Changing Roads Podcast
Changing Roads Podcast unveils the profound essence of travel, exploring not just the destinations, but the personal transformations within. We unravel the various themes, aspects and narratives of travel that define us, shape us, and lead us to the heart of our own stories.
Changing Roads Podcast
The Highway Chronicles: The Evolution of American Roads
Ever wondered how the sprawling highways and charming roadside attractions across America came to be? Join Brad and and Ranger as we cruise down memory lane with car aficionado and history buff, James Wilder. Their trek takes us from the early days of horse-drawn carriages to the present, where every mile of road tells a story of progress and the resilience of the human spirit. They share anecdotes and insights that highlight the profound impact of our nation's roadways on culture and personal experience, uncovering the roots of our modern highways.
Discussing everything from the ingenuity behind the ever-evolving accommodations for travelers to the iconic neon signs that beckon from the roadside. From the building of the Alaskan Highway, to the historic upheaval of the Kentucky Cave Wars, to drilling I-70 through the Rocky Mountains, to the simple joys of unplanned detours, Their discussion reveals how the highways and byways reflect the ongoing narrative of America's love affair with the open road.
As if their chat couldn't get any livelier, Ranger surprises us all by offering his own take, proving that our four-legged friends have a sense of adventure too. This heartwarming conversation with James Wilder leaves us with a newfound appreciation for the journeys that connect us—not just to destinations, but to each other.
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Welcome wanderers, dreamers and fellow seekers of the open road. This is Changing Roads, a sanctuary for explorers of the world and the self. The history of roads hums with human ingenuity, creativity and the ever-evolving needs of transportation. These roads, meticulously designed and constructed, embody the very essence of our progress, innovation and interconnectedness as a society. Every road we travel holds within its asphalt the narratives of humanity's unwavering commitment and fearless resolve. These roads weren't born from mere blueprints and machinery. They emerged from the sheer will and grit of those who dared to defy obstacles and limitations. Each mile bears witness to the toil, perseverance and fearless determination of countless individuals who poured their blood, sweat and tears into their creation. Interlacing and connecting these roads together, we built an infrastructure that opened the doors to progress, defense, economic growth, tourism and the opportunity to finally see and explore the beautiful country that we live in. We blazed forward and laid the foundation for making the American dream possible. Our roads are more than only conduits for movement, more than just gravel, tar and concrete. They are living archives of our history. Each mile marker stands as a testament to our past. Adorned with historic landmarks, abandoned buildings, rusting cars and roadside attractions that whisper stories of bygone eras, our roads invite us on a journey through time, urging us to explore and unravel the layers of our shared heritage. In the bends and curves of our ever-changing roads lie the imprints of our creativity, ingenuity and collective resilience, reflecting our ceaseless quest to push boundaries and embrace possibility.
Speaker 1:Hi, welcome to Changing Roads. I am your host, brad, and I am sitting here with my co-host, ranger. And Ranger, our listeners have yet to hear your beautiful and piercing voice, so would you finally like to say hello? Thank you, ranger. It's amazing to have you as my sidekick and I could not do this without you.
Speaker 1:Ranger and I are very excited for this episode today. This is going to be different from what we've done in the past, because we're going to be unpacking a lot of history here. I have post-it notes decorating my studio right now, but if I get any dates or information wrong, feel free to email me so that I can make those corrections. I've done a lot of research, so hopefully I get most of it correct. I know my guest has done a lot of research as well, and we are going to give you the best possible episode we can. So today we are going to be talking about the history of the rise of American roads and the resulting infrastructure, and then we will get into our personal connections with those roads later on in this episode. My guest today is James Wilder. He has a pretty cool background in cars and car culture and I think that he's the perfect person to have on for this conversation. So I would like to introduce you to our guest, james Wilder.
Speaker 1:Greetings, man, it's good to be here. It's good to have you here.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. Yeah, me too. This is going to be fun.
Speaker 1:Do you want to give me some background on yourself and your experience on the topic that we're going to be talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always been interested in cars since I was a kid. I got the Matchbox cars, hot Wheels, matchbox City when I was a kid a little briefcase. You click it open and you got this whole city to yourself. You know driving cars around and loved collecting cars. I got a minibike when I was 13. After that I got a Suzuki TS250 motorcycle.
