Retro Roadtrips, Brimming with Americana

And welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer.

It is road trip season, and my next guest has a road trip that will drive you straight into the past in the most delightful way.

His name is Rolando Pujol, and he has written the Great American Retro Road Trip.

It's a.

A celebration of roadside Americana.

Hey, Rolando.

So nice to speak with you and so fun to read this book.

Hey, Pauline.

Good to meet you.

Real pleasure and an honor to be on this podcast.

I can't tell you how many Fromer's books I've read over the years or have accompanied me on trips.

So it's really neat to be here.

Well, I think people, if they have your book and our book next to one another in the car, they will be set.

And it also seemed like a good time for this interview because it is the hundredth anniversary of the motel.

Tell us a little bit about the history of the motel, and I'd love to hear what your favorite retro motels are.

Okay, those are all great questions.

So we're about to encounter a number of big anniversaries in the next couple of years.

We've got the motel in 20, 25, 100 years, and of course, next year, Route 66, which is intrinsically connected with the motel as well, and the rise of motor courts in the car and all of that.

But the motel itself has a funny little history.

It sort of sprung out of a need, like so much of the roadside architecture that's in my book.

It sprung out of the need and an opportunity presented by the widespread use of the car.

They're hopping into their Model Ts and.

And they're going out there.

And these are adventurous people, because if you're a motor car tourist in the early 20s or late teens, I mean, you're really.

You're not dealing with a lot of paved roads.

You're dealing with a lot of complicated travel.

And researching this appearance, I. I found this photo on the Library of Congress site of a.

Of a, I believe, like a Model T or some car like that on the very edge of a rocky road on the precipice.

And there's this one guy behind the wheel there.

And you just know it's a certain kind of person that undertakes this.

So these were very, very hardy tourists and adventurers who wanted to get a taste for the America that they could not experience by taking a train and paying all that money and then staying in a fancy hotel.

In downtown Flagstaff or wherever.

No, they wanted to see America.

And the only way they could get there was with these cars.

And they were happy to pitch a tent.

That, of course, came with problems.

And so eventually these.

These auto camps emerged that were a step above simply, you know, sleeping in your backseat of your car or in a little tent right next to your car.

And by 19, by the mid-20s, there was clearly an opportunity for something more sophisticated.

You were starting to see cabins emerge in cabin communities where you could at least stay inside and kind of a glorified lean to, but at least you were inside and protected from the elements.

He's thinking about creating a.

Not just one, but a chain of what they begin to call motels, which is a portmanteau of the word motor car and hotel, A motel.

And of course, that fits more nicely on a neon sign than motor, hotel or whatever else.

So I.

Now that we're having this conversation, I'm thinking this is a great day to be in San Luis Obispo.

That is where the Milestone Motor Inn, this motel opens.

And eventually it is called the Motel Inn, and it is heralded as the very first motel.

What makes it a motel?

Well, you know, those cabins are no longer cabins, per se.

Now you're starting to see a situation where there are rooms, you know, and people can actually stay in a place with running water.

You are greeted when you arrive by a bellhop who makes sure that you are taken care of.

You have a place to park your car.

This particular motel came with the garages, which is kind of cool.

Those.

Those eventually went away, and you can have this whole wonderful experience.

So some of the comforts of a hotel, but also the practicality of being right by the highway, staying in a safe room with running water and electricity.

These rooms came with radios and even telephones, although I can't imagine making a telephone call in those days.

The toll charges on that would have been crazy.

But whatever, suddenly you have an experience, and it wasn't that expensive.

$50 to $3 at the very beginning for a night in one of these places.

So.

So versus the traditional idea of planning a whole trip and staying at a hotel for a week and spending all this money here.

You can come for the night and you have a safe place to stay.

Your car is taken care of, you're taken care of, and you're on your way.

And so that very first one was in San Luis Obispo.

Remnants of that motor inn still exist.

And they own the one, the complex and what's left of it.

Most of it has been demolished, but there is still a wall left from portion of the lodging area.

And there's also the main office area with its Spanish tower, a bell tower.

You can actually still go to San Luis Obispo and see the traces of what was the very first motel, which I think is very cool.

Hyneman's vision of a.

Of a chain under his ownership along the west coast did not materialize.

He was thinking of a motel every about 150 or so miles, which was about what you could hope to get in a day's travel back then, given the state of roads and cars and that era.

And.

But that wasn't to be.

But the motel idea was out there.

