#437： Don't Make Me Pull Over! A History of the Road Trip
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Summary
If you grew up in America in the 1970s and 80s, a vacation with your family likely involved piling in a car with your parents and siblings and being stuck with them for eight or more hours on the open road. With little other than each other to keep you entertained and sane, this world has slowly faded away without our hardly noticing thanks to cheaper airfare and advances in technology and convenience. In his new book, "Don't Make Me Pull Over: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip," author Rich Retay walks us through the history of the American family road trip.
Transcript
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This episode of the Art of Manliness podcast is brought to you by The Strenuous Life.
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and women. New styles, great fits, Wrangler, real comfortable jeans. Brett McKay here and welcome to
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another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. If you grew up in America in the 1970s and 80s,
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a vacation with your family likely involved piling in a car with your parents and siblings and being
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stuck with them for eight or more hours on the open road with little other than each other,
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keep yourselves entertained and sane. Entire movies during this time were made about the great
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American road trip, yet this world has slowly faded away without our hardly noticing thanks to
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cheaper airfare and advances in technology and convenience. My guest today has set out to document
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what he calls the golden age of road tripping before it vanishes from our collective memory.
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His name is Rich Retay, and in his book, Don't Make Me Pull Over, he walks us through the history
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of the American family road trip. Today on the show, Rich and I discuss how it was actually bicycles
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that kickstarted America's interstate highway system, when automotive road tripping really started
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taking off, and all the iconic businesses that built up around the nation's new pastime,
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including Stucky's convenience stores, motels, and attractions like the world's largest frying pan.
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Along the way, Rich shares stories from his family road trips growing up as a kid,
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particularly his memories of his dad taking on the role of leader, protector, and refueling
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stop minimizer during their expeditions. We end our conversation discussing the decline of the
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family road trip, what we miss out when we take a plane to our destination, and why millennial
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parents are ushering in the return of road trips to American culture. This episode is definitely a
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nice drive down memory lane, and a great one to listen to as you hit the open road. After the show's
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over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash don't make me pull over, all one word. And Rich joins me now
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So you have a book of history out on a very important topic that I think gets overlooked
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because it's part of, I think, almost every single American's upbringing. And that is the
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road trip. It's called Don't Make Me Pull Over, An Informal History of the Family Road Trip.
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So, I mean, what was the impetus behind this book? Were you just one day waxing nostalgic about your own
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road trips as a kid and decided, I want to look into that? What happened there?
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Well, kind of like that. Shockingly enough, the idea for writing a book about family vacations
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actually occurred to me while on a family vacation. Now, my dirty little secret is it wasn't a road
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trip that time. We'd actually flown to that particular destination. But I was sitting on a
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beach chair, and I looked over at my sons, who were eight years old and six years old at that time.
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And I got back to thinking about what life was like for me when I was their age and traveling
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the highways of the 1970s with my own siblings and parents. I'm the youngest of four kids who grew
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up in near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And it occurred to me how profound those road trip experiences really
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were to me. And especially, you know, at that impressionable young age of, you know, say around
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eight or 10 years old, they'd given me many of my fondest childhood memories. They'd broadened my
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horizons in so many ways, you know, at that age, going to different areas of the country, trying
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completely different foods, hearing the different ways that people talked, even though we were still,
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you know, in the same country. And I also realized that those long hours of traveling together
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really shaped my relationships with my siblings and my parents for really a lifetime. They just,
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they brought us closer in so many ways. But it also occurred to me at that same time,
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how little I knew about how this great American road trip experience really came to be. I had very
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little idea of how America got its roads and its interstate highways, how we got things like
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eight track tape decks and fuzz busters, why our station wagon had fake wood paneling on the sides.
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And so when I got back from that trip, I hit the library. I did about a year's worth of research,
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reading book after book and doing more research online. And I found so many interesting stories and
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anecdotes and just little, little historical nuggets that I knew I had the stuff to write an
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interesting book. And so I sat down and spent the next four years writing a book.
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And I bet you, when you were looking at your son too, you're probably thinking
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he has never experienced that world and he probably never will either.
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No, no, that's right. Even though we still take many road trips and I've always traveled,
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my wife and I have always taken our kids on road trips from, from a very young age,
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but just the landscape has changed in so many ways. Of course, with the rise of our personal
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electronic devices and the fact that there's so many more exits with restaurants and service
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stations, you know, along the interstates these days, it's just not the same. It can never be.
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Right. Well, so let's get into it. Cause I mean, it's interesting that, you know,
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you don't think about a history of road trips, but certain things had to have happened for
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the idea of a road trip to have occurred. And like the first one is, okay, of course cars had to be
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invented, but the other important aspect of that is like cars had to have something to drive over
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to do a road trip. So like, when did Americans start thinking of, Hey, let's build roads that not
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only go within a town or maybe within a state, but go across state lines.
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So really it wasn't the automobile at all that inspired America to start building better roads.
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It was the bicycle and specifically the invention of what's called the safety bicycle until the
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invention of the safety bicycle. We had basically those penny farthings, those high wheeled bicycles
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with the pedals fixed to a large, you know, a very tall wheel. And they were very dangerous bicycles
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because if you fell off the perch of those high wheeled bicycles, you were liable to, of course,
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you don't break an arm, break a collarbone. So really they were strictly the, um, uh, kind of
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the domain of daring young men who used to ride those, those types of bicycles with the invention
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of the safety bicycle. All of a sudden the pedals came down and were situated between two equal sized
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wheels powered by a chain or a treadle. And really the safety bicycle kind of democratized bicycles.