Speaker 2:So I've liked things that are motorized and actually had a lawnmower as a garden tractor. My friend down the street had one also. We take the mowers off and we would just use our tractors as all-terrain vehicles and just go terrorize the neighborhood with our tractors. So, yeah, anything with an engine on it. We always tried to find some fun activities to do with that. And, of course, when I turned the age of being able to drive, I got a car got inherited my sister's Volkswagen Beetle. I think it was a 65, I believe that was right. And then I got a pickup truck. After that I lived in a small town so trucks were pretty big. So I've always really enjoyed vehicles, just dreaming about them, buying them and trading them, the Hot Wheels, and also recently I've hit a record of buying six cars on Carvana over the last five years.
Speaker 1:This is pretty cool. It's a pretty cool hobby from Hot. Wheels to real cars it's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I use that app every day. I'm looking at it all the time to see what's next, what's on the market, and so, anyway, I love cars and I went through the standard. You got to get a job, be productive, had some artistic abilities too, so I went into the drafting industry. I did that for quite a while and I transitioned miraculously into the computer programmer apprentice and then started coming to the age, getting to where I could come close to thinking about retirement, and I started trying to figure out what I could do more creatively. And so internet came out and I started building websites before anybody knew what that was. I had the skill of building websites, but naturally I would start building things about motorcycles and cars and so forth. So I ended up creating a website called Motor Austin, and that was to meet a need to list car shows and events in the local area. So that's kind of where I started. And then that led to a whole other thing. That's amazing. I'll leave it right there.
Speaker 1:That's kind of where we're going to go with this too. You saw a need and you filled it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1:That's pretty much what we're going to be talking about today. That's awesome, being the need for better transportation and not just better transportation, but how we travel with that better transportation which would end up being roads. There was a need and it was filled for many, many different reasons. So, that being said, James, you have this background in cars. That means a lot to you and through that, you've learned a lot about the history of cars, roads and the things that have come out of that and surrounded that entire topic and culture.
Speaker 2:So let's just jump right in Totally One of the things that got me into history and that's I'm very passionate about following your dreams, following something that your passion I know passion. It gets a hard knock sometimes today, but that's okay, I don't care, I follow what I want to do. How about that?
Speaker 1:I follow what I want to do.
Speaker 2:Why would I not want to do what I want to do?
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so there was a guy I learned about in Austin who was kind of a mythological figure. His name was August Hardcough and he was a racer and he owned the original Austin's Feet Shop on Barton Springs Road. Been there, cool place.
Speaker 2:And well, this is before the one you're talking about. Okay, this was the first Austin's Feet Shop and he had a reputation of winning quarter mile drag races and I wanted to know who this guy was because he sounded really interesting. He was not only a brilliant person in the auto racing world locally in Austin, but he was a big figure of a towering person, also had long hair, very interesting character. So my interest in him is the seed that got me interested in history, because I didn't really care about history before that point. You know that wasn't a really big topic that I was ever interested in. But just looking at going through the process of who this guy is and trying to do research on him allowed me to discover some really fascinating things. Started finding photographs, I started finding stories about him and all that was really exciting. It was really cool. So that planted the seed in me for history.
Speaker 1:And then it just kept going. It's amazing how it adds perspective to your passion. You're in the car culture, you love it and once you start diving into the history behind it, it adds a lot of substance and you start connecting dots and that makes your, it almost heightens your excitement and connection to that passion. Am I right? Did I say that right, yeah?
Speaker 2:totally Cool, totally. That's probably a large percentage of what drives the creative aspects of what I do is the people that laid the foundations and the stories that they left behind. Yeah, and that these stories need to be told. Yeah, that's why we're here, and so I can't run off the top of my head trying to remember how I got into the highway system or the beginning of transportation.
Speaker 2:I pivoted, I wanted to reach more people, so I took Motor Austin and I said I could do Motor Texas. Yep, why not look at the whole state? Sure, yeah, so now I can take these road trips and start writing about that, and while I was working on the weekends, we would take trips and explore and do creative things that way. So I started Motor Texas and, of course, I started learning about. When I was researching where to go, I started running across historical stories about roadways and I learned about the Bankhead Highway and that was a East West highway that was originally a military route, I believe, and I thought that was really fascinating because I'd never heard of that before. So that was one thing that I found and I tried to research that and it was a we're actually going to talk.
Speaker 1:We're actually going to touch quite a bit on the military history when it comes to the birth of the road system across the world, not just the United States. But that's really neat because you were doing Motor Austin and realized your love for history regarding these things and when you tried to talk about it in that setting it kind of fell flat because the people that you were talking to didn't value that history as much as they wanted to talk about their motors and their engines and the customizations that they had done on their vehicles In racing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you found that, moving from that specific subculture into the history behind all of this, it really connected with you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you decided to run with that, and I personally saw this with you in a lot of ways, because I've known you for quite a while at this point. Yeah, it's been a while now. Yeah, do you remember I used to sneakily sleep in the back of my Explorer on the side of your house? Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. Yeah, I would park on the side of your house and sleep in my.
