A Sizable Matter

Size does matter.

It matters especially when you want to be known for being the World's or The United States' Smallest/Littlest (insert noun here).

I have visited the World's Smallest Police Station located in Carrabelle, FL. The Colonel and I took Yam and Spud to see it when we lived in Florida's Panhandle (2001-2006).

The police station is a phone booth.

Originally the police phone was in a call box that was bolted onto a building. The police would get drenched while answering the phone when it was raining, so in early 1963 the phone was moved to a phone booth. The police had hoped this move would also stop people from making unauthorized long-distance phone calls from the police phone. It didn't. Eventually the dial was removed so people could no longer make the calls.

One morning, after Yam and Spud got on the school bus, The Colonel surprised me with a day trip to Ochopee, FL. Ochopee sits on the edge of the Everglades and reportedly has a population of 11.

Ochopee is home to the Smallest Post Office in the United States. It is a 7 x 8-foot building that was once an irrigation pipe shed for a tomato farm. In 1953, a fire destroyed Ochopee's general store which housed the post office, so the post office was moved to its current location.

There is no bathroom in the air-conditioned post office, so when nature calls the clerk has to drive 3 miles west to a Subway restaurant or one mile east to the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters (the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters was the real destination of the surprise day trip and seeing the post office was an added bonus).

While The Colonel and I were recently traveling Coastal Highway 17 in Georgia, we passed The Littlest Church in The United States, "Where folks rub elbows with God".

It was so cute tucked into the woods a little ways from the highway, so inviting.

A woman named Agnes Harper had the 10 x 15 church built in 1949. She wrote the deed in the name of Jesus Christ. Mrs. Harper installed stained-glass windows from England and there is a glass star in the roof that allows sunlight to flood the little church, lighting the interior at midday.

The church is open to all for worship and is open 24 hours a day. There is room for 13 people inside (was that intentional...Jesus plus the 12 Apostles?).

Size matters too when you want to be known as the Largest/Biggest (again, insert noun here) in the World or The United States.

So far, The Colonel, Yam, Spud and I have visited the World's Largest Hand-dug Well located in Greensburg, Kansas. It was hand-dug in 1887 at a cost of $45,000. The well is 109-feet long and 32-feet in diameter.

We (along with a Mennonite family) descended to the well's bottom via an illuminated stairway and then climbed our way back to the surface by retracing our steps on the stairway. As I recall (we visited the well sometime between 1996-1998), it was a bit cool down in the well, kind of cave like. It was (and still is) amazing to think the huge well was dug completely by hand.