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It made it safe and easy to use for women, for older folks, and especially kids. And so that
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inspired a real bicycling boom into the late 1890s and, and, and that era, many of these bicyclists
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formed bicycling clubs, which petitioned lawmakers to start building better roads so that they could
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ride these bikes farther out from their cities and, and, you know, enjoy the riding of their bicycles
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more. This became known as the good roads movement. And then of course, you know, automobiles
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started coming along in the 1890s as well. They gradually overtook bicycles and popularity.
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It was the latest new thrill machine, especially for, for some of those daring young male drivers.
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And so automobile clubs started overtaking bicycling cubs, clubs and popularity, and they kind of
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assumed the mast, uh, of wanting to, uh, you know, help create these, these better roads in America.
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So like the first road or highway made for cars, when did that happen?
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Well, I mean, the first major transcontinental highway was the Lincoln highway, which was the
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brainchild of a, an entrepreneur and self-made millionaire named Carl Fisher. Um, he had made
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his money as the head of Presto light headlamps, which were the first gas compressed headlamps
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used on automobiles. And of course he wanted to promote automobile usage and wanted to get
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more people interested in buying automobiles in order to support his products. So he came
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up with the idea of building this transcontinental highway, which he envisioned going from time
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square in New York city, all the way to San Francisco. And so he called together a number
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of his friends in the auto industry. He was very well connected, uh, and gathered them for a big
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dinner party and announced this, this big idea to build a transcontinental highway. He got many of
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them to contribute money from their companies and out of their own pockets among the early contributors
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to the Lincoln highway project, or Thomas Edison, Woodrow Wilson, uh, Theodore Roosevelt,
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president of Goodyear Frank Sieberling, but still the funds weren't, weren't nearly enough. So he had
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to eventually come up with another idea as well. That idea was called seedling miles. And basically
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he used some of the donations that were privately contributed to build improved sections of this
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highway. And then travelers would be able to motorists would be able to travel over these improved
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sections and compare them side by side with, you know, the unimproved sections, the dirt roads
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and see how much better they were. And then this inspired demand by those motorists to enlist their
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own local leaders to engage in efforts to improve those sections as well. And then connect these seedling
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miles together into one unified whole. So construction of the Lincoln highway began in 1913. It was hoped
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that it would be completed in time for the 1915 world's fair in San Francisco. It didn't quite turn out that
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way. Portions of the Lincoln highway remained unimproved until well into the late 1920s. Of course, there was a
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very famous crossing of the Lincoln highway by the 1919 motor transport convoy of which a young lieutenant by
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the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower was a member. This was a huge military, U.S. Army military expedition
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included 81 vehicles attempting to cross the Lincoln highway. They actually started in Washington, D.C.
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and connected with the Lincoln highway at Gettysburg. And they just had, they had a devil of a time. It took
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them well into the, well into the weeks to cross the Lincoln highway. They had to use a part tractor,
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part truck called a militar to constantly extricate vehicles that were stuck in the mud. They often had
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to get off the Lincoln highway entirely and cut through farmers fields because they found the going
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easier. There was a 1916 road guide created by the Lincoln highway association that described any attempt
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to cross the Lincoln highway, even at that time as something of a sporting proposition. And as a final
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note of advice to anyone attempting to do so, it encouraged them to not wear new shoes.
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So, I mean, at this time, so it was rough going and like, this was people who attempted it. They
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weren't, they weren't taking the Lincoln highway to, you know, go visit some roadside, you know,
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some attraction or visit grandma or grandpa. These are people who were like basically daredevils.
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They wanted to see if they could drive a car all the way across. I mean, officially like road
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tripping in America didn't start with the Lincoln highway. Like when did like to say average Americans
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families decided, okay, we're going to take to the road to go visit grandma or grandpa in another
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state, or we're going to go to a national park. Like when did that start happening? Was it like not
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It was actually really in the 1920s. And that was when there was a craze called auto camping.
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And really what made auto camping possible was Henry Ford and his mass production, which really
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brought the price of cars down and within reach of average, you know, middle-class Americans.
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And really all auto camping was, was trespassing with a car. You would be traveling along a back
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road. And when night fell, you would simply pull over at the side of the road where there was a nice
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clearing or just a farmer's field. And you would pull a tent out of the back of your truck or just
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sleep in the car. Of course, this wore out its welcome with property owners along those roadways
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pretty quickly. People, you know, squatting on their property at night and squatting in their bushes in
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the morning. So municipalities began to set up their own campsites where, where these travelers could
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set up a camp and stay the night. Other entrepreneurs saw how popular that these municipal campsites
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were becoming. So they set up what were called cabin camps, which were just, you know, little
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campsites with huts and very spare amenities, a stove, you know, a heater in there, maybe a mattress
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where some of these travelers could stay the night. Gradually, these cabin camps kind of evolved into
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more formal buildings, motor courts, and eventually then into the early motels.
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We get the motel. I imagine the development of Route 66 sort of brought driving even further
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Yeah, Route 66 was built predominantly during the 1930s. And in large part, as many of our highways
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were during the 1930s, it was built as a work program under the Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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administration. Of course, it was kind of a jobs program to get and keep people working during the
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So, and then along this, they started building. And the thing that we got to point out too is that,
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okay, the roads were there, but there was like no infrastructure, like except for a few, maybe
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municipal camps, maybe a few motels. But like, unlike today where there's, you know, roads,
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an exit every 10 miles, they didn't have that. Like what'd they do for gas? What'd they do for,
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like, did you have to like prepare and like really plot out and be, I don't know, strategic
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Oh, absolutely. You would commonly have gas cans with you that would have spare gas. Of course,
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the only place that you could really find gas was in towns and at general stores or farm supply
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stores that would commonly have gas, of course, for farmers and their tractors. But it was very
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unpredictable where you might be able to find a diner to stop at to eat, where you would find a place to
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stay. So, you know, you had to be much more self-reliant and prepared to deal with the
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unpredictable anytime you traveled, certainly in any of the days prior to the interstates.