Speaker 2:Explorer because it was safe. Yeah, absolutely, it was many, many, many, years ago, but yes, that did happen.
Speaker 1:It's a long, strange truth. So we've known each other for quite a while and I've watched this transition in your focuses and interests going from there into something that you really care about and that's the history behind these things that you care about these cars, these roads and you've tapped into something that a lot of people may not think of when they approach cars and roads and travel and when you start diving into it, you really realize that there's so much there that is just not at the forefront of people's minds when they start talking about this and once you dive into it, it blasts your mind open and it changes the way that you connect with cars and the roads and travel. And these places, these literally physical roads that you are driving down now, have life. They're not just roads, they're something completely different.
Speaker 1:And you're going through these places and on these roads and you're seeing all these things on the side of the road that, at the end of the day, come together to form a story, a beautiful story that does not get told very often, and that's what I've seen in you and your exploration of these, and that's been my experience too, in a lot of different ways, because I've based my life around travel and the road.
Speaker 1:So in my travels, to the extent that I've done that, I've really expanded my horizons and my travels. And I look out the window and I want to know what these things are on the side of the road, may they be ancient ruins or modern things, and when you start connecting those and understanding why it's there, where it came from, you connect to your journey in a way that you wouldn't if you were trying to go from point A to point B. Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, yeah, I wrote down some notes because there were things that really surprised me about the early history, and one of the things we talked about is the electric vehicles being created in the late 1800s. I think we talked about Porsche creating an electric vehicle in the late 1800s.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, so before the gasoline engines. And what was a real shocker was learning who were the proponents of good roads. Who were these people? I discovered it was the League of American Wheelmen. They're bicyclists. Really, they were huge advocates for improving the roadway system because if you can imagine riding a bicycle on dirt roads with wagon wheel ruts all over the place in it and horse stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know, and people, bicycles apparently were a big thing back then. I didn't know that of the culture, but they were super organized and they had a publication and an association. They were the League of American Wheelmen and they lobbied the local governments to push for a highway system, a system of better roads. Wow, that just blew my mind. The bicyclists were really the ones that pushed the agenda, along with, of course, the farmers, who did want better roads to bring their product into market, into town, so it wouldn't be such a hassle going through all the ruts and the mud and so forth. But as far as getting a movement going, credit the bicyclists.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. It's insane, did not?
Speaker 2:know I did not with totally nice how long ago was this 1800s.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the other thing that I kind of blew my mind, which is kind of scary, is I ran across an article that talked about the draft, but it's not a draft. You would think it was a draft to work on the county roads. So you, living in a county, were part of a draft, like a military draft, and when your name was called, you had to spend a week working on county roads. Wow, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't know anything about that, it's like jury duty, exactly, but the hammer, the freaking rocks. Wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:So, not knowing any stories about interviewing somebody that did break rocks or whatever they had to do for a week, I would love to hear those stories. Yeah, yeah, did they do it voluntarily?
Speaker 1:Yep, were they happy, right? Did they feed them all?
Speaker 2:Or are they just like not in a good mood for a week? Interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1:So those were a few of the facts that I wasn't expecting, and these are the early days of starting to build and improve roads right Before. We're going way back yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in the last 200s the counties were in charge of the roadways. There wasn't a state highway system at the time. One county might spend money on part of their road system, but then you cross the lines into the next county and you get mud. You know, just mud. So there was not a uniform standard for the quality of roadways and how. I think every county is complicated the type of material that's used in building roads. You would think so. Let me back up. So when I started doing drafting work, I worked for a civil engineer and a civil engineering firm. My mind was expanded when I started learning how roadways were built. It was a thousand times more complicated than I ever would have imagined it was, and there's so many different materials that can be used in laying layers of foundation just to build a gravel road, and not only that is that once you build? This is really geeky stuff. Okay, so Love it.
Speaker 2:So, over here. So once you build a road, then you interrupt water flow. I had no idea there was a whole field of moving water around and calculating pools of water, because once you build a road you interrupt the water flow and now you have to move the water somewhere else to drain it so it doesn't start piling up. So you need to have drain systems and these engineers are calculating where all this water is going to pull up and where that water is going to go, and they do detail calculations as to how to move this water and the change the grades, very so slightly to push the water to this place or that place that they have engineered. So to me I'm like it's a cow path. You know you just pave the thing, but then no, these are extremely complicated engineering feats.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. That's not something that we think about every day.
