Word: townes
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...Brewery, as Anheuser-Busch is known around town, is not technically the biggest firm left standing; that honor goes to industrial conglomerate Emerson Electric. But it is certainly the most famous, an iconic American brand backed by one of the largest advertising budgets on earth. Nearly half of all American beer is brewed by A-B. Every time a radio ad for Bud or Bud Light ends with the words "St. Louis, Missouri," it's a shot in the arm for the hometown, which is why more than 45,000 people, including the mayor of St. Louis and the governor...
...early evening in Grand Tower, Ill., and Josh Franklin, 23, was standing outside his aunt's double-wide trailer. He'd like to move away from this community of 585 people to Carbondale, a college town about half an hour's drive to the north. But he can't afford to. Grand Tower isn't much of anyplace anymore. Its last restaurant closed shortly after the great flood of 1993. There isn't a bookstore. Don't even ask about wi-fi access. "If we get a major flood," he says, "it's all over. A lot of small towns...
This tiny town on Illinois's southern tip is caught between catastrophes, literally. A dispute with the Federal Government has resulted in its loss of flood insurance - unless the impoverished town takes expensive measures, like hoisting homes and the few remaining businesses on stilts a dozen feet into the air. But if they scratch together the money to do so, it will be impossible to afford earthquake insurance, which is already prohibitively expensive...
...disaster zones, and dozens of points along the Mississippi River's levees in both states have ruptured. "We're just standing by, hoping for the best but expecting the worst," says Burke "Bear" Ellett, 49, Grand Tower's mayor for the past dozen years. If the floods ravage the town, there probably won't be any money to rebuild...
Grand Tower sits along one of the Mississippi's narrowest points, across from Missouri. A levee runs along what remains of Main Street, but it's weak. That puts Grand Tower in a flood plain. Floods have repeatedly battered the town. And a handful of folks here recall 1947, when the Mississippi sent some 1,000 residents racing for the rocky hills above town...