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Right. And the development of the interstates, that happened after World War II. So I guess there
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was like a lull in driving because there was rationing going on during World War II. And then
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after the war, big boom in car production. Like we took all this, you know, this arsenal of
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democracy built up and just unleashed it on consumer products. Tons of cars rolling off
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the conveyor belts. And then also, of course, we have the interstate system that was developed
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during the 1950s and 1960s. And I thought it was interesting, like we often think of, you know,
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interstates being associated with the era of Eisenhower. That's where it got its genesis,
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but it really, it didn't get finished until the 1980s, which I found really surprising.
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Yeah. Amazingly, the interstates, of course, were begun in 1956. Originally, it was thought that
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cost about $30 billion and take 10 years to build.
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It goes without saying that those projections were slightly off. I think in the end, it took
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about $130 billion to build the interstates. And of course, construction of the interstates did,
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as you mentioned, last into the 1980s, it turned out to be the most expensive peacetime project in
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Yeah. And they're still working on it, right? I mean, even today, I think I-35
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has been, had construction going on. That's from like, you know, goes through Texas and Oklahoma.
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Right. Well, I mean, from the time they were first built, the interstates were really only
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constructed to last about 20 to 30 years. So really, we've been rebuilding the highways even
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before they were completed, you know, in the 1980s. So it has been a one long road project, I guess.
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Right. So the interstate system, that really, that kicked off, I think, the road tripping
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boom. Because you had lots of Americans driving cars, lots of Americans with vacation time,
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with disposable income. And we've got this big, shiny interstate system that can take you from,
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you know, one end of the country, either north or south, or east to west.
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Yeah. And the interstates really, I mean, they fundamentally changed America, right? Because
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they were a highway system that was built, you know, exclusively for high-speed travel. They,
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for the first time, you had super highways that eliminated intersections via overpasses and
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underpasses. Of course, most of them were built to be four-lane with broad shoulders. They were
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restricted spaces. So you weren't liable to get stuck behind a tractor or a wagon being pulled by a
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horse or anything like that. And they greatly reduced the travel times that it took to cross
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the country. So they made America a much smaller place. For the first time, all these destinations
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that people could, or that people once could only read about in newspapers and magazines,
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now they could suddenly travel to, given ownership of a car, a few days off and a few dollars for
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gasoline. And an entire family could travel almost as cheaply as one person. So it made America a much
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smaller place. So we got the highway systems and more people were taking to the roads. But even
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during this time, there weren't the like rest, there weren't like the gas stations or the, you know,
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sort of mega corporate chain gas stations that we have today that are just there, like we said,
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every 10, 10 miles, 20 miles. When you planned a road trip back in the 60s into the 70s,
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like you had to think about, okay, I got it. I'm going to start here at seven, you know, at this,
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this time I've got, I know I got this much gas, I can make it to, you know, this destination.
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So like when, tell us, walk us through like the development of the infrastructure, like what did
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planners think about and when they're developing the highways to ensure, you know,
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travelers weren't stranded on the freeway by themselves in the middle of nowhere?
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Yeah. Well, I, first of all, one of the big things that they planned to be as part of the
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interstates were what were called the safety rest areas, you know, or what we just simply call today
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rest areas. Of course, the purpose of these rest areas was to give motorists a place to pull over
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without leaving the restricted space of the highway. It was a place for them to be able to fix their
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cars in the event of mechanical breakdowns. It was also to offer families a place to,
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you know, pull off the road and have a picnic and take a break from the hardships of driving.
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Of course, all the rest areas offer, offered restrooms, you know, for, for, for families to
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use for that purpose. And there was also a kiosk where families or especially the driver's dads could
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go look for directions so that they, they knew, you know, how to proceed along the interstates.
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Gradually over time, the rest areas also became, they kind of developed a role in public relations
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as well, because one of the things that the interstates did, of course, I mean, prior to the
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interstates, you traveled on two lane highways, which took you through every town and city along the
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way. You got kind of a, a taste for different areas of the country. You traveled relatively slowly
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through these areas. So you got to see the, the cities around you. You got to see the products
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that they made. You got to see the food they served. You got a taste of the local culture.
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And what interstates did is they really avoided taking motorists into those small towns. And they
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really kind of isolated motorists from the countryside around them. So what local communities began to do
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in order to give motorists a taste of their local culture is they started turning these rest areas
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into almost public ambassadors. And they would, they would set up plaques in these areas to tell
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those who stopped at the rest areas about historic events that had taken place in the area, or they
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would create elaborate murals out of tiles inside the buildings that describe some of these events or,
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gave people an idea of the products that were manufactured in that particular area. So they
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really began to, to fill a vital role in public relations for many of these small communities.