Speaker 1:And no it is really complicated to build a road. You know, in these systems. One of my favorite memories that sticks out in my mind and I don't know necessarily why it's one of my favorite memories, but I was in a motel when I was a lot younger with my little brother, when we were kids, and this documentary came on TV and it was about building guardrails and the engineering behind guardrails. And you know, I'm like 10 years old and my brother's like 12 and we're watching this thing and it's the most fascinating thing ever. You know, there's these things on the side of the road that keep you from going across cliffs and you dive into the engineering behind these and it's fascinating.
Speaker 2:Well, let me tell you there's T501. Rail has burned into my brain. I had to do so many drafting plans marking out T501. T501 is the standard railing that was used on these highway projects and I'll never forget that.
Speaker 1:So cool. It's these little things that you drive by every day. No one cares the roads the guardrails, the bridges, this whole infrastructure. It's so complicated and they're such big engineering feats that at the surface level, like you said, it just looks like concrete to drive on. But these are massive engineering projects. It's a thing that we don't normally think about when we drive down the highway.
Speaker 2:No, and that was kind of I don't know. I really didn't have anybody that was in the highway construction field to learn any of this stuff, so I didn't have any preconceived ideas. Honestly, I never even thought about it how roadways were designed and built. But yeah, it was pretty cool if you're kind of a geeky engineer type that likes that.
Speaker 1:I mean there's a few examples of that that just off the top of my head I can bring up. And you look at I-70 going across the Rocky Mountains and they looked at it and they were like this is impossible. And the engineers said you know, if we're going to make this happen, we have to go through the mountain. We literally have to drill through this mountain and the Eisenhower tunnel is long. I've been in it many, many times and they're looking at this from an engineering standpoint. They're like you can't, it's going to collapse under the weight of the mountain. And these engineers came in and they developed a way which had the main tunnel and then there were tiny little tunnels that you can't see surrounding the main tunnel that was able to support the weight of the mountain, which is why the Eisenhower tunnel doesn't collapse. And if it wasn't for this one guy that came up with this completely off the wall idea, then I-70 might not exist.
Speaker 1:Interesting, I'm going to make a note of that. I'm going to watch that. Yeah, look at Eisenhower tunnel and the engineering behind that, the people that went in there. It was so painstaking to do. It was a lot of work, but it took a lot of ingenuity and thought, and because of that you have this road that crosses from the eastern side of the United States to the western side of the United States, now through the Rockins, which is a major thoroughfare, and without that it could have changed a lot of the history of the United States from the ground up.
Speaker 1:And I've driven through the Eisenhower tunnel dozens and dozens and dozens of times and usually I hate it because it's packed with people and people are honking their horns. Sometimes I love it because it's a quick reprieve from the blizzard, but I've driven through it many times and to me it's just a tunnel. And then I start doing things like researching this and looking into the engineering behind these roads and all of a sudden it becomes a completely different thing. And now the next time I drive through the Eisenhower tunnel, I'm going to appreciate it more and I'm going to experience it on a deeper level.
Speaker 1:I'm going to look around and be like, wow, this right here is one of the major things that allowed America to expand westward and, like we've been talking about, it's those little things that you take for granted, that you don't see with your naked eyes, and once you start exploring it, it becomes fascinating, if not profound, absolutely profound. So a lot of what we're talking about right now in this episode is the engineering of these roads and how that came about, and there's a few examples that I wanted to bring up. And I guess I want to get to Route 66, because it's really cool and I think we're going to go down a rabbit hole with Route 66. I was trying to go in order by date and year, but I'm going to put that on the back burner real quick. And I'd like to talk about the Alaskan Highway, which is the highway that was built from the lower 48 United States to Alaska, and we're going to dive a little bit into my own personal connection with that road and I think a lot of peoples.
Speaker 1:They started construction on this 90 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor and it became apparent to the US government and the military that we needed to fortify Alaska and get military supplies and troops up there and Air Force resources to help the Soviet Union, push Hitler out of the Soviet Union, which is one of the things that you know a major thing in winning World War Two. So this is 90 days after Pearl Harbor and they went to work and they sent 10,000 troops into Canada into some of the harshest conditions that you could imagine. We're talking, you know, british Columbia to Alberta, to the Yukon, and it's a different thing in summer, but these guys were doing this in winter and it's unimaginable what they did. It's considered one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times. And they went and they cut this road out of permafrost in the most remote areas of the, some of the most remote areas of the world. It was an amazing engineering feat and it allowed us to get those resources to Alaska to eventually win the war. So after the war ended we turned that highway back over to Canada and it's kind of been this symbol of alliance between Canada and America. It's this thing that we share.
