2018 Winner: Olivia Ketron

Born in Hawaii and raised in Iowa, Olivia Ketron currently serves as an active duty sailor in the United States Navy and is the 2018 winner of the Edward Readicker-Henderson Travel Classics Memorial Scholarship. Inspired by her Navy team lead, Olivia began her writing career with an online blog detailing her first solo trip across Iceland. Having grown up in a small town, she now practices her newfound passion for travel writing about her adventures along the East Coast from her home base in Maryland.

Olivia’s Award-winning essay: 

When you see the aged wooden sign boasting Welcome to the City of Dixon and immediately the road begins to descend downhill, that is the first sign you should turn around and go back to wherever you came from. If you are unlucky enough to continue down into this podunk town, you will find yourself facing an open and empty gravel lot with the most beautiful, elaborate centerpiece; one single Pepsi machine. This is no ordinary Pepsi machine. This one in particular serves as the meeting point for tailgate “parties”, numerous misdemeanor arrests, and if you happen to be visiting for Thanksgiving, it becomes the home to four plump turkeys who had been spared from the seasons feast. 

If the lone Pepsi machine didn’t scare you away, you could hang a right at the stop sign and continue a couple hundred feet until you pass the small park on your left, where as a sixth grader I found a used feminine hygiene product taped to the roof of the slide by one of the classier citizens of our town. The broken half wooden half chain link fence surrounding the park is decorated with uninspired attempts at graffiti art and the two swings swaying in the back are too eaten away by rust for me to ever consider putting a child in them, nonetheless people regularly do. 

When you reach the local watering hole, the Dixon Legion, you have already made it about halfway through town. The Legion is a small bar and grill that usually entertains a lively crowd of three to five men after a long day in the unforgiving cornfields that surround our little town; most likely drinking away their disappointment if this years crop hasn’t reached knee high by July. If you continue on, you will see another empty lot that used to be home to the one and only Lil’ Stop. Generously labelling it a convenience store, this small shack sold a primitive selection of candies, chips, and soda that made it the number one hangout spot for kids in town. After it burned down in a suspected arson, I’m sure Dixon lost its only star on TripAdvisor. 

Growing up in a town where the population is so small you can write three words per citizen in a travel writing essay has its hidden benefits, despite what first impressions might convey. What most people can’t see is that the Pepsi machine gave families who haven’t seen each other in a few years an excuse to get back in touch over a cold beverage and a tailgate picnic. Or that the turkeys sitting there on Thanksgiving put a smile on a child’s face that wouldn’t otherwise be there. You also wouldn’t know that the Dixon Legion is home to a very popular Taco Wednesday that brings those hardworking farmers a little more company and good conversation than they are normally used to. You wouldn’t know that the best part of being a kid in Dixon was getting to ride your bike to the Lil’ Stop with the two other students from school on a hot summer day when they finally broke out the slushie machine. It’s the two hundred and fifty-four people that find joy in the little things our small corner of the world does have that make appreciating the wonders we see outside of it that much more spectacular.

See past Edward-Readicker-Henderson Scholarship Winners