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And of course it was also, they also, that was also reflected in the design of many of these rest area
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buildings as well. They used locally sourced materials, timber and brick and stone that were specific
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to that area of the country. Some of these buildings were built in the shape of teepees or oil
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guernseys, things of that nature that reflected the, the local industry. So these rest areas really took
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on kind of a role in public relations for, for many of these communities. Many of those, those classic
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rest areas are now starting to disappear. There's just not the need for them anymore as our, our cars have
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gotten more reliable. Uh, you know, we don't have to stop and, and, uh, have rest areas to fix our cars
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anymore. We don't need to stop and look for directions because we have those on our, on our GPS systems or on
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our smartphones. And of course there's, there's many more restaurants and exits with restaurants and service
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stations for us to get off and use the restrooms. And we don't need to, to use rest areas for that purpose
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anymore. So unfortunately many of those classic great rest areas are starting to disappear from
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Yeah. I was noticing that I took a trip to New Mexico this like a couple of weeks ago. And I noticed
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some of the rest stops that I'd stopped at as a kid, they were closed up and like they started,
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they were taking down the structures that were there. And I was like, man, that's, that's a, it's a,
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it's an end of an era there. And I mean, into your point about the food things, I remember we stopped
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at those not only to go pee and just play around, but like, I remember my folks, we, part of getting
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ready for a big road trip is we'd pack a cooler full of food, maybe some, you know, sandwich meats,
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some bread, and we'd stop and we'd have a picnic at one of these things. But you know, nowadays you
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can just stop at a, a loves or whatever and get, you know, a Southwest egg roll and, uh, be on your
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Yeah. Those exits are simply much more frequent now and, you know, places to stop and, and eat are,
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are much easier to find in the 1970s. And, and especially, you know, of course, before then
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setting off on a family road trip was much more like, uh, uh, setting off on an, on an expedition
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into the wild frontier. You didn't know when you were going to find those exits with the service
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stations and you couldn't always count on restaurants and you couldn't count on finding
00:24:25.220
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and conditions apply. And now back to the show. So one of the businesses that started because of
00:27:03.000
more Americans taking road trips, thanks to the interstate highway system. One that I'm familiar
00:27:08.700
with because I saw them all the time on road trips I took as a kid is Stucky's. Tell us about
00:27:14.340
the precipitous rise of Stucky's and their tragic fall.
00:27:18.880
Yes. Well, Stucky's was started by a gentleman by the name of Williamson Bill Stucky in the 1930s.
00:27:27.020
He was a pecan farmer and he found himself with a bumper crop of pecans one year. So he figured,
00:27:33.700
okay, I'm going to go out to the highway and just set up a roadside stand and sell some of these
00:27:38.180
extra pecans that I have here to all these motorists that I see passing by the highway in front of me.
00:27:44.340
And he attracted quite a few motorists. They loved picking up his pecans pretty soon. He sent his
00:27:50.560
wife into the kitchen to make some desserts with these pecans so that people would have more of a
00:27:56.320
reason to stop. And so she came up with all these pecan desserts with pecan pies and pecan divinities
00:28:04.540
and whatnot. And it became a very popular stand. So soon he added on a restaurant, you know, aspect to
00:28:13.220
it and a souvenir shop as well. His Stucky's grew in popularity and he had a very distinctive strategy
00:28:21.480
for placing or locating each one of his new Stucky's that he added onto his chain. He started out in
00:28:29.520
Atlanta, which was the biggest city near where his farm was. And he had essentially a big gulp drink
00:28:35.960
and he would sip on this drink and drive out along the interstate. And when he felt nature's urge,
00:28:42.860
he would pull off to the side of the road and get out his roadmap and make a little mark on his map
00:28:49.020
where, you know, he had to, uh, uh, respond to that urge. And then he would get back to driving,
00:28:55.540
drive further down the road until he felt, you know, when he needed to go again and he'd make
00:29:00.480
another X there. And those would become the locations for each one of his Stucky's because he
00:29:05.400
felt, you know, other drivers would, would, uh, be having that same experience. And I guess that explains
00:29:11.100
why Stucky's always had very clean restrooms too. Now, the thing with Stucky's is they would always
00:29:18.700
have multiple, multiple billboards, up to 50 billboards for each Stucky's location.
00:29:25.100
Bill Stucky was a, uh, you know, a big believer in putting out these billboards to promote, uh, his,
00:29:31.240
his locations and, and get people to stop. And that worked, uh, well and good until Stucky started
00:29:36.960
going out of business in mass in the late 1970s, mainly because of the rise of the real fast food
00:29:43.360
restaurants like McDonald's and Wendy's and their convenient drive-through service. Pretty soon,
00:29:49.180
you know, motorists wanted to just stop and, or barely even stop. They wanted to drive through and
00:29:54.120
pick up their meals and keep going rather than go inside a Stucky's and have a sit down meal at a
00:30:00.080
Stucky's. So Stucky's started going out of business, uh, in mass, but those billboards remained and that
00:30:06.860
used to get my family into real problems because we would be cruising along. And my dad was one of
00:30:13.500
those dads that was a big believer in making time. He wanted to get to whatever that day's destination
00:30:19.880
was in whatever, you know, time, whatever time was humanly possible, you know? So if that meant, you
00:30:27.620
know, not stopping for meals, that was okay with him. If it meant ignoring our pleas to, to get over and
00:30:33.920
use the restroom, that was okay with him. But he would also stretch every tank full of gas to the
00:30:40.400
bitter limit. And we would see these Stucky's billboards saying, hey, great food, get gas, next Stucky's,
00:30:47.240
you know, 15 miles. So we would be kind of running on fumes as we're trying to leg it out to the next
00:30:52.820
Stucky's, following these billboards one after the other. Yep, you know, get gas at Stucky's. And we would
00:30:58.880
follow the billboard to the Stucky's location. Of course, we'd find that they had gone out of business and
00:31:03.620
then, of course, we were in a bit of a situation at that point with an empty tank and, you know,
00:31:09.780
unable to get any gas at a closed Stucky's. Did you guys run out of gas frequently on your
00:31:14.960
family road trips? You know, we, in the end, we did not. My dad, his thing was, he believed in his
00:31:23.900
heart of hearts that automobile engineers calibrated fuel gauges so that when the low fuel light came on
00:31:30.980
or the needle went to E, that there was still 40 miles worth of gas left in the tank. And this was
00:31:38.300
a theory that he put to the test many, many times. And his favorite gambit was the small town up ahead
00:31:45.320
with extra bonus. So, you know, the low fuel light would come on and my mom would, you know, kind of
00:31:51.960
be urging him, hey, Chuck, you know, it's time to get off the interstate now. Let's get some gas.