Speaker 1:It was built for that utility for the war, but it became something different in time and not only is it now an economic necessity to get resources in and out of Alaska, from America, but it's also become this dream, this vision and this last frontier of road for people, because it's so remote, it's not well maintained, it's 2000 kilometers to get from here to there and it's scary. In the past few years they've done a lot of work to re-maintain the roads and get them back up to par to some degree. Not all the way, but when I first heard about it when I was a lot younger, it just became the final frontier to me of roads. Wow, interesting. Yeah, alaska was my final frontier, but in between America, the lower 48 and Alaska stood the Alaskan highway, and it is remote.
Speaker 1:There are no resources, the roads are not well maintained, they're rutted, there are parts where it's gravel or just straight dirt, and to do this takes some gut. So when I got onto the Alaskan highway, the highway itself was my adventure. It wasn't.
Speaker 1:Alaska as the destination it was. I finally made it to this road, this highway, and that road, that pavement, that stretch was my adventure, and I could talk about the Alaskan highway for quite a while. I just did it. Finally, for the first time in my life, I got 81 miles in and I rolled and flipped my Explorer and should be dead crushed it like a tin can.
Speaker 2:I saw photos of that.
Speaker 1:A lot of people said that I should tone back my trip, I should come back and take a break, and I was undeterred. I had family come up and I said I want to keep going escaping death. And I did that Alaskan highway. And that was a story yeah, a big story but I did it and that was something that I achieved, that I'd always wanted to do Me in that highway, and I found that personal connection with this thing that inspired me and put fire in my belly.
Speaker 1:It's adventure.
Speaker 1:But before it was that to people, and before it had motorcyclists and RVs and 18 wheelers, and before it became what it is today, it was a military road that was born out of the need to win a war, and the people that built it built it in suffering and in really harsh conditions blood, sweat, tears, death.
Speaker 1:It was a major thing. And you start talking about roads that start as a thing, that are built for utility, that take on a whole whole other nature of themselves in the end. Right, and actually, when you look at the grand scheme of things and the beginning of building the interstate highway system in 1956 to connect these states and these towns and these cities, part of it was for defense and part of it was for economic reasons. But this road system took on a life of its own. It became the spider web of roads that have allowed Americans to travel and tour. Right, there would be no tourism, there would be no ease of travel, there would be no opportunity for people to go and explore this United States without that spider web. True, yeah, right, see where I'm going with this.
Speaker 2:I'm rambling a bit, no, I mean but one of the things, the consequences of that, it damaged a lot of towns because they bypassed the downtowns. And so, before the interstate system, you traveled into the downtowns, you stopped downtown, you got some fuel and so forth, got some grub, maybe stayed the night there and then you went on to the next town. Town through town, through town. Well, the interstate system took you away from the towns. They bypassed every town so you could get from point A to point B without even stopping.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of business started to fail because of that. They would move the alignments of the highway, sometimes miles around the city, away from the city. So you had motor courts set up for travelers and then no more travelers. They wouldn't stop there anymore because now they could get to their destination quicker and they didn't need to stop. Yeah, or they didn't wanna pull off the highway and go into a town and explore or something and find things of interest, because they could just keep going to their destination. And so today we look for the roads, we look for the original highways, and usually the main streets are the original highways that went through the towns before the interstate system. And you can see all the old motor courts. Some of them are abandoned, some of them are still barely thriving and some of them they're doing very well if you happen to be a good marketer or there's new, modern versions of them, right?
Speaker 1:Can you explain what motor courts are and their place in history?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so fascinating. So when people got cheap transportation, the first thing they wanted to do was go to the next town, like cause you can, and as you went, maybe you wanted to go to the two towns away or three towns away, and first they started camping on the side of the roads cause there were no motels and there were hotels at the time, but the hotels at that time were typically used for construction type railway workers. It was very rough place, from what I've read, to stay in one of these hotels in town because they had a rough clientele.
Speaker 1:I've been to places like that.
Speaker 2:So that's not necessarily catering to the family going off on their Model T to explore a couple of towns away. So they would camp on roadside camps. They would just camp wherever they wanted to. But then the roadside camp started popping up and some cities would allow you to camp in the park. So you could come into park, your Model T in the park, set up your camp there and go exploring the city and do whatever town, whatever you wanna do, and so forth, and say on the roadside camps. The camps started getting more sophisticated. Somebody