Interestingly, the first impression I got was that time spent on the road today didn't feel much different than that from years ago. Once the car is packed and you are out of your familiar area, the novelty of new sights kicks in. The thrill of excitement, the wonder at each new vista revealed by the rounding of a curve. It all comes flooding back, bringing that kid in the back seat along for the ride. And once you're out of the house, the preponderance of modern gadgetry is less evident.
Looking out that car window, you still see miles of telephone lines weaving along beside you. And the billboards- although in the cities you see some fancy digital ones, out in the countryside they are the same as we had 'back in the Bronze Age'. Local restaurants, tourist attractions, peeling faded ads for some motel- all are still common today. And they still offer the same enticements: gas, food, and "clean restrooms". The upshot: if you lean back, gaze out the car window at the passing landscape and relax, it might just as well be 1977 as 2017.
Now there certainly were some more specific observations on this trip. You may recall such Bronze Age travel standbys as Stuckeys and Nickerson Farms; purveyors of fuel, souvenirs and pecan logs. Never saw a single one over 1800 miles of driving. Now the big truck stops and travel centers fill those niches. Interestingly, those truck stops often hid numerous Bronze Age relics inside. For instance, a stop in Columbia, Missouri yielded the sight of a whole rack of retro travel games. A Spirograph, cards, and Travel Bingo (you recall- where you slide a little cover on a card to indicate you saw a particular car, or sign, or animal) shared a display with many other such pastimes.Remarkably, that truck stop also hit me with another past blast: cb radios. Yes, right next to tablet computers and GPS systems, you can still find a cb radio for sale. Apparently they still have an appeal not found in a cell phone...
Another taste of the past came in the form of gas stations. Travelling through different states exposed several chains I'd known in years past, but which were long gone from my current environs. Chevron, Phillips 66, and Sinclair (yes, still with the Sinclair dinosaur- I was so excited) were signs that some of the past lived on. And in Albuquerque, New Mexico another old friend reappeared: 7-11 stores. Still with Slurpees, but no Marvel cups in evidence. Sigh.And of course, many of those local stores and tourist stops still feature custom signs, folk art, and/or any number of unusual decorations intended to attract your attention...
So in the final analysis; yes many changes have occurred since our Bronze Age, but a road trip offers a chance to witness a few remnants of that time. Just one more reason to 'hit the road'!
12 comments:
There's a shopping arcade in my local town centre which has those gumball machines - they remind me of childhood trips to the seaside. Also the supermarket I regularly use (Tesco) sells candy floss (cotton candy) and jars of cockles & mussels, which were also childhood seaside favorites. I can't help noticing that all those photos show blue, cloudless skies (sadly something we don't see enough of in the UK) - surely a sign that solar power is the future and fossil fuels are the past whatever dinosaur Trump thinks.
(Ha!-- Nice w/ the editorial exit-tag, there, Colin--!)
(Also-- does the UK tend to be on the rainy side in the summer as well? From watching Doc Martin over here, one would gain the impression that the Cornwall region, at least, is one of the sunniest, most idyllic spots on Planet Earth--!)
I much, MUCH prefer the long road-trips we take now (the DC-to-Kalamazoo,MI one is already becoming almost passe' w/ HBGirl going back & forth to college. . .). But I've been traveling that exact route with some regularity since, gosh, 1983. About a 9 to 10 hour drive. And there have been some noticeable changes in the roadside environment over the years. The biggest one is probably the complete overhaul (at least twice in fact) of the Service Area system along the turnpike. Whereas they used to each have their own unique personality and local "feel", even in the architecture, they've all been corporate-ized into almost startling conformity. To the point of confusion, in fact, 'cause you lose track of where you are-- you lose any sense of having traveled at all, because you walk in, and it's like you've stepped into the building you'd left behind 150 miles or so ago. I'm not sure what the thinking was behind this policy. I'm sure it's cheaper to mass-produce and maintain identical facilities, to some degree. And maybe there was a mistaken notion that travelers would then feel more "at home" in the midst of their trip if they were always stopping at effectively the same place. But I rather hate it. A lot. If you're looking for something to break up the monotony of a long, dull highway drive, erasing any variation in the pit-stop experience is not a well-considered move.
The other development I've noticed in these 30+ years on that route is the recent explosion of fire&brimstone, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian billboards all along the way that mince no words in telling me how quickly and certainly I will be going to hell if I don't repent/change my ways/accept my personal savior, etc, etc. Real 1930's revival-tent tone, which I find incredibly off-putting and, to be honest, intrusive. Rock City, Ruby Falls, and South of the Border never, ever once attacked me directly from their billboards, after all. . .
HB
It was a long, hot, dismal summer trip 'cross country back in '73 that I purchased, at a roadside gas station, my foray into Zumvembie-dom with FF 138, yes the **dreaded** Miracle Man. Kept me quiet for hours, my Mom said.
Soon followed by Marvel Team Up 13 with Cap and Spidey.. pure heaven.
Yes it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Nowadays I enjoy long road trips (the few I do get to take annually, either for work or pleasure), since my wife's always with me, and I could never ask for a better traveling partner.. She's fantastic to travel with. Always bubbly and bright, we also share a fun affection for great classic music, National Public Radio, snack foods and McDonalds along the way.
The family car trip to PA was an annual summer event. My brother and I would pack the essentials, Hostess fruit pies, cap guns and comics! We'd leave all that other unimportant stuff to mom (tooth brushes, clothes, underware!) It was a 4-5 hour car ride. We'd read and play the license plate game, pausing only to eat sandwiches and Pringles out of the trunk at a rest stop. Then once there, we would trade comics with our cousins. I loved going there because they had nearly all the Mego figures. Plus, there dept stores had comics! When on vacation mom was more apt to say "yes" when we'd run up to her with fists full of comics. We'd read everything on the trip home. I have several books that made that voyage 10 times or more, and they show it!
