Once upon a time it was acceptable to begin stories with the words "once upon a time." It was most likely then that Sassafras County was born.
At that time, which was one of those years that begin with digits different than those of the number of the century in which it took place, Missouri was a very different state than it is today. Then it was known as a boxlike state no one really found particularly interesting at the western edge of the country, whereas today it is known as a boxlike state no one finds particularly interesting in the center of the country. And in this peculiar state there was a county called Old Hickory County, Missouri. It was, as you can imagine, named after a rosebush that some misguided settler had mistaken for a hickory tree.
It was a lovely county, full of woods and hills and even a dale or two which had left a neighboring county in search of a less hospitable environment. There was also a single very bewildered-looking giraffe so that Hollywood, which had yet to be invented, could make movies about Africa there, because one needs a giraffe to make a movie about Africa. Settled by a troupe of traveling sideshow actors who quickly left because they were, as previously mentioned, traveling, Old Hickory County was a county with promise, hope, and lots of people who passed through and said, "Hey, what's that giraffe doing there?" |