The story goes that he tried to trademark the motel copyright the concept, was not able to.

And soon there were many, many imitators, motor courts and motels that were beginning to prop up all around the country.

And to me, what made the later iterations, but not much later iterations, so unique were they.

The fact that they weren't unique, they were standardized.

And so you knew if you were going to a Howard Johnson's, if you were going to a Holiday Inn, you would get the same amenities.

The room would be clean, it would be a certain look.

And back then, standardization was very sexy, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Technology, science, organization, all of this is highly prized in society.

And people want reliable experiences when they're on the road already by this point, by the 50s, the dawn of the Howard Johnson's, the motel portion anyway.

And the Holiday Inns motels have been around at this point for 20, 30 years.

And even by then, they're already starting to get an unsavory reputation, right?

Their Open design, which was a virtue in the very beginning, becomes a problem.

You can now sort of like anyone can go in and out.

You can avoid having to deal with the front desk.

You're not protected by the interior hallway.

It's exposed.

And unseemly.

Things begin to happen at motels.

And so these entrepreneurs emerge by the 50s that have the answers for Americans.

And Holiday Inn, with its beautiful, stunning, great sign, that gorgeous, massive neon sign that became the symbol of the chain and was widely imitated all around the country, you know, emerges.

And Howard Johnson's two becomes a place where you can not only go and enjoy a safe place to stay at night, but you also have a very, very fine restaurant as well.

In fact, it began as a.

So it's funny how you see that evolution from auto camps to motels to then these.

These chains, all in the course of about 30 years.

And so I gotta ask you, if you could only go to one motel in the United States this year, what has the best retro spirit?

Okay, There are some real competitors for this, for this title.

You know, like the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari is along Route 66 in New Mexico, is a treasure and beautifully maintained.

There are so many of these that I'm a big fan of, and many of them have been sort of upscaled as boutique motels.

So they're a little nicer than they would have been back in the day.

But that said, if I have to choose one, it's got to be the Madonna Inn.

We're back in San Luis Obispo, midway between San Francisco and LA and the wonderful fantasy land created by Alex and Phyllis Madonna.

You've never been to the Madonna Inn, and I think listeners of your.

Of your show may have.

I certainly suspect they may know of it.

But if they haven't had the experience, no amount of writing or talking or examining of photos or videos or influencer videos will do it justice.

You must go, of course.

The sign is absolutely stunning.

But once we get beyond that, the public spaces are something to behold.

You've got this dining room that's a sea of pink leather banquettes.

Even the bathrooms are extraordinary.

There is.

In the men's room, if you are not a man, you can sort of like, ask for permission or say, hey, is it safe?

You should go inside because there's a waterfall urinal.

So the public.

I went in.

You made him.

You're crazy looking.

You gotta.

You just gotta do it.

You gotta go in incoming, you know, and.

But the rooms are the big show there.

There's 110 of them and they each have like, different themes.

I've stayed in a couple.

I've never stayed in the.

The infamous.

The caveman room, which is something out of prehistoric history.

There was once actually a room that was based on the Flintstones that got them into trouble with Hanna Barbera.

And that was.

They had to remove the Flintstones imagery from the room.

But each room has a distinction, design and look and feel.

And the Madonna's put real tremendous amount of effort into making sure that rooms didn't repeat that each one was unique.

And when you're staying there, you have the pleasure of being in your own room, but you're trying to catch a look at the other rooms as well.

And in the morning, if you see the.

The.

The cleaning staff at work, you're like, hey, do you mind if I can take a peek?

You also use one of the first things in your book, and I should say this is a book that is filled with photos that has histories of many of the places it talks about in all of the states.

You give one entire chapter to California just because it has so much retro.

And when you say retro, you mean 30s through what era?

Yeah, it's a good question because, you know, retro.

The more appropriate word might be vintage because retro tends to be a modern distillation of something that has the vibe of the past.

But retrologist and retro sounds a lot better than vintageologist or.

Or whatever.

But to me, yes, I think most of the places in the book, earliest ones are from the 20s and 30s, and they continue right on up until, I would say the, The.

The old.

The newer ones are probably 70s and 80s, although I celebrate places that are.

That that were built yesterday if they have a retro spirit or have a roadside Americana sensibility to them.

And there are places in the book that were constructed just in the past decade that have that.

That vibe and understand that vernacular and those marketing techniques that made these places so special at mid century.

And they're doing it again and they're enjoying great success.