HB, the average British summer is a mixture of rain and sun - usually neither dominates. The driest part of the UK is the south-east (including London). I remember reading that the south-east gets less annual rainfall than Jerusalem (!!) and with climate change that is set to get worse. Cornwall is in the south-west facing the Atlantic so isn't short of rainfall. One thing we don't need to worry about in the UK is paying for air-conditioning - it rarely gets hot enough here to need air-conditioning. The last major heatwave was in the summer of 2013 when it got really hot for three weeks.
Like Colin says, British summer weather is all over the place. In June of 2007, my hometown saw so much rainfall in a 24 hour period that a quarter of the city ended up submerged. On the other hand, in 2015, the temperature threatened to smash through the hundred degree mark. Then again, in 1976, which saw the worst drought in British history, the outskirts of town were hit by snow in the middle of summer.
It was the same with childhood road trips. I remember summer holiday journeys where it was so hot you felt like you were being cooked alive by the vehicle you were travelling in. Other trips in summer were conducted in fog so thick it was a miracle we got there without driving off a cliff.
The only road trips we used to make in the Bronze Age were to the seaside. Inland journeys were always by train. My main memory of those road trips are of reading Alan Class comics which reprinted early Marvel monster stories, looking out for cows and sheep and passing seemingly endless parades of reservoirs, every single one of which seemed to be in a valley that had once contained a village which had been flooded to create it. With every single reservoir we passed, we were told that the buildings were still intact beneath the water and that, at night, if you listened carefully, you could hear the church bells being rung by the currents. I suspect such claims were pure fabrication but they had a certain romance and mystery to them.
We always went to the seaside town of Blackpool for our summer holidays and a big part of the trip was trying to be the first to spot the Blackpool Tower (which looks remarkably like the Eiffel Tower) looming up on the horizon, signalling that we were finally reaching our destination after long, frustrating hours on the road.
About 5 years ago, when the cost of the annual Spring pilgrimage to see my folks in Florida shot up to like $3,500 for the week (airfare, auto rental, parking) we decided to drive and save like $3,100.
Never had driven before, such a long distance (about 1,500 miles from Chicago), and everyone loved it.
I'd forgotten the never ending stream of corny billboards in Kentucky and Tennessee promoting Loco Joe's Fireworks or Lookout Mountain... And the kook in Illinois with his billboards telling us to have guns. And the billboards in Indiana scaring us into Salvation. (At least I didn't see one telling me Jesus wants me to own a gun or I would face damnation, lol.)
The only positive / negative was the same array of fast food restaurants at every stop. Yea, you won't get food poisoning but it sure is boring and you feel like you are in a corporate, mass-market bubble.
HB- you're right about those rest areas. Pretty indistinguishable, except for those closed down completely. And yes, there were an abundance of religious themed boards. I kept looking for a "See Rock City" sign, but to no avail. Of course, that would have been South rather than West...
David_b- nothing beats comics in the back seat to ease a long trip. Except a great travelling partner, such as you have!
Luther- very fun story! I do wonder how your driver handled the din from those cap guns...
Steve Does Comics- very evocative description of those submerged towns. There are examples of the same practice here in the states, wherein a prolonged dry spell has revealed the buried remnants. A little eerie.
Charlie- you're quite right, most towns offer the same selection of eating spots. Yet as we traveled, we made an effort (largely successful) to find some local cuisine. Loved the Prickly Pearl Lemonade from a stop in Oklahoma...
We did have our share of those childhood long-distance family vacation road trips. Including one in the summer of 1970 (I believe) that was UNCANNILY similar to National Lampoon's VACATION (or to the story in Esquire that it was based on, actually). Not in the extremes of the specifics, certainly, but in location, destination, route, tone, and even some of the broader events-- yep, you bet. It's like the writer followed us the whole way. . .
And am I seeing up above that there was a fairly common dining experience? The "we'll save money and time by bringing a picnic lunch and eating at a rest stop" routine? Man-- we did NOT love that at all. My Mom was pretty darned weak when it came to picnic-type cuisine-- and we were generally running several hours late by the time we left, with making/packing said lunch being the last item on her priority list. And of course along every highway in those days were signs extolling great Home Cooking, fried chicken, burgers, malts, etc, etc as far as the eye could see. And we were stopping at a rest stop in the summer heat, sitting at sticky picnic tables, eating dry bread & sliced chipped beef sandwiches (no mayo, because Mom somehow thought we'd all get food poisoning if it spoiled while we were in the car), potato chips, and warm milk (go figure). And the ubiquitous carrot sticks. Thus, we were always a touch hungry throughout the car ride. And alllll of the food signs. . . . Even Stuckey's mysterious Pecan Logs took on a sumptuous mystique (until 20 years later, when I actually tasted one--- gyarghlf!)
This aspect has, for the most part, become SO MUCH more enjoyable in later adulthood. My wife, also, likes to track down the off-beat, local-diner type places whenever possible. We've had a solidly 75% success rate with that, I'd say-- and the failures have been so remarkable (even spectacular) that their memory alone warrants the gamble.
HB (who also never met a WAFFLE HOUSE he didn't like!)
One of the internets many benefits: YELP that diner first!
HB, we took loads of hard boiled eggs and a thermos flask filled with soup with us. It wasn't a varied diet but it kept us going.
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