Route 66 in the News
Memories of Georgia's Route 41
2005-05-28 10:28:45
The old orange roof is going the way of the two lane U.S. highway.
Word comes that the last of the Howard Johnson's restaurants will be closing soon. The place that was famous for 28 flavors of ice cream, grilled frankfurters and fried clams will be gone. HoJos didn't serve Coke or Pepsi, they served their own HoJo Cola. It was also the place to get salt-water taffy.
Going to Howard Johnson's was reserved for when we were on vacation. It was the first place I remember with kid meals and placemats with all sorts of puzzles and those dot-to-dot pictures. The dot drawings were usually of a menu item, like chocolate pie or one of those ice cream flavors.
I remember that they served the ice cream in a little stainless steel dish, which I thought was unique.
Out front was a stone facade which had a wall plaque that I always thought was old Howard Johnson, himself. I just found out it was a depiction of nursery rhyme character Simple Simon and the Pieman that he met en route to the fair.
I was born in the era when interstate highways were being built and we would travel a number of miles on the new four-lane before it abruptly came to an end. We would then go back on the old road, usually U.S. 41.
I've never traveled on Route 66, but I think of Old 41 as our version of those legendary lanes.
Along the way was Stuckey's, which was based in Eastman and had a zillion locations. Between each location was a number of painted billboard boasting such things as "Fresh Georgia Pecans" and "Clean Restrooms." Each sign also mentioned how many miles to the next Stuckey's. My brother and I would play the game of guessing how long it would take us to arrive.
There was another smaller chain, B. Lloyd's, which also sold much of the same fare, minus the famed Pecan Log Rolls. Lloyd's had also built more than their fair share of billboards.
There were a number of service stations along the way. They had the billboards too, with a painted guy in a service station uniform wearing a bow tie reminding you to check your gauge.
The other feature of the old two-lane road was the seemingly endless number of little motels, most of them were motor courts, where you pulled the car right up to your room.
The motels had distinctive names like "The Lamplighter," "The Towne Terrace" or my favorite, "The Shangri-La." Others were named for their color like "The Pink Motel," "The Blue Moon" and "The Aqua Terrace."
Their billboards mentioned their features, such as "Air Conditioned," which was often painted with ice dripping from the letters and "Television in every room." The feature that always caught our eye was if they had a swimming pool. I don't ever remember having a reservation; we just pulled in where the neon "no" next to the "vacancy" sign was turned off.
The rooms were basic and for some reason often featured those roll-out jalouse windows. I can remember driving my dad crazy by playing with the window crank. Many of them had another bygone feature: Magic Fingers, the device that for a dime would shake the bed for what was billed as a massage.
Sometimes when I'm not in a hurry, I like to venture off the interstate and search for the remains of those old stations, restaurants, and motor courts that have been shuttered for years.
When I do hit the open road, it seems that everyone is in one heck of a hurry to get wherever they're going. Fighting that onslaught of traffic, there are moments I long for that simple time on a tree-lined highway on the way to paradise.
~Harris Blackwood, Gainesville (GA) Times
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