00:31:57.060
And he'd say, oh, you know, I think I know of another town down the road here, you know,
00:32:01.540
Dyersville or Bumbleburg or whatever, you know, kind of desperate sounding small town name that
00:32:07.600
he could come up with. And we would pass the exit, you know, with the clearly marked signs to a nice
00:32:14.500
Sinclair gas station where we could have filled up. And we'd continue on to try and get to Dyersville
00:32:19.720
or Bumbleburg. And of course, pretty soon we'd pass a sign listing the town that he had referenced.
00:32:25.780
And it would say, you know, it's 35 miles away. So we had many anxious moments where we were like
00:32:32.720
a tennis crowd, you know, shifting our heads from the gas gauge to the road ahead to the gas gauge
00:32:39.760
to the road ahead, looking for some sign of civilization down the interstate that there was
00:32:44.660
a gas station coming up. And more often than not, we actually made it to that small town and our
00:32:51.160
salvation until a rainy dark night in Arkansas. And I believe 1975 or 1976, when our car suddenly
00:33:01.780
started sputtering and we lost the power steering and sure enough, we were out of gas. And so my dad,
00:33:09.240
you know, pulled over to the side of the road and wound up having to hitchhike to the next exit. And
00:33:13.500
forever after that, he would have to listen to my mom when she said it was time to get gas.
00:33:18.040
Yeah. No, I, uh, I think on my one family road trip, we ran out of gas once or my dad had to
00:33:24.720
hitchhike into town and get a can of gas. I mean, that was kind of interesting, you know,
00:33:28.260
throughout the, you know, besides giving the formal history of, of road trips in America,
00:33:32.540
you, you wove in vignettes from your own family history of road trips. And I thought it was
00:33:37.080
interesting because I saw this in my own family, the dynamics, like the role of dad in road trip.
00:33:42.240
He's sort of like this, he was like a captain of an, of an expedition, right? Cause like I remember
00:33:47.340
being out there when we ran out of gas, it was like, there's no cell phones, there's no payphone
00:33:52.180
nearby. And like, it was like mom and dad having to take care of three kids in the middle of nowhere.
00:33:59.200
And I can imagine like now being a parent, like how like kind of, you know, frightening that would
00:34:04.200
be, you're in the middle of nowhere and you, you, what do you do in that situation?
00:34:07.900
Yeah. As you pointed out, I mean, my dad was very much captain of, of the ship and, you know,
00:34:13.120
we, we, we drove these big land yachts. So I guess it was appropriate to call him the captain,
00:34:18.120
but my dad did 90% of the driving. As I mentioned, his thing was, was making time. He wanted to get
00:34:25.280
to whatever that destination for the day was as fast as possible. I know other fathers, you know,
00:34:31.120
enjoyed stopping at every historic landmark along the way and stopping at all the great roadside
00:34:36.200
attractions along the way. My dad was not that type. He just wanted to get to whatever
00:34:41.700
destination that he set for us for that day as quickly as possible. Of course, once we got
00:34:47.220
to the motels, he was the ultimate price negotiator, I guess, you know, he would always give them some
00:34:53.820
sob story about, you know, how times were tough for middle-class families out traveling in the 1970s
00:35:00.600
and those tough economic times and try to, to haggle them down to get the, their, their best
00:35:06.020
price that they were, would be willing to give him. Or he got them to throw in rollaway beds for
00:35:11.700
my sister and I at no extra charge. So yeah, he was very much kind of the engine of our family road
00:35:18.980
trips where my mom was much more of the steering wheel kind of trying to keep us guided in the right
00:35:23.920
direction and kind of look out for the concerns of us kids as well.
00:35:26.900
So you mentioned your dad not stopping at roadside attraction. My dad was one of those make time
00:35:31.160
guys. And I'm always like, I, even then I was like, what are we making time? Like we're going
00:35:34.860
to get there and we're not going to do anything for, I mean, it's like, why, why, what's the rush?
00:35:39.280
But anyways, every now and then he would throw us a bone and we would stop at some crazy roadside
00:35:44.320
attraction because I saw the billboard for something like the one that I was pretty excited
00:35:49.460
about was the hole in the wall, just someplace in Utah. Some guy built his house inside of
00:35:55.600
like a mountain. And it was pretty cool because the bath that was like carved into stone. It was
00:36:00.720
really neat. But like you talk about, this is another part of like the road trip economy that
00:36:06.360
built up as more and more Americans started taking to the roads, like these crazy roadside attractions.
