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'Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small-Town America'

Scott C. Yates, Special to the Rocky

Published May 18, 2007 at midnight

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• Nonfiction. By Bill Geist. Random House, $23.95.

Grade: B+

Book in a nutshell: A specialist in all things off-kilter for CBS News Sunday Morning, Geist sat down to write a book based on his favorite bits for television. It turned out that these were from rural, out-of-the-way-and-happy-about-it spots, so that became the theme of this fast, fun book.

It seems Geist's job is to spice up the heavy dough of "newsmakers" with a leavening of humor from places decidedly outside of the N.Y.-D.C.-L.A. sphere of influence. In a series of vignettes about stories he's done for the show, he writes about food from gas stations, parades so small the spectators walk around the parade, the tricks to eating roadkill ("All you have to do is beat the flies to it," a Kansas man tells him) and illegal porch furniture. It's not the stuff of congressional hearings - but that's pretty much the point.

Many of the highlighted spots are right here in Colorado, including towns that have festivals celebrating a headless chicken and a frozen dead guy. Are we weirder than the average state? Hey, at least we're not the Lutefisk Capital of the World.

Best tidbit: The book is made up of tidbits, so it's hard to pick a favorite. For me, it was probably the unlikely success of the southwestern Colorado guy who uses a sewer vacuum to suck prairie dogs out of their holes to relieve ranchers and keep the varmints' blood off government hands. Hard to imagine that the little suckers are really sold for pets to wealthy Japanese families, as Geist claims. I just hope the meat doesn't show up in sushi.

Pros: The funny bits don't exactly write themselves, but an author attempting to detail such matters has to be careful to write just enough and then get out of the way and let the humor bubble up. Geist does a masterful job of this.

Cons: Some of the stories would be better on TV. Reading about a school bus demolition derby was fun, but it only made me want to see the tape.

Final word: As with all collections, this book doesn't have an impressive narrative arc or characters that grow as you turn the pages, but it does have plenty of funny stories that top out at about 10 pages - which is just right. Also, be forewarned: Read it in places where it's OK to laugh out loud.