As Tam predicted when I bought the book two and a half years ago, I enjoyed this collection of roadside attractions, cut-rate museums, and silly tourist traps you find on the edges of US and state highways.
It’s interesting to read about the obsessions people of previous generations have had, with things from nuts to, well, other things and how they tried to cash in on car-mad America in the middle of the 20th century. Sadly, the things were dying when the book was written almost 20 years ago. You know most of the colorful characters depicted within and their creations are dead now, gone but for this book and memories sandwiched between the sense of boredom on long trips.
My total, by the way? I’ve been to one, the old Noah’s Ark restaurant in St. Charles. Interesting tidbits about it: I was there when I was in middle school since it was where the Republican Pachyderm meetings were held, and the parking lot where I met my wife in person for the first time is right across Fifth Street from where it stood. She remembers it was still there when we met, but a new interchange for Interstate 70 spelled its doom in the early part of the 21st century.