00:36:11.540
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, you know, many private entrepreneurs saw this road travel boom going on,
00:36:18.440
saw all these motorists hitting the highways. So they came up with their own attractions to try and
00:36:23.740
entice people to get to stop over and spend some money. Among the most notable early ones were the
00:36:30.580
mystery spot in Santa Cruz, California. That was a place where, you know, supposedly the laws of
00:36:36.320
physics meant nothing. And you were led out to this, to this cabin on a, on a hillside and the ball
00:36:42.960
bearings appeared to roll uphill and people would have to stand at all these odd angles. And it looked like
00:36:50.360
they should be falling over, but they were able to, you know, to somehow maintain their balance and
00:36:55.480
stand up. And of course, all the guy had done was build a cockeyed cabin onto the side of a, of a
00:37:01.700
hillside. And there was no visible horizon for people to be able to reference. So it was all an optical
00:37:07.840
illusion, but it gained a lot of notoriety. It was featured in Life Magazine and in several television
00:37:14.120
shows and it became world famous. Another famous one was the thing in Texas Canyon, Arizona, where
00:37:21.400
there were all these billboards for hundreds of miles leading into this, not even a small town. It
00:37:27.100
was just a, you know, a roadside stop in Texas Canyon, Arizona. But these billboards would ask, you know,
00:37:32.940
what is the thing or come see the amazing thing. And, you know, I won't give away what the thing actually
00:37:41.380
was, but it was, but you know, obviously, you know, they were successful in getting a lot of families
00:37:47.780
to stop there. Down in the South, of course, they had many alligator farms trying to get you to, you
00:37:54.180
know, stop off and look at dozens of alligators and large pythons and whatnot that were kept in these
00:38:00.820
roadside farms. You also had all of these world's largest statues here in Wisconsin. You, we had the
00:38:07.640
world's largest muskie. There were multiple world's largest frying pans. I think at one point, there
00:38:13.600
were six contenders for that. There was a bunch of world's largest chairs, you know, world's largest
00:38:19.220
office chair, rocking chair, right down the line. There was even a world's largest bull weevil statue
00:38:25.460
in Enterprise, Louisiana. And of course, I think many of us have heard of the largest balls of twine,
00:38:32.040
right? And for years, for actually decades, there were two competitors for that title,
00:38:37.460
one in Darwin, Minnesota, and another in Cawker City, Kansas. And they competed back and forth for
00:38:44.020
decades for the true title holder of the world's largest ball of twine. Personally, one of my
00:38:50.720
favorites is the one that I discovered on a road trip with my family just a few years ago when we made
00:38:55.740
that classic American excursion out to Mount Rushmore. And we stopped off at the Minuteman Missile
00:39:01.820
Historic Site in South Dakota, where you can still see decommissioned Minuteman missiles in
00:39:07.480
their silos, just like they were during, you know, the Cold War of the 1970s and 80s. And I thought it
00:39:13.920
was just a fantastic museum out there. It's actually at the same exit that you get off of I-90 to go
00:39:20.340
visit the Badlands out there. But that became one of my all-time favorite roadside stops, I guess.
00:39:26.420
Another aspect of road tripping that's changed, that's no longer the case, is entertainment. Now people
00:39:33.140
have iPads, iPhones, whatever, games, you know, Nintendo Switches. But back in the day, when you were a kid
00:39:40.320
on a road trip, you had to really think about how you're going to entertain yourself for possibly eight
00:39:46.200
hours, nine hours in the car. So, I mean, tell us about the sort of the brief history of road trip
00:39:52.300
entertainment that you uncovered. Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, back then, it was much more of an
00:39:57.680
interactive experience, right? You were a family traveling together, and you had no one but each
00:40:04.660
other in order to pass the time with. And so, many families would play those great family road travel
00:40:11.240
games like license plate bingo and the alphabet game and 20 questions. One of my family's favorite
00:40:18.840
activities was to play Mad Libs, which are, you know, they're still around to this day. But my mom would also
00:40:24.680
keep something at her feet, which we affectionately came to call the game bag. And that was filled with all
00:40:32.480
sorts of games and activities like those plastic mazes where you'd have to navigate a small ball bearing, you
00:40:39.880
know, through a maze to get it to an end point. Or there'd be the magic slate writing pad where you used a
00:40:46.920
plastic stylus to write on a gray sheet of plastic. And then you could lift up that sheet and it would
00:40:54.240
erase whatever you'd drawn so that you could make a new drawing over it. Or there was Wooly Wooly,
00:41:00.060
which was a cartoon character beneath a plastic bubble. And you used a magnet to guide black metal
00:41:07.600
shavings over Wooly Wooly's face in order to create mustaches and beards. Or I'd always create an
00:41:13.820
afro on top of Wooly Wooly. We'd have those yes and no invisible ink games where you'd have these
00:41:20.340
invisible ink pens to play games of hangman or reveal mines, you know, in a minefield as you try to
00:41:29.900
navigate your ship safely through this minefield. And one of my favorite activities was one of the
00:41:35.680
first handheld electronic games. That was Mattel electronic football, which became an enormously
00:41:43.260
popular game. It was really, you know, it was, like I said, the first of the handheld electronic
00:41:48.060
games. And today, if you look at it, I mean, it's an absolutely primitive device. The game screen was
00:41:53.820
about the size of a stick of gum. You were a running back that was represented by a bright red dash.
