Sarah Walker Gorrell, Author

Yesterday, on our trip 'cross the MS River Bridge to check out Helena, AR we had a wonderful unplanned experience. We were looking for food - fast food, any food. We never saw a McDonald's, Burger King, Popeyes, nothing but I did manage to encourage Mike to continue in a direction that he really didn't want to go. (The River Bridge, back to MS, was the "other" way.) Suddenly, around a curve, sat a small local restaurant. I convinced Mike that we should stop. It said, "Rosie's Diner" and "Soul Food." (I had to 'splain to MIke what Soul Food was - and after my explanation, he had a strange look on his "I don't know if I want to stop or not," face. We did.) We ordered what Mike said was the best Pulled Pork Sandwich he had ever had. They were cooking it, right there, in the little wooden shed out to the side.....where black smoke was just rolling from the roof and windows. OMGosh, I'm hungry for another one....

I had just taken over driving (Mike usually does the driving, but the sun had made him sleepy) when I saw the Exit sign for Kahoka, MO. I said to him (who had already dozed off), "I really want to see this place." Mike is "easy"......so he said, "I don't care, go ahead."  It was a good thing, because I had already gotten off at the exit! Now, the reason I wanted to see this little town, which was about 10 miles off our route was because, in 1932, his parents had come here to get married. I had always wondered "why?" We drove the 10 or so miles to Kahoka, which is the county seat of Clark County. It's the first courthouse in northeastern Missouri, just south of the Iowa border. Back in 1932, there was no waiting period, no doctor's exam, nothing needed to get a Marriage License. This was the "Marriage Capital" of the Midwest. People came from Iowa, from Illinois, from wherever to get married in Kahoka, MO. It was the ...