Not to go on a bit of a detour here, but Buc EE's I think, is an extraordinary example of.

It's a.

You know, these convenience store gas stations that you'll find that are spreading.

They began in Texas in the 80s and they've been spreading throughout the country, mostly on the east coast, but that they will.

You'll see them, I'm sure, farther west and also in the south central area for sure.

And they use a lot of the same marketing techniques as classic roadside attractions like Wall Drug or South of the Border, building anticipation through a network of billboards along the highway so that when you finally get there, you just have to pull over.

You have no choice.

You want to see that cute little character.

You can gas up, use clean bathrooms, pick up good food.

It's, it's really a very interesting thing and it's a fairly novel concept.

Well, it sounds like they took the formula created by Wall Drug.

Wall Drug.

Tell about the folks moving there at the height of the depression and what they needed to do and how they did it.

It's so interesting, it was almost an act of madness.

Imagine taking your young family, Ted Husted and his wife and little Billy their son, and they buy this dusty old drugstore in Wall, South Dakota and there's not much in the town.

And their family and friends are trying to dissuade them from making this potentially family and life destroying decision, but they decide they want to, they want to make a go of it, they want to give it a shot.

And they give themselves, you know, five years to see whether they can.

They pull this off.

And his wife comes up with the idea of putting a sign by the nearby highway where they can hear cars sort of whizzing by a sign that promises free ice water.

Free ice water.

You know, if you just pull over at Wall Drug and they put that sign out there and the cars start pulling over right away, the demand is almost immediate.

And of course people aren't just going to stop there for the ice water.

If they have, they're going to pick up food, they're going to have ice cream, they're going to pick up a prescription or something.

And so they begin to build a business, an empire of sorts, a roadside empire there in the little town of Wall.

But it was all, it all began by simply a clever idea of marketing, which was not that clever per se.

It was a clever application of an idea that already existed.

Burma Shave, of course, had done even before that had been using roadside signage with sequential signs that told a little story, encouraging people to pick up this now obscure brand of shaving cream.

You know, there were other companies, Mail Pouch Tobacco, that they weren't using signs, but they were using the Sides of barns that were visible from roads to.

To attract interest in their product.

So it was a smart application of an idea that was out there, brilliantly executed.

They assumed these signs were going up on either side of the road.

I first encountered Wall Drug on a road trip to Mount Rushmore, which was part of the success of this place.

It was coming up at a time that Mount Rushmore was being carved, but nevertheless.

And of course the badlands were near there as well.

But.

But when I first began to see these billboards, I was instantly hooked and pulling over and taking pictures of them.

And when I finally got there, I must say I never had a more delicious glass of ice water.

So, I mean, this kind of marketing really, really works.

And you see different examples of this all throughout the country.

Yeah, yeah.

In the very front of the book you introduce the concept of roadside giants.

Yes.

What are roadside giants?

And give us some good examples of them.

Well, a number of them.

There's like different, I suppose, categories of this.

Let's talk about the giants themselves.

The big.

They're known as different things as giant men or muffler men.

And they have different iterations and different guises.

You know, they come, they come in the form.

There's.

There are male and female versions as well.

And they were manufactured by a company, now defunct company in Venice, California, known as International Fiberglass.

Made of fiberglass.

And the reason that most people call them muffler men is because they were often outside of auto repair shops or muffler repair shops.

And they're holding a muffler.

And the gentleman is, usually has a.

Is a rather stocky, you know, lantern jawed.

Here's a gentleman with a fine beard, a cap, a uniform of some sort reflecting the work being done at the facility where he has been installed.

And he's usually holding a product that is connected to the business.

So it's a muffler.

But of course, the applications across the country that you will see are many and varied.

And these spread like wildfire across the country.

In the 60s and 70s.

There were different iterations of them all other brands as well.

There were the Texaco gasoline giants as well.

There's a very fun one in Aloha, Oregon that has been repurposed into a giant bunny rabbit Harvey Marina, which is very fun, but you'll see different iterations of them.

In Dallas, I photographed one at Ken's Muffler that looks like the Mad Men in character.

Alfred E. Newman, you know, sort of Mortimer Nerd.

But there he is holding a muffler they're all over the country.

But their time in the sun was in the 60s and 70s and the company went out and they began to vanish.

There's one near and dear to my heart is up in Elmsford, New York, at what used to be an AMACO station and then later became a BP station.

And his colors changed from the red and blue of AMACO to the, you know, to the yellow and green of bp.

