Reasons to Like Muncie: Its Proximity to Mooreland and That Girl Named Zippy

If you have not yet read A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana or its sequel, She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel, you really need to stop reading this right now, go to your public library, and check them out. And then you must read them. Because they are hilarious. And also because Mooreland is only 30 minutes from Muncie and I have been there.

Mooreland is a tiny town in the middle of rural farmland; it's hardly a dot on the map. But it's cool, because Zippy (aka Haven Kimmel) lived there and wrote funny stories about her adventures growing up there. A Girl Named Zippy recounts her early childhood and includes events such as her sisters beauty pageant win at the Mooreland Free Fair, an unfortunate encounter with a finger-biting rabbit, a door-removing ordeal between her older brother and bathroom-hogging sister, and purposefully trying to lose her pink Bible so she wouldn't have to attend services with her mother at the Mooreland Friends Church. It's a charming book, and its sequel, She Got Up Off the Couch, is just as fabulous, albeit a little more sobering. This book tells of her mother's heroic act of getting up off her spot on the couch (which after many years of sitting there reading book-mobile books now has a permanent impression of someone curled up comfortably with a favorite read) and going back to school to get a degree from Ball State University against her father's wishes. It tells of such adventures during Zippy's adolescent years as the time she broke her arm roller skating, the many times she had to deal with living in a dirty, mouse-infested home, and the loneliness she felt when her sister "abandoned" her, got married, and started her own family.

Last August, shortly after we moved to Indiana, Blake and I paid a visit to Mooreland at the request of my mom who wanted pictures of it to show at her next book club meeting (wherein they would be discussing Zippy). The drive to get there is beautiful...farmland interrupted by a few rolling hills and groves of shady trees. Zippy was right to infer that to blink would be to miss Mooreland entirely. We drove around this tiny town looking for Zippy Landmarks several times in about only about 5 minutes. We found the Mooreland Friends Church, the Marathon station her friend's family owned (though it is now out of business), the cemetery. As luck would have it, we also arrived in Mooreland during the Mooreland Free Fair, so of course we had to stop and take a look around. It was the most charming small-town fair I've ever seen (and also the only small-town fair I've ever seen, but certainly that doesn't detract from its charm). We will definitely be going back this August, and maybe this time we'll be better prepared to participate more in the festivities...maybe we'll even ride the rickety, portable ferris wheel!

So yeah, Mooreland...a tiny town I know you'd be sorry to miss. So get reading those Zippy books and we'll take you on a short literary tour when you come.