| Congratulations to the national soccer teams of Spain and Argentina, finalists in the 2026 FIFA World Cup! |
| Many of us are not international travelers so it was an incredible Odessey to have the world come to us for this incredible multi-faceted futbol event over the past month. Though I have been blessed to travel to many places on several continents, I am not much of a globetrotter or world voyager; I enjoy staying home. As a resident of Missouri, I know that we have towns and villages across our state that bear names of exotic faraway places; they invite us to think about foreign soil and the various histories and cultures that accompany them. |
| My brother’s daughter married a boy from Sullivan County where they now live and raise their children in a township called Japan. Since my brother is a farmer near Kansas City and must stay close to home for daily chores, he cannot get away much; but now he likes to say that we may not be able to reach him because of his travels to and from Japan, or that he has business in Japan next week, or that he is intrigued by the people and customs of Japan. |
| Those who have cabins or lake houses in the Ozarks journey regularly through Warsaw and Versailles (Ver-sales). Missouri has numerous townships with names of glamorous European destinations like Amsterdam, Krakow, Vienna, Vichy, and Paris. Others bear names of Italian places of paradise: Venice, Como, Florence (New Florence), and Milan (My-lan). Some have names of major cities in Great Britan: Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and London (New London), as well as those of Iberia, including a town called Iberia: Madrid (New Mad-rud), Lisbon, and Montserrat where Saint Ignatius of Loyola dedicated his life to Christ in the sixteenth century. |
| The villages of Missouri may not be labeled as bizarrely as some in Pennsylvania: Mars, Normalville, Blueball, Intercourse, and Climax, but almost; we have Butts, Licking, Tightwad, Monkey Run, Conception Junction, and Uranus. Beavis and Butthead could have quite a conversation about the best place to live—but I digress. Our towns with attractive names create images of global unity. In summertime we might think of ourselves north of the border by visiting Halifax or Montreal, Missouri; in winter’s cold we can go south of the union to Mexico or Monterey, Missouri—or embrace a larger Latino sense in Peru, Cuba, Columbia, or Bolivia (Bolivar) without ever leaving the state. If we want to go to ancient civilizations, there’s Carthage, Troy, Bethany, and Kabul (Cabool). |
| I’ve listed over thirty towns in the Show-Me State with titles of alluring places of the world, sites that adventurous souls from George Bailey to Dora the Explora would love to experience in a lifetime. You can probably come up with more. Some people spend summers visiting all thirty major league baseball cities, and some make it a goal to visit all fifty states. Though I suspect no Missourian has made a bucket list of visiting our small towns that bear acclaimed names, it might be a fun venture—kind of like a country western song about someone who sees the world without going far. |
| It has been said that travel is symbolic of search, and each of us should do so. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we will eventually realize that everything we searched for was with us from the start, rooting us in the place we came from and leading us to acknowledge that there’s no place like home. And though it’s true, it was wonderful to have the world come for a visit during the summer of ‘26. |
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