00:42:00.700
And I think you had one other blocker that was a red dash in front of you. And you would try to
00:42:05.780
elude tacklers as you made your way towards the end zone. These tacklers were simply slightly
00:42:11.700
dimmer red dashes. So the only thing to distinguish the offensive player and the defensive player was
00:42:17.940
how bright the dash was. Well, you, you try and, you know, elude these tacklers and get to the end
00:42:23.580
zone. And as primitive as it was, it was incredibly fun, incredibly addictive. In fact, it was named one
00:42:29.620
of Time Magazine's all time 100 devices. And so I spent many hours passing time just doing that. But,
00:42:38.380
you know, most of these activities that you played in the car were very much shared experiences. And,
00:42:44.620
and that was really the thing about road travel is, you know, you had to deal with your fellow
00:42:50.420
family members for those long hours on the road, you could have fun with them, you could fight with
00:42:55.400
them. And Lord knows, we had plenty of fights in my family. But in the end, all that interaction and
00:43:00.760
all those experiences, all those discoveries that you made together, all the challenges and adversity
00:43:06.040
that you faced out on the highways together, those brought you closer together as a family.
00:43:17.500
Whoever smelt it, dealt it. Right. No. Yeah. The, the invisible link thing that brought back
00:43:22.120
some memories because I remember buying those at Stucky's along with some sort of, they always
00:43:26.540
sold like in New Mexico. It was always like some sort of like, you know, chintzy Native American,
00:43:31.520
you know, fake Native American stuff, like Indian drums that I thought were pretty cool.
00:43:39.240
And drums that you would bang on with the, you know, with the little sticks, right?
00:43:43.220
Yeah. Your dad would go crazy and tell you to stop it or he's going to turn around.
00:43:47.840
So it was family, it was very interactive at the time. You'd have to talk and interact with
00:43:52.100
your siblings. You would get in fights sometimes and then your mom would turn around and like put
00:43:57.640
some sort of barrier between you so you wouldn't like mess with each other. Yeah. Or you, you take
00:44:03.300
some tape to draw the line between, you know, siblings when one was touching the other too much
00:44:08.700
or somebody had their foot, you know, too far on the other guy's side. And, you know, especially
00:44:15.160
for me, you know, I was in the backseat with two much older teenage brothers. So I finally gave up
00:44:21.480
trying to fight for my space on the backseat entirely. And I'd either retreat to the floorboard
00:44:26.580
where I'd have to deal with that big, you know, transmission housing, the big hump, you're right
00:44:31.460
on the floor. Right. Right. It always made it impossible to get into a comfortable position
00:44:36.120
to sleep. Or my favorite position would be up on the rear window shelf, you know, where I could
00:44:41.480
spread out underneath the slanted rear window and just kind of enjoy the sunshine coming in,
00:44:47.640
of course, through the antenna that was built right into the glass.
00:44:51.100
Yeah. That wouldn't fly today. You would be, your parents would be ticketed.
00:44:54.980
No. Yeah. The times have definitely changed. But back then, I mean, I can vividly remember
00:44:59.640
being up on that rear window shelf and there'd be a highway patrol officer pulling up alongside
00:45:05.020
of us and I'd wave over at him and, you know, he'd just tip his hat in return. Either that
00:45:10.680
or I'd be in the back in the rear facing, you know, pop-up seat of our Ford Country Squire
00:45:16.700
station wagon that I think was mandatory that every family own, at least, you know, at some point
00:45:22.260
during the 1970s. And I'd be back there and I'd have my own little private fort kind of set up,
00:45:27.920
you know, and I'd have my stash of candy with my candy cigarettes. And you should have seen some of
00:45:32.800
the looks that I would get from people passing us by on the highway as they're looking over at this
00:45:37.600
eight or 10-year-old kid with a, you know, what looked to be a lucky strike sticking out of his
00:45:42.680
mouth when it was just my, you know, my little candy cigarette back there.
00:45:45.820
So in your book, you make the case that the sort of the golden age of the road trip,
00:45:51.120
of the great American road trip was the 1970s. And then after that, it started fading. What changed?
00:45:57.820
Well, it was really deregulation of the airlines in 1978 under the Carter administration that was
00:46:03.920
really the beginning of the end of the golden era of family road trips. Until then, air travel had
00:46:10.380
just been prohibitively expensive, especially for families with lots of kids. Airfares were three
00:46:16.460
to eight times the price that we would pay today. And so once the airlines were deregulated, it created
00:46:22.980
a much more competitive environment between the national carriers. You saw airfares come way down
00:46:29.060
in price. And pretty soon, families started parking their cars and wanted to take advantage of the
00:46:36.080
the convenience. And of course, the quick way to get to their family vacation destinations by getting
00:46:42.920
on airplanes. Within 10 years of deregulation of the airlines, the number of flyers in America
00:46:48.420
doubled. Today, it's triple what it was in the 1970s before deregulation. And, you know, of course,
00:46:55.780
you know, soon after deregulation, there were just, there were far more flights to far more
00:47:00.060
destinations and families wanted to take advantage of that. And that really spelled the end of the,
00:47:05.960
the golden era of the family road trip. But what do you think we're missing out by taking the plane
00:47:11.260
instead of the car to get to wherever we're going for vacation? Well, I mean, I think we've,
00:47:16.420
we've kind of lost the idea that the journey is in a way its own destination, right? We've kind of lost
00:47:22.900
some of that great opportunity that we once had to spend time together as families to interact with
00:47:29.740
each other to share discoveries, you know, even by stopping off at roadside attractions or discovering
00:47:36.980
great scenery or historic landmarks along the way that we may not have anticipated. And even some of
00:47:42.900