But he is still there and he intrigued me.

And I as a kid figured that he was the only one.

He was just there, Elmsford.

And so when I began to see versions of him elsewhere around the country, it was a great sort of revelation.

I think a lot of people who get into this stuff have these same moments of discovery that this stuff is that you're seeing in your immediate environs as a child is.

Is far more widespread.

And giant men and roadside giants are having a great revival right now.

There's a lot of interest in them.

A lot of it has been powered by a gentleman named Joel Baker, who began to document them online and is now started the American Giant Museum, which is in Atlanta, Illinois, which you have to visit.

It's got plenty of examples of restored giants, great created exhibit inside.

And there are other.

There's another giant in town as well.

A muffler man holding a hot dog.

And he used to be up in Cicero, Illinois, a Paul Bunyan.

Paul Bunyan hot dogs.

And he ended up down in Atlanta, Illinois.

So that's a great stop.

So there are those very quickly.

Do you think that it was the development of fiberglass that made these things possible and thus changed the culture?

Because these are massive structures that had to be fairly light.

Right.

Because they're often on roofs.

They're on roofs or they're on.

You know, a big stiff wind could knock them over.

Right, exactly.

And I think it is.

I think part of what made roadside travel so interesting in the 50s and 60s was the fact that you saw these.

These architects and these urban designers, these planners, finding clever ways of using technological advances to create interesting experiences and interesting attractions.

Right.

I mean, you see this a lot as well.

And just like the different materials that, that you can now more widely and more easily manufacture.

I know later on we're going to talk perhaps a little bit about Googie, but you see that, Matt?

You see that.

Let's talk about it now.

What is googy?

Googie is a kind of architecture that is sort of like.

I like to call it concretized optimism.

You know, I mean, it's Architectural optimism.

These are these buildings, they emerge initially in Southern California.

And the Googie name is actually taken after what was a coffee shop named Googie's in Southern California that used these principles.

So what are these principles?

They are for certain design elements that are found in most Googie buildings.

Zigzag roofs or pointy roofs, massive plate glass windows, you know, floor to ceiling that let you look into the restaurant, which itself has these spectacular lamps and leather booths and rock walls and plants and floor and, you know, all of this sort of stuff that's going in inside.

Like you as the customer, as the patron become part of the architecture.

And of course, the signage outside uses imaginative, quirky typeface.

There are sometimes towers that rise out of the building where the sign is applied that are very, very dramatic.

When you see a Googie building, you kind of know it.

And again, technological advances allowed us to begin to build buildings like this.

I mean, these were the buildings of the future, right?

These were.

This was the way that we were going.

50s.

You start to see this in the 50s and you'll see construction of gookie buildings into the 60s and maybe even a little bit beyond.

But it's really petering out by the 60s.

By the, by the mid to late 60s there is beginning to be the beginning of the bland era that we're sort of in that I feel people are now kind of trying to rebuff where you have a highway beautification movement.

And local zoning boards are trying to tamp down on the installation of neon signs and they want to restrain the look and feel of buildings because they're just a bit too much.

And they're trying to bring a sense of decorum and they don't want all that riff raff from the highway in their towns.

And so people sort of turn on this almost as quickly as they were intoxicated and embraced.

Embraced it just a decade or so earlier.

It's really quite fascinating.

But you see examples of gookie buildings not just in California, they're everywhere.

And one of the greatest examples right here on the east coast is head on down to Wildwood, New Jersey, where the style there is known as the Doo Wop style.

So kind of adapted to the music of the late 50s and early 60s.

But it is unmistakably Googie.

And those buildings could just as easily be in California.

Huh?

I'm hoping to see some.

Are any at the Jersey Shore?

Oh, absolutely, yes.

When I think of the Jersey Shore, there's sort of the center, the central part of the Jersey Shore, Right.

And that area.

But really it is worth making it all the way down to the southern end to enjoy the wildwoods, because that's where the greatest concentration of those buildings are.

If there's one that I think we're talking about favorite motels.

The Caribbean in Wildwood Crest is exceptional with its beautiful cantilevered floors and the old plastic jersey palms, as they call them, the plastic palm trees and sign, which is just extraordinary.

I mean, there is just a.

Again, concretized optimism.

You see that building and you just.

It puts a spring in your step and it puts a sense of excitement and joy.

And I have stayed there a couple of times and really do love it.

And there are some other great examples of that style, endangered, by the way.

We've been losing them.

