i grew up just a few miles from Hummansville MO. i i was wondering if anyone else came from a place mentioned in th ebook. i also think its kinda funny the blond god with the tarnished silver bracelet somehow reminded me of a friend of mine that used to work in the only supermarket in hummansvuille. he was blonde but he wore a silver chain with a wwwjd on it. not the kind of thing an old god would wear, lol.

Also if Neil read these boards then i was wondering how you came to know the town hummansville. was it just a place on a map or have you actually been there. just a curiosity of mine.
thanks a lot.

Neil doesn't read this board, but he does read his FAQ line. Eventually. He doesn't always respond to everything, but he's inhumanly busy.

Oh, and would you mind shrinking your avatar down a bit? It's quite thread-squishing.

I'm just wondering if there really is a Lakeside. It would be really cool to go there.
I've often considered not heeding Neil's warning at the beginning and following the route in the book, just to see where it leads...

It doesn't lead anywhere. <Grins>

Lakeside is a mishmash of about 6 or 7 small towns throughout the midwest... which is why it seems like the "ideal" midwest town.

It's both real, and fake, being a conglomeration.

I've been to Rock City. It's very much as it is described in the book, and a perfectly tacky and mythic site for second-tier Gods to go fight one another.

There are several Mystery Houses, all of which have similar attractions; water that runs uphill, a working faucet with no pipe to feed it, and a wide variety of optical illusions. I think one of them is in Georgia.

I live in central Wisconsin. The House on the Rock is a real place in Spring Green, WI - about an hour west of Madison. It was built near Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin by a man who fancied himself Wright's rival. It's been awhile since I have been there, but Neil nailed the descriptions of the different rooms and the carousel.
I also have family near Cairo, Ill. Yes, it really is pronounced Kay-roh.
I plan to re-read the book and sit down with the local maps to figure out more of the locations.

hi! I live in Sweden. just outside of Uppsala. Guess how suprised I was when I was reading the novel and all of a sudden realized that Shadow was outside Uppsala. So cool...

I just found this board at around 7:30 this morning. Couldn't sleep so I'm puttering around online. I'm looking out my window in the early morning light directly at Lookout Mountain and my wife who is asleep in the bedroom across the house worked at Rock City when she was a teenager.
When I read AG I was truly surprised to see my hometown as a featured location.

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm familiar with the highways of the Midwest, having had to use them to go anywhere by car. If you want to know about the cafe, check out my post on Travel The World.

Bumbling through these boards on my second reading of American Gods, I found this thread and figured I'd contribute.

I used to live near Cherryvale, Kansas, where Czernobog went to replenish himself at the site (unnamed in the book)of Bender Mound. It's actually a bit further outside the town than represented in the book; it's a good 12 miles away, in fact. But it's really there, and there used to be one of those historical markers by the side of the road denoting the spot where the Bender clan waylaid travellers on the Oregon Trail.

I've lived in Madison forever. The day after I read "American Gods" I took the very highway they take out to the House on the Rock, passed the landmarks, felt the draw of the House..it was surreal. A week or so ago I ate at the restaraunt (the barn-like one) they patronised. Yummy stuff.

I've been to house on the rock, and I'll be going again this summer. It's cool to read stuff in American Gods and think, wow, I saw that. Been through Cairo too, never actually stopped there. There's like this big glass pyramid...

Well... I am from and live in Manhatten. I can assure you that it's a real place ::grins:: And some of our cab drivers can get pretty damned weird.

I live in Oman! (well, at least one of the people mentioned in the book is from there)

I used to live near Cairo and the area around the Big Muddy River. Moved a lot. I just cracked up when I recognized a lot of those places.

I grew up in Lacrosse, WI and live in Wisconsin Dells, about 45 min. from UW-Madison (where I went to school), 45 from the House On The Rock, and a little over an hour south of Lakeville

I live in Chicago. 2 hours SE of HOTR. The House is amazing and houses one of the largest Titanic Exhibits in existence. (I think it's in the Whale Room). And everything in that place is red. EVERYTHING.

quote:

Originally posted by MouseyMdith:
I've lived in Madison forever. The day after I read "American Gods" I took the very highway they take out to the House on the Rock, passed the landmarks, felt the draw of the House..it was surreal. A week or so ago I ate at the restaraunt (the barn-like one) they patronised. Yummy stuff.

Which Madison? I believe there are 23 Madisons in the US, more than any other city/town names. I lived in "Madison" too.