Before I knew what education was, Roadside America was already offering up its wisdom to me.
I grew up in the US Deep South states of Georgia, Louisiana, and Arkansas. With everyone I loved in Georgia and my small family moving between the other two states for most of my elementary school years, we drove back “home” for every big holiday and summer break.
The landscape of this region never met a roadside gimmick it didn’t love.
A big chicken beckoned us as its eyes spun around and its beak clucked. Giant peaches, oranges, and peanuts told us exactly where to stop for a snack. See Rock City on the red rooftops of barns became a direct commandment no civilized Southerner could ignore.
These attractions were the wallpaper of getting somewhere.
But the first roadside attraction I remember consciously noticing wasn’t even on the road. It was the dinosaur from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. We didn’t visit that dinosaur, but I do recall begging my parents to stop so I could see an enormous purple dino on one of our excursions. As I walked around it, I remember thinking that some artist had made it for no reason other than to have it admired by travelers eager to get somewhere else.
That, in retrospect, was my first lesson.
Someone creating an homage to something they loved just so they could share it with the world. Knowing it would most likely be forgotten once the wheels were rolling again.
Roadside Attractions: History or Mythology?
My second lesson came later, in my flight attendant years.
I started flying for a living, and when I did stop, I’d be in some unknown place with time to kill, so I’d visit local attractions. It was during those short breaks that I realized every region has its own mythology.
Roadside attractions just help make that mythology become real.
Sure, you can read a history of a place. You can eat its food and talk to its people. But how do you really learn about a location? Well, if a city’s got a UFO museum or a hospital for Cabbage Patch Kids, that can explain a lot. These places tell you what people in certain locales find worth preserving.
You’ll gain insight into what the local color thinks:
Is funny
Is sacred
Is valuable enough to spend money on
And that can tell an extraordinary story.
Roadside Americana is more than folk art with a gift shop. It’s the “id” of a region—that primal unconscious part of us turned into a 3D representation. Funky and photographable.
I started seeking out these weird art installations the way some people seek out churches or famous tourist destinations. I made a mental list of every last one, adding to it each time I landed somewhere new. It became my framework for getting to know a culture.
Show me a city’s roadside attractions, and I’ll tell you something true about that place.
The Thing in the Desert
But the one that changed everything was THE THING.
This was before my flying days, when I still wasn’t sure who I wanted to be or where I wanted to live.
Maybe you’ve seen the signs if you’ve ever driven along Interstate 10.
They stretch from El Paso, Texas, to Tucson, Arizona, with just the words THE THING? painted in red or blue on a yellow billboard. This gets repeated like a mantra until you either pull off or die of curiosity. I had driven past these signs on several roadtrips, always too eager to reach my destination to stop.
The last time I drove back from Georgia to Phoenix, I made a decision.
I would stop.
I was in my mid-thirties. A mid-point serving me an invoice for so many deferred decisions. Like postponing motherhood. I had gone back to Georgia with the hope of reclaiming something. A sense of home, perhaps, or the version of myself I’d long left behind. In the end, the return didn’t work out. The Georgia red clay might have been stuck to my shoes again, but the feet in those shoes were attached to someone different. And those feet were pointed toward a destination I had discovered in Phoenix, Arizona.
When the signs for The Thing started to appear, I was ready to face them this time. I paid my two dollars and walked in. I followed the yellow footprints through the corrugated metal tunnels past the Model T and the Rolls Royce built for a maharajah, past the torture devices and the displays of dubious provenance, until I got to The Thing itself.
A mummified mother and child, encased in glass.
Real?
Fake?
Who knows?
Was that even the point?
The mother is curled around the child in a protective posture.
I stood there longer than I intended to. I was in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, having paid two dollars to see something that might be papier-mâché, and I was holding back tears.
I don’t know exactly what I thought I was grieving. The version of my life I hadn’t gotten to live yet. The sense that time was doing something irreversible while I drove back and forth across the country, looking for my place to belong.
The Thing didn’t give me any answers. Instead, it had me questioning everything. Why this macabre tableau of a mother and child? And why now?
Once back in Phoenix, I became a flight attendant, met my husband, and had my daughter at forty.
I don’t think The Thing was the cause of those decisions. I’m into mysticism, but not from roadside mummies. But I do think about how many times I had driven past the exit, too busy and too certain of my destination to stop.
There is mystery in the road not taken, isn’t there?
Exploring Today
Those past experiences as a single woman inspired me to share Roadside Americana with my family today.
When we go, we don’t hesitate to check out the most unusual and unlikely spots to stop for a break. We’ve taken Aurora to the EXPEDITION: BIGFOOT! The Sasquatch Museum in Cherry Log, Georgia. She acquired her favorite stuffed animal, a green alien, at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. She’s been to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, to see everything Elvis. We’ve stopped at the Lodge in Wakulla Springs, Florida, to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
What I’m trying to teach her with these trips is harder to pinpoint than any lesson in a curriculum. Sure, it’s geography, history, and mythology. But it’s also something unnamed. It’s the awareness that the world is more visceral and alive than it seems when you blaze through it at 70 MPH on the highway and never slow down to really look.
It’s taking the time to see things.
To pay attention to the odd and unusual just for the heck of it.
The roadside was always a curriculum. I just had to get lost enough to notice.
❦ If The Narrative Nest benefits you as a home educator, but you aren’t ready for a paid subscription, consider making a small donation to help me continue my work ❦
Roadside Attraction List
Here are some of the roadside attractions we’ve explored:
The Thing — Benson, AZ
International UFO Museum — Roswell, NM
BabyLand General Hospital — Cleveland, GA
Unclaimed Baggage Center — Scottsboro, AL
Biosphere 2 — Oracle, AZ
Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch — Picacho, AZ
Bird Cage Theater Museum & OK Corral — Tombstone, AZ
Rock City — Lookout Mountain, GA
Expedition Bigfoot, the Sasquatch Museum — Cherry Log, GA
Mermaids of Weeki Wachee — Weeki Wachee, FL
Fountain of Youth — Saint Augustine, FL
National Museum of Funeral History — Houston, TX
Santa Claus House and Giant Santa — North Pole, AK
Crater of Diamonds — Murfreesboro, AR
The Big Chicken — Marietta, GA
Fort Raleigh (The Lost Colony) — Manteo, NC
The Lodge at Wakulla Springs — Crawfordville, FL
The Winchester Mystery House — San Jose, CA
The Hoover Dam Statues — Boulder City, NV
The Fremont Troll — Seattle, WA
Where are you traveling this summer?
I’d love to know if you are incorporating roadside attractions into your trip. And if so, what are these places teaching you and your children about travel, history, and mythology? What are you noticing?
Starting next week, we’ll take a closer look at specific roadside attractions, and I’ll detail how I use them to teach about an area and its history.
First up: Ponce De Leon’s The Fountain of Youth