They've been dropping like flies since the 90s.

And there are preservationist efforts underway, of course, the Duoc Preservation League, notably.

But still, when a place is built for commerce, it often falls in the pursuit of newer iterations of commerce, sadly.

And we've lost.

We keep losing them, sadly.

Right before I lose you, we started talking about motels and chains.

There's a lot of fascinating history in the book about restaurant chains, some of which are gone and some of which are still very much part of our lives today.

Like Dairy Queen.

I loved who the Queen is in Dairy Queen.

Will you tell our listeners?

Absolutely.

There's a story then.

What is the Dairy Queen?

The Dairy Queen is, the story goes, is the cow.

Right?

The cow from which all the wonderful ice cream can ultimately be be traced.

And I marked the day every year on social media with a selection of photos of what I liked.

The legacy Dairy Queen stores, which are the stores that opened in the 40s and 50s and 60s that have still survived.

The corporation has been putting a lot of pressure on some of these legacy stores to sort of update their look and move over to the grill and chill concept.

But good number of these stores still survive and they're really worth checking out because for me, Dairy Queen is like the.

The ultimate manifestation of a benign chain, if you will.

They tend to be the classic ones, these little, little ice cream huts in the middle of town.

Small building, neon sign with a little askew ice cream cone with a little curl on top.

And it's so deeply connected with people's daily lives, whether it be just stopping there for a little ice cream after work or after the game on Saturday night, or during courtship rituals of one's adolescent years.

Dairy Queen is sort of always there.

It just becomes part of American life.

And, and so when I am anywhere in the country and I know I'm within easy reach of a small town Dairy Queen, I'm right there.

To me, it's just, it's just such a nice slice of Americana.

So you discussed your online presence.

How can our listeners find you online?

If they.

And they should get the book too, the Great American Retro Road Trip.

But online where?

Are you sure?

So you'll find me on Instagram.

Use the handle just my name, Rolando Pujol.

You can follow me there for my adventures.

I'm also on substack, Google Vitrologist substack, and it'll come right up.

And, and, and on other social platforms as well.

But, but I'm easy to find and I'm always posting and sharing.

Well, from this former history major in college, I'm going to ask you a philosophical question to end you've talked about the joy that a lot of the design of these places brings.

And in the book you dig deep into the history, which I think tells us a lot about American history, learning about how these companies came to be and what historic forces shaped them, like the emergence of the highway system and things of that sort of.

Why is it important to have these buildings in our lives?

Why is it important to have these glimpses of times gone by?

Yeah, you know, to me there's nothing more important than understanding how we got here and where we came from.

And these places are the most vivid manifestations of our history.

And without them, we don't have a certain we talked about joy, but also texture and context for our lives.

There has been this, this awful trend over the past couple of decades of architectural homogenization where all chain restaurants, which used to have very distinct looks and feel have become.

They all look the same.

They're kind of these square little gray boxes.

The fun is gone.

The interest is gone.

Having that those architectural cues of our past simply adds richness and joy to our experience.

And it helps us understand how we got here and perhaps can also inspire us in so far what kind of world we want to live in.

Because this is really about having, having experiences and getting to know.

For me, anyway, travel is about having experiences and getting to know your.

Your fellow human.

And the more that there are interesting historic places that can draw us somewhere and it's not just a, a fancy hotel or A beachside resort.

Nothing wrong with those things.

But there are other ways to travel.

I think the better we are, and it can sort of like, I think at a time of a lot of division, it can unite us if we, you know, really begin to explore the country and get to.

To visit these places.

Because behind all of these places are stories and people.

And that is really, I think the most important part of travel is.

Is.

Is the people who.

Who create and manage and run these places and live in these places.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beautifully put.

And it's such a fun book.

Many, many thanks for appearing on the Fromer Travel Show.

What a pleasure to be here.

I only wish we had more time.

Maybe I'll.

Maybe I'll come back again.

That'd be great.

All right, that is it for this week's show.

I thank you so much for listening.

And to those who are traveling, may I wish you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the table Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants Watching cable well it feels so far away all the channels seamlessly same Trying to remember all the songs we like to play Cuz those lazy afternoons don't come so frequently these days oh it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candle be in the boat house on the lake oh but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes.

I can't.

Get you off of my mind Looking out, out the window where we spent so much of our time Cuz I miss the way it felt.

But I.

Guess you can't control those damn cards with Babe I know the both of us are happy when we're free but would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

It's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boathouse on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate.