by Gary Bennett
This article appears in Frederick News-Post’s “72 Hours” entertainment insert, June 7, 2023.
“You do want sweet tea, right sugah?” the slightly overweight, middle-aged waitress drawled as I sunk into my comfy booth at Stuckey’s just off Interstate 59 in southern Alabama. “Oh yes, sweet tea would be great”, I said, as she scribbled in het ticket book. “That’s a good thing, sugah,” Doris said, “because you’re in the South now and that’s all we got.” I overlooked the logic of that statement much as you would overlook your mom asking you to wear clean shorts in the car because you never know when you’ll be in an accident. It might not make sense, but she means well.
Ah yes, Doris’s sweetness reminded me there’s nothing like a good road trip.
Once the bastion of the middle class, Americans of all stripes are now loading up the family car for getaways far and wide. According to U.S. Travel Association, Americans logged 1.8 billion person‐trips of 50 miles a more with an overnight stay for leisure purposes in 2018. That means that, on average, every man, woman, and child in the U.S. took five such leisure trips in 2018.
There used to be a bit of a stigma attached to traveling long distances by car, especially if you fancied yourself upwardly mobile with a little bit of money in the bank and are traveling more than a few hundred miles. After all, why wouldn’t you fly? Saves a lot of time, right? Well, sort of. More on that in a minute. Kind of glamorous, right? Uh, no.
I’m sorry to confirm what you already know in your heart about air travel: there is nothing glamorous about it, and it comes with monumental downsides. First, there’s the expense. Second, the inconvenience. Third, the angst of finding the best deal. Then throw in all the idle time waiting in lines, constant delays, surly agents, glum and germy strangers, crowded conditions, random cancellations, weather problems, terrorist threats, seats designed by Marquis de Sade worshipers, bad food, and nothing being in control, and I’m not sure why anyone flies who doesn’t have to. As for saving time, once you factor in getting to the airport, all the waiting and delays, transfers, and getting a rental car and driving to your final destination, the time savings gap closes up faster than a liquor store on Christmas Eve.
I’m here to witness that if God intended us to fly everywhere, he wouldn’t have created the magnificent U.S. Interstate Highway System, or more precisely, provided the wherewithal for humans to create it. Our interstate system efficiently gets us into every nook and cranny of our great country with very little planning needed. It puts a map of the human body’s circulation system to shame.
If you have the notion and time, you can start off early tomorrow morning from Frederick and be in sunny Tampa, Florida, by night fall. I’ve done that myself many times. Our country is just the right size for such escapades – neither too large nor too small. I envy all those adventurous souls who claim to have driven coast to coast. That’s not such a big deal in, say, Croatia.
My wife Ellen and I wanted to do something special for New Year’s Eve last year, so we made plans to drive 2,200 miles round-trip from Frederick to New Orleans. What better place to solemnly celebrate the beginning of the new year than New Orleans, right?
We could have flown, sure, but didn’t even consider it. Okay, I’m sure Ellen did. After all, I’m not the world’s best driver, as she will attest. But in my defense, I am cheerful and quite enthusiastic. The call of the open road and chance for adventure is just too great for me to pass up. And to my wife’s lasting credit, she is usually willing to overlook the small stuff with me, much as you would a child.
Now, you can’t just head off without a plan. I have several “rules of the road” that I’ve found are necessary in order to make the most of one’s road trip and to bring order to what can be a chaotic endeavor. I am happy to share them here.
My first driving rule is fairly minor but unassailable: the driver controls the music. This may seem unfair (and maybe it is because I drive most of the way) but consider the fact that I, like many drivers, depend on pounding rock music to help propel me down the road. If this were not so, there would be no such things as road trip songs. Further, I believe it has been scientifically proven the nerves in our ears are directly connected to our gas pedal foot.
Why, Sirius XM even has a channel devoted to road trip music. All-time favorites like Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild and Magic Carpet Ride and Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run are guaranteed to keep you moving along at a clip just under speeding ticket level. It helps that my wife enjoys the same music I do. I think. Anyway, I’m not a total despot. All Ellen has to do is start bobbing away to a song she likes and I will immediately vacate my rule on a temporary basis and stick with that song for the duration. Bruce Hornsby songs, inexplicably, are a particular favorite of hers.
My second driving rule allows the passenger to control the in-car temperature and to decide when and where to stop. Unless a really good song comes on.
You may think that driving long distances is excruciatingly boring. Hah! (I mean, yes, you’re right – please stay off the roads.) But, my third driving rule helps overcome the boredom: You must always consider the people who live and work in the towns and cities you pass by and get to know a few. How do they live? What do they care about?
Fortunately, the need for gas, food, and shall we say “rest” provide ample opportunity to converse with the locals. That’s how I’ve made so many temporary friends over the years – mostly waitresses, convenience store clerks, and the occasional police officer – who are happy to share how they live, work, and what’s going on in town that week.
Take Crystal, our waitress at a New York-style deli in Roanoke, Virginia.
Imagine my surprise when I walked up to the cash register to pay our lunch bill with my credit card, as I always do, but was matter-of-factly informed by Crystal, “We don’t take credit cards—work of the devil. Cash or check only, sweetie.” She displayed no hint of sorrow or embarrassment and was more than happy to point me to the bar next door to access an ATM. “Happens every day,” she sighed while directing me outside. I think the irony was lost on her that she was sending me to a bar to avoid the hellfire of credit, but it wasn’t my job to point that out. I could have just left without paying, but flustered, I left her my credit card anyway to ensure my return.
Crystal was such a trusting soul, she seemed surprised I would do such a thing. But I wasn’t surprised. I’ve always found people in the South to be more trusting than their Northern counterparts. Maybe it’s the slower pace of life or maybe it’s because they are so nice. You’d feel really bad if you cross them, so you don’t.
My fourth driving rule is to always allow enough time to see a few local landmarks along the way. I’m a sucker for these. My two favorite landmarks on this particular trip were the Chattanooga Choo Choo in well, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Main Street in the sister cities of Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia.
In the case of the sisters, not only are they two next-door cities with coincidentally the same name, but you can stand on Main Street and straddle two states at once! I took advantage of this opportunity, of course. Since I’m 6’2” with long legs, I was able to stand with one foot in Tennessee and one in Virginia. People must do this all the time, so I didn’t feel bad about briefly stopping traffic.
Still, as nice as Southerners typically are, some grew impatient and blew their horns. This attracted the attention of a stern-looking deputy sheriff. When I saw him coming, I ran to the car. The deputy stopped to give me some good advice. “Son, you can’t block traffic like this. Pick one town or the other and get the hell on the sidewalk.”
Bemused, he told me about another place I could go. Literally, not figuratively. He must have researched this to help people like me. “You know, out West, there’s a place where four states come together – Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. They call it the Four Corners, and you can put your arms and legs in all four at once! And better yet, it’s out in the middle of nowhere and far away from here.”
I got the feeling he had imparted this wisdom before.
My fifth driving rule is to always make a bad joke to a total stranger when you can. Makes time go faster. In Chattanooga I stopped at a 7-11 to ask the nice attendant where I could find the famous Chattanooga Choo Choo. On the way in, we saw signs promising it was close by. The attendant, Sidney, seemed ready and willing to help because he’d obviously been asked this question before. But as luck would have it, I had already spotted a cat lounging in the sun on the front sidewalk, and I was ready.
I strolled up to Sidney, pointed, and musically asked “Pardon me, sir, is that the cat that chewed my shoe shoe?”
I laughed loudly. My wife rolled her eyes and moved slowly away. I was pleased with myself, nonetheless. Even though my singing of the old song was spot on, Sidney gave me that classical cocked head, furrowed eyebrow “what-are-you-talking-about” look. I suppose you have to be of a certain age to get that one, and he wasn’t and didn’t.
There was one sign on the way to New Orleans, though, that particularly caught my eye and rivaled any South of the Border sign. It nearly caused me to swerve onto the shoulder and back up a couple hundred feet to snap a picture. Sadly, I didn’t – Ellen has a better sense of road etiquette than me. Somewhere in rural Tennessee an official looking state-sanctioned sign warns: Rest Stop Ahead, No Oversize Loads
My final driving rule is to pay attention to the signs. You never know when you’ll be rewarded with a nugget of golden wisdom. Aliens landing on one of our interstate highways would surely think “Crazy Eddy” is a very important person and that a “Gentleman’s Lounge” is the seat of power.
I’ll be the first to admit, however, that the signs on the way to New Orleans pale in comparison to the signs on the way to Florida on I-95. Sure, there was “Stay Off Tracks—Trains” and ‘Get Lunch, Gas, and Worms Here” in rural Mississippi. But I-95 in South Carolina has the venerable tourist trap South of the Border. It is a tour de force of politically incorrect creative signage like “Roads’ Scholar,” “No Monkey Business, Joost Yankee Panky” and “Give Pedro the Business.” But the very best one features their intrepid mascot Pedro who assures us that “You’ve Never Sausage a Place; You’re Always a Weiner at Pedro’s” complete with an image of a very large pork product representing their iffy lunch offerings.
There was a sign on the way to New Orleans, though, that particularly caught my eye and rivaled any South of the Border sign. It nearly caused me to swerve onto the shoulder and back up a couple hundred feet to snap a picture. Sadly, I didn’t. Somewhere in rural Tennessee, an official looking state-sanctioned sign warns: Rest Stop Ahead, No Oversize Loads
Now maybe it is just the way my mind works, but that hardly seems fair when every other exit features a Cracker Barrell, Stuckey’s, or Hardees. Even though I did qualify to stop, I indignantly decided to pass this one by.
