“Serving overseas as a small-town boy from America is intense, stressful and humorous! Enjoy a light-hearted story with me from our last 20 years overseas!”

Northern Ohio and Indiana is pleasantly void of nearly any geographic features that would inhibit the usability of the land – no mountains nor, especially, volcanos.

Having lived overseas on mountainous and volcanic terrain, we are amazed by the locals’ ingenuity and riskiness to use uninhabitable terrain.  Homes and businesses are constructed along cliffs’ edges with no apparent concern.  Caves and overhanging rock ledges are repurposed for storage buildings.  Even cracks in the volcano terrain is used for cooking and heating as hot sulfuric steam exudes out.

Kids learn about state history and culture in elementary school.  Our sons learned overseas about their local history and culture too.  Our area’s main volcano hovers over us at 12,200 feet.  Teachers do no not refer to it as a volcano, but rather a mountain.  If local authorities and volcanologists are pressed, they call it an extinct volcano, despite hot sulfuric gases that exude out from its cracks along the crater.  Having a ready cooking source, we began bringing hotdogs and sticks with us when taking visiting American teams to the volcano’s crater.  Quite a novelty, the hot sulfuric steam cooks the hotdogs .

Once when back in the States while in the visitor center of a national park, we saw a display  on volcanos.  A chart had the ten most dangerous volcanos in the world, based on the probability of eruption and proximity to large population centers.  We were surprised to see our volcano had made it on the infamous list.  We later learned that authorities play down its risk in order to not worry locals and discourage tourists from coming.

If you are hungry for a hotdog when visiting me in the States, I will take you to small-town ice cream stand.  If I’m overseas, I’ll take you out for a “volcano dog.”

Something similar ever happen to you?   Contact me and let me hear your story!

mattsmishaps@gmail.com    Matt’s Mishaps, PO BOX 114, Grabill, IN  46741

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