Indie Summer Blog Hop

Where in the world!

For my stop on the Indie Tour Blog Hop today, hosted by Parajunkie Blog Tours, I’m supposed to focus on one town, so I decided to focus on one I know.

I’m from the middle of the country (my house is literally surrounded by milo fields, a cow pasture, and a dirt road), so since I’m centrally located between about four towns, I can claim a handful of places as my “hometown!”

But I’m going to talk about the biggest one: Pittsburg (no H at the end!). Located in the southeast corner of Kansas, it’s a college town that typically has around a 15,000 population count, depending on the time of year. During the school year, it can almost double. Ergo, it’s very quiet in the summer.

It’s the home of the split-face gorilla. Our university mascot is Gus, and he is the only college mascot in the country that’s a gorilla. My three-year-old is a huge fan of Gus and watches videos of him on YouTube constantly.

We’re big on our PSU football team. Our tailgate parties before games can rival that of a professional NFL team. And the week before the first game is called “Paint the Town Red,” where many merchants in the area decorate their stores in the red and gold school colors.

Pittsburg was built up by a mining community—ergo its name.

It’s surrounded by strip pits, and many of the richer crowd likes to buy ground along the pits to build their houses on, and make them look like beach-front property.

I’ve gone swimming plenty of times in one of these pits that was full of some kind of mineral used in batteries. Probably not the safest thing to do (and might explain what’s wrong with me!), and it does stain your swimming clothes awful colors, but it also means fish and other creepy crawlers can’t survive in there either, so it’s a snake-free time!

Many of the first people to settle in the area were Balkans, so every Memorial Day Weekend, Pittsburg has a Little Balkans Days Festival, with a parade and other events.

And the beer of choice here is Natural Light.  I have no idea why, but my husband has gone places far away and ordered a Natural Light with his meal, only for the waitress to say, “You’re from Pittsburg, aren’t you?”

So, that there is a brief introduction to one of my hometowns!

What's something unique about your hometown?

Other stops on today's hop are :
Cocktails and Books and
The Obsessive Reader