those occasions of overcoming adversity together, because if you suffered a mechanical breakdown on
00:47:48.980
the highways of the 1970s, I mean, families were, were kind of on their own, right? I mean, help wasn't
00:47:54.080
just a simple phone call on a cell phone away. You either had to find a way to repair the car
00:48:00.940
yourself or to hitch a ride to the next exit or find help in some way. And so I think there was
00:48:07.040
definitely a feeling back then that, that, that families were, were in it together. And all of
00:48:13.260
those things, I think kind of brought us closer. When we started getting on, on airplanes, we kind of
00:48:18.520
eliminated, eliminated that, that journey. It all became about instant gratification and getting
00:48:24.180
to that final destination as quickly as possible. So, you know, I, I lament the idea that we've kind
00:48:30.060
of left the, the journey behind. Do you still, do you try to take road trips or are you, is your
00:48:35.140
family an airplane family? No, absolutely. We still take road trips. We may not take the, the, the
00:48:41.660
lengthy trips that we took when I was growing up. I think we've stayed a little bit closer to home
00:48:47.540
for the most part, but I live in the Milwaukee area. We'll make long weekend trips, maybe four
00:48:53.340
or five days to go to St. Louis. One of our favorite recent discoveries has been the Henry
00:48:58.100
Ford museum in Detroit. And so we've gone there multiple times, but I've also made up for some
00:49:05.020
lost time. Now, when I was growing up, my dad was an avid golfer. So the point of many of our family
00:49:10.500
road trips was to get my father out of the Wisconsin winter and down to a warm, sunny golf course in the
00:49:16.800
south as fast as humanly possible. So we would particularly travel during the winter months
00:49:23.200
over Christmas break and spring break. And we would travel to the destinations predominantly along
00:49:28.320
the Gulf coast, maybe in the new Orleans area, the Florida panhandle, but almost always east of the
00:49:34.220
Mississippi river. So when my wife and kids and I do take road trips these days, it's predominantly to
00:49:41.400
the west. We've been out to Yellowstone park to Mount Rushmore, and we've just had some fantastic road
00:49:47.900
trip experiences. So I think it is possible to, to keep those, those road trips alive. And, and we do
00:49:54.200
very much make those road trips shared experiences and spend lots of quality time talking to each other
00:50:01.360
and dealing with each other and, and, you know, just recreating those magical experiences that I so
00:50:07.840
fondly remember from when I traveled the highways of the 1970s with my own parents and siblings.
00:50:13.700
And one thing I've noticed, I actually enjoy, there was a time where like I preferred flying,
00:50:18.460
but I, since I guess 9-11 and sort of the uptick in security and it's just like driving is just,
00:50:26.100
I feel so nice. I feel like I'm in charge, right? When you, when you go to the airport,
00:50:30.080
as soon as you enter the airport, like you feel like I am no longer, I no longer have any autonomy.
00:50:34.620
I'm just going to do whatever I have to do to get on this plane. But like, when you get in the car,
00:50:39.480
like no one knows where you're at. You can pull off at a, you know, a convenience store and take
00:50:45.580
your time, get out, wander around, get back in. Like there's no, and it just, it feels so good.
00:50:51.780
I don't know something about the freedom of the open road. It feels amazing.
00:50:55.260
And there is significant evidence that millennials and especially young millennial parents
00:50:59.840
are coming back to road trips in vast numbers. I saw a recent study that said in 2016, that 39%
00:51:07.760
of all family vacations were taken by road trip. And that was up 16% over just the previous year.
00:51:14.980
I think it's a sign, um, millennials in particular and, and, uh, people as a whole are getting fed up
00:51:21.780
with air travel. Obviously airfares have gone up in price. There's many more unexpected delays
00:51:27.900
and cancellations. You're shoehorned into these, you know, impossibly small seats. You can't bring
00:51:33.600
your own drinks with you into the airport. Uh, so I think people are becoming disenchanted with
00:51:39.940
air travel and they're looking for alternatives and they're turning back to road travel for the,
00:51:44.640
for the specific reasons that you mentioned that you can leave when you can, when you want,
00:51:49.160
you can stop when and where you want and for how long you want. So it, you know, it's my hope that
00:51:55.120
as people are rediscovering the practical benefits of road travel, we're also coming back to the idea
00:52:01.680
of the road trip as a shared experience that can bring us all closer and, uh, can really be the
00:52:08.980
source for creating, uh, many wonderful memories together as a family. Well, Rich, is there someplace
00:52:13.740
people can go to learn more about the book? Uh, yeah, absolutely. You can pick up the book at,
00:52:18.020
uh, on amazon.com Barnes and Noble. Uh, of course, it's always a great idea that we get out and support
00:52:23.500
those independent booksellers. You can come and visit me on my website at richardretterights.com
00:52:29.680
or we also have lots of interesting posts and discussions going on over at my Facebook page,
00:52:35.320
which is Richard Retay, King of the Road Trip. Well, Richard, thanks so much. This has been
00:52:39.460
really interesting and a lot of fun too. Thank you so much for having me on, Brett. I had fun.
00:52:43.360
I hope your listeners did too. My guest today was Richard, the author of the book,
00:52:46.940
Don't Make Me Pull Over. It's available on amazon.com. Pick it up. It's a great vacation read.
00:52:51.160
And if you want to find out more information about the book, check out our show notes at
00:52:54.760
aom.is slash don't make me pull over. We're going to find links to resources. We're going to delve
00:52:58.920
deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more
00:53:15.440
manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if
00:53:19.400
you enjoy the show, you've gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to
00:53:22.580
give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.
00:53:26.200
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something
00:53:29.140
out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling