Welcome to my America

I never called the circular road in my home town a roundabout until well after the internet was popularized and MapQuest defined it as such. The roundabout was always called "eight-corners" or "the circle" (although, technically "Veteran's Memorial Circle." As a child I always thought that it was unique and different, and naïvely believed that it was the only of its kind in America. Those kinds of streets, I knew, they had in Europe, but I also believed Brookfield was the only American town to hold one.

Besides the roundabout, Brookfield, Illinois houses a restaurant with a cow on its roof, a canon, a fake Liberty Bell, and ice cream shop with "Cock" in its title (which is, sadly, now up for sale). We have a zoo where all of our childhood field trips were held. We have a school called Gross. We have never had a Starbucks or even a McDonald's.

I grew up in this little town of oddities and this was the suburbia and the America that I grew up with.

The landscape of America is full of silly little things that some people may pay no heed to or others find as eyesores. Those little things that you wonder "who put that there", "where did that come from", "what were they thinking?" These things are sometimes in the big cities and sometimes in the suburbs and sometimes in those little towns you'd never think to go to or have driven through without paying a second look.

But these are the things that give a sense of humor and a sense of wonder to America, and these are the things that I love.

SillyAmerica.com is my little project, celebrating all that is odd in America., be it people, places, things, events, animal, vegetable, mineral... Here, I will share my pictures and share my stories, as I travel and seek out the craziest places I can find.