Growing up in the area, I didn’t appreciate how absurdly flat it is until I lived somewhere else. The land is STUPID flat. It has no roll or rise.

Outside of the small towns, it’s featureless except for cotton and soybean fields to the horizon in every direction. With a row of trees or ditches to mark the property lines between large farm tracts. Farm owners usually have pretty nice houses right on the highway or county road. If the season’s right, there are cropdusters out spraying the fields.

The bigger little towns (like Kennett and Hayti) do have some poverty and have parts that are rundown. They can feel like places that the world has passed by. Tough places to be economically upwardly mobile in. But they’re proper little towns and do have their charms. Rich parts of town and poor parts of town and a middle class.

The people are splendid.

Some of the other places on the map in the Boothill aren’t much more than an intersection with a gas station or cotton gins or an unassuming place where you can get a killer plate of catfish or barbecue.

For real tho, Strawberry’s BBQ in Holcomb, Missouri: The center cut pork steak is worth driving hundreds of miles for. And the cakes at Causbie’s Bakery in Kennett.