I’m ready to go on a road trip after reading Rolando Pujol’s The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Amercana. It’s filled with colorful photos and equally colorful descriptions of the signs, locations, and people who built businesses across the United States. If you’ve ever noticed old signs, motels, and stores as you traveled; if you’re at all nostalgic for the history of the country as displayed on the roads, you might enjoy this book.
Pujol breaks the book into regions from the Northeast and New England to the Pacific Northwest and California. Then, he breaks chapters down further, “Roadside Quirks, Roadside Eats, Mainstays of Main Street, On with the Show, The Inn Crowd, Sweet Stops, and Cheers!” Since my family traveled when I was young, and I lived in four states and D.C., I was eager to look for some of the places I remember. Even so, I enjoyed the stories behind places I’ve never been, and appreciated Pujol’s enthusiasm for signs, stores, and history.
Now, for my personal enjoyment, I’ve been to Katz’s Delicatessen in Manhattan, which was already famous before they filmed the deli scene in “When Harry Met Sally”. Mom and I have been to Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida, a gravity hill where you can put your car in neutral and become part of an optical illusion. My favorite one, where I’ve been multiple times, is The Sugar Bowl in Scottsdale, Arizona. That falls under “Sweet Stop”. The ice cream parlor was opened in 1958. Of course, I’ve been to an ice cream parlor multiple times. In fact, crime fiction author Rebecca Cantrell and I once vowed to eat our way through the menu. If you remember the comic strip “Family Circle”, Bil Keane sometimes featured The Sugar Bowl, and his cartoons appear on the menu, and signed cartoons are on the wall.
The book will bring back your own memories of trips. On our family’s first camping trip in the 1960s, we went to Santa’s Village in Jefferson, New Hampshire. It was founded in 1953, so we must have been there around 1967 or 1968. For years, I had a ring that we bought there, made in the Blacksmith shop. It’s greatly expanded as an amusement park, but it’s still in operation.
My hometown has an ice cream shop drive-in that would fit with Pujol’s historic signs. It’s called the Pied Piper. It’s operated by only the third family since it opened in 1952, and the signs for the Pied Piper would interest those who enjoy historic signs on long-running businesses.
I guess my favorite, though, would be Skeeter’s in Wytheville, Virginia. Opened in 1925, it’s one of Virginia’s oldest continuously operating restaurants, home of the “Skeeter-dog”. When we were there in 2018, it was in danger of shutting down. But, when I checked their website, it said 2025, so it made it through COVID.
I couldn’t resist sharing my photos from our 2018 trip to Skeeter’s. I think the diner would fit in great in the next edition of The Great American Retro Road Trip. What about you? Do you have memories of a retro diner, sign or shop that would fit in the book?
Rolando Pujol is “The Retrologist” on Instagram and Substack.
The Great American Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana by Rolando Pujol. Hachette Book Group, 2025. 320p.
FTC Full Disclosure – Library book
Yes – The Sugar Bowl! My sister lives in Scottsdale and we’ve been there several times. Yum!
Basically, we’ve driven the West Coast from San Diego to Portland, Oregon and stopped at places like Pea Soup Andersen’s in Buellton (tough, because Jackie hates the smell of pea soup), the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo and Hearst Castle in San Simeon. On the East Coast we’ve driven from Portland, Maine (well, a little north of there) to Key West (a favorite). Most of the rest of the places we’ve been are individual places we’ve flown to rather than drive, though we’ve driven from New York to Niagara Falls (my favorite “sight”) and Toronto, as well as Raleigh and Asheville.
I will definitely look out for this one. It sounds like a good companion to Bill Bryson’s THE LOST CONTINENT: TRAVELS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA.
I’d love to see that Lake Wales thing…
Jeff, I knew you and Jackie traveled so I wondered if you’d like the book. One of my favorite places when I worked on Captiva was the Bubble Room. You should look it up, and go to their website. There’s nothing like it. It’s kitschy from the outside to the 3000 pieces of memorabilia inside. But, their enormous slices of cake are to die for!
I loved Key West when I visited. I have to admit though that I spent an hour there one day sitting on the pavement with a cat.
The worst part of Key West is getting there, with the last 30-35 miles being one way in each direction. But driving over the Seven Mile Bridge with the Atlantic on one side and the Gulf on the other is truly amazing.
You’re so right. That drive is gorgeous. Then the last part is long.
Just looked it up, and The Bubble Room just reopened on July 14, nearly three years after the hurricane (one of three!).
I wondered how bad it was, but thought it was open from their website.
In Brooklyn, we had Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor, home of the famous Kitchen Sink. Apparently, there is one Jahn’s still open, in Jackson Heights, Queens. We always went to the one in Sheepshead Bay or Flatbush.
Jeff, he mentioned the original Junior’s, and I know you said you go to that one.
I would love that book, my father took us on so many road trips and James and I have been on them too. One time, we followed a big section of Route 66 and the diner that we ate at was time travel. It was so much fun.
I’m ready to hit the road right now, Carol, after reading this book. I’m glad you have road trip memories!
I have a purchased request at the library for this. They bought it so I’m just waiting for it to come in
It’s so much fun, Sandy!
Islay’s ice cream. May have sold sandwiches too although we never had. Best sugar wafer cookies that had all three flavors on one. Original Klondike bars and one of a kind rainbow ice cream.
Isn’t it fun to look back and remember, Carol Jeanne? Nostalgia.