These multi-colored balls seem to emanate from a tree whose roots resemble a skull and/or the cloven hooves of the Devil himself! According to early colonists in Northern California, the Native Americans of the region used to call it the “cracker tree,” and as you’re straining to look for it (as well as the blood-red water), your car will suddenly defy gravity and roll up hill (did I mention the wooden bridge slopes?). Nowadays, if you listen close enough you can hear the tossed Melon children singing along to frightening Neil Diamond songs as gaseous red balls dance around near the removed Union Pacific tracks down by the river bed. She hits one Wawa store in each Township at alarmingly regular intervals. Nonetheless, the man still screened her phone calls so the scorned lady/thing can now be seen, dressed like a bunny, wandering in a perfect 120 mile radius within South Jersey. Assuming the man would only court her/it if she/it didn’t have babies, she threw her babies off of Crybaby Bridge right there on Devil’s Elbow Road in Broken Whistle, Oklahoma. She/it was seeking the love of a non-Melon Head man from a higher station in life. The lead Melon Head also happened to be a woman, and had a couple babies. The fearless leader of the Melon Heads incited an uprising and burned the stone building down with the deranged scientist trapped inside the attic with his collection of Peruvian voodoo dolls. Down the road there used to be an asylum where a disenfranchised Rumanian chemist was turning orphans into Melon Heads in either the early 1800s or 1973. It was a hazy evening so we decided to turn off on Devils Foot Road. “So me and some buds were driving along route 34 in North Carolina. Potato Head doll where you just plug in pre-scripted elements to make a freakish thing. It makes me think there’s some sort of return-postage, story-spinning template mailed to everyone who lives more than 40 miles from a video rental store. Crybaby bridges and “Melon-heads” are seemingly in every county. In format, the authors non-critically expose the innumerable overlaps of stories, sightings, and BS across the nation.

This is the underbelly of Americana…and I love this crap!Īs a compilation of weirdness, this book includes the surreal-real (Rodia’s Towers, Lizzy Borden) and the surreal-gotta-be-fake (96.9% of the rest of the content). Reveling in a collage of myths and neurosis, this tome is chock-full of supposed oddities that have somehow escaped the lens of a camera (in a society where seemingly every post-1987 infant pratfall or freaking dog chasing a squirrel is filmed and aired on my damn TV each Sunday!). Before reading this, I assumed – per a South Park episode – that Al Gore was the only person who believed in the notorious Man-Bear-Pig chimera.

Weird U.S. by Mark Moran