The Roadside Experience

Generic RoadsideThe Great American Roadside described by James Agee seems a wondrous and timeless thing to the reader, however, if one really considers his or her own experiences on the never ending asphalt roadways that crisscross the country, the reality of the roadside today is much less quaint. At the time Agee was writing, the various roadside industries that people had cashed in on, such as restaurants, automobile and tourist camps, motels and popsicles, were relatively new. In the decades since Agee's experiences on the road, the American roadside has become like everything else in America - standardized, franchised, unoriginal.How often when we take road trips do we see family owned businesses along the highways? And how often do we see fast food chains and service station chains and motel chains? The American roadside has been taken over completely by chains of any and every sort.

If small family owned, original businesses do exist, they are on smaller highways and roads that connect smaller towns or are traveled less often. In fact, corporate America has cashed in on the American traveler's nostalgia for the old original roadside. There are plenty of chains of "family restaurants" along the roadside that try to give patrons a sense of good old fashioned American family values, like Hoss's Family Steak and Sea House that grosses around 70 million dollars a year.

Though readers today can identify with Agee and his experiences, is traveling in America at all the same as it was? How much does the roadside affect and shape our road trips? And even if the restaurants and gas stations and motels along the road aren't all chains, does that really change how we experience the places? After a while a diner is just another place to eat mediocre hamburgers, a gas station is just another place to fill up, a motel is just a bed. Agee doesn't really address this issue in his piece. He describes the rise of roadside industry, tells the stories of certain business owners, provides us with figures and statistics, stresses the importance of roadside infrastructure. However, he doesn't specifically explore how the traveler's experience of these places defines his journey or vacation. Perhaps not that much has changed after all. After several hours on the road our eyes glaze over and our backsides begin to ache and any rest stop offers a place to rest and refuel, but that it. After all, whether roadside stops are owned by massive corporations or have been run by several generations of the same family, do they really aim to offer anything else?