the fields during the week and they always complain they can never get dates because of the smell.

Joan Unterreiner and her husband Ron usually drive past the Shrine of St. Joseph on Sunday mornings. They could stop, but the opening hymns have already been sung, so they continue down the road to a later service at their own church.

After some nagging from her sister, Joan said she finally made the decision to leave home a bit earlier to attend mass at the St. Louis church, which has attracted attention from all over the world.

The service took place in a spacious, glittering sanctuary complete with a belting organ and melodic hallelujahs, but this is not atypical of Catholic churches. Joan soon discovered the distinguishing charm of this particular church lay hidden behind layers of paint covering more than 150 years of wear and tear.

After the mass, tour guide Vince LeBlaze told visitors that the Shrine is a standing miracle — the end-product of 26 years of renovations that began with five local businessmen and $1.

Its silhouette landmarked the St. Louis riverfront in 1846 as a Jesuit church that served the largely German population, but an influx of immigrants in the 1830s gradually changed the demographics in the neighborhood. The German congregation barred non-Germans from their services, so the Irish, Italian and Polish in the area built their own parishes.

As a result, congregation numbers at the church dwindled. Neglect and lack of funds brought the church to shambles by the 1970s, but they continued to hold weekly mass, LeBlaze said. When it became too rundown, the St. Louis Archdiocese elected to build a new parish across the street so that the congregation could relocate.

St. Louis, Missouri

When Dug Feltch goes to work on Monday morning, it’s not to a cramped cubicle with small, framed pictures of friends and family and an intimidating stack of unfinished work.

For the last 34 years, he’s been doing things his own way.

Clothed in all black, Feltch takes the stage alongside his many coworkers — singing gumdrops, a back–talking orange monster and a Russian bear with a penchant for ballet — to provide an ancient form of entertainment that is becoming increasingly rare these days: puppetry.

Every show begins with a nearly hour-long demonstration, which gives a brief history of the art of puppetry and details the extensive amount of work that goes into each puppet. Dug, the so-called “consummate goodwill ambassador” of Bob Kramer’s Marionnettes in St. Louis, Missouri, conducts this lesson with the skill and humor of a practiced showman, with puns for the kids and more subtle humor for the adults.

Bob Kramer said they’ve been doing the demonstration since 1979.

“It wasn’t really planned, it just sort of happened,” he said. “Some girl scouts wanted to come see how we made a puppet.”

The construction of a single marionette is a laborious process that can take as many as 1,500 hours, so Kramer and Feltch developed a fast-forwarded version to show audiences, which they say New York puppeteers have called “a definitive explanation of how puppets are made.”

Storm troopers milled anxiously around the stage, Spocks fidgeted with their ears and Darth Vaders loomed in the background. With them, about 40 other costumed characters stood lined up, awaiting their moment in the spotlight at the annual Trekfest in Riverside, Iowa.

A buzz rose through the crowd as three former stars from the original Star Trek television series mounted the stage. George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig made a special appearance at the festival’s 25th anniversary to judge the costume contest and give speeches.

Among the costume contestants, Star Trek fan Shel Greek-Lippe stood proudly dressed as Lady Amanda, Spock’s pregnant mother. The realism of Greek-Lippe’s costume was aided by the fact that she was eight months pregnant with twins.

“It was kind of hard to tell if I could make it today or not because I’m so far along,” Greek- Lippe said. “But I’m glad I made it to compete another year.”

The competition was stiff, with a lineup including a square lava like creature called a giant horta, a father-son Spock team and multiple stormtroopers. For Greek-Lippe this is a yearly event. She said she’s been coming to Trekfest and entering the costume contest for about 15 years.

The costume contest is just part of the celebration every June in honor of Captain James T. Kirk from Star Trek. According to the Star Trek series, written by Gene Roddenberry, Captain Kirk will be born 2233 in a small Iowa town, but Roddenbury never names the town. So one day 25 years ago, Riverside community club member and avid Star Trek fan Steve Miller asked, “Why not Riverside?”

Terry Philips, president of the community club at the time, said Miller suggested declaring Riverside as the birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk to the city council.

“The city council kind of ignored it and went on with the other business,” Philips said. “The next meeting, Steve brought it up again. They knew Steve well enough [to know] that he would not let it go, so they said ‘Fine, we’ll humor Steve’ and declared Riverside to be the birthplace.”

In Olney, Illinois, it is not uncommon to spot a flash of white darting from tree to tree.

Street crossings, welcome signs and banners decorate a downtown dedicated to the albino squirrels that have put Olney in the international spotlight since the 1960s. Even the patches of the local police officers and their police cars feature an outline of the white, bushy-tailed squirrel.

Although several small towns across America, including Marionville, Missouri, and Kenton, Tennessee, have white squirrels, Olney residents claim that it is the original “Home of the White Squirrels.” The white squirrel became Olney’s mascot in 1966.

John Stencel, a retired life science professor at Olney Community College, initiated an annual squirrel count in 1976 after he received a grant from the Illinois Academy of Science to study and keep historical records on the white squirrels. The albinos are Eastern Gray Squirrels that have a genetic mutation, which causes red eyes, pink skin and white fur.

Olney city clerk Belinda Henton took charge of the count in 2003 when Stencel retired and moved to Iowa. She said she promised him that she would keep the tradition alive.

Squirrel counting is held at 7:30 a.m. for three consecutive Saturdays in October. Squirrels are most active in October as they gather food for winter. Volunteers are designated different routes and asked to tally how many gray squirrels, white squirrels and cats they see in their specified area. Volunteers are typically Olney residents and Onley Community College students who return every year to take part in this beloved tradition. This October will mark the 32nd year of Olney’s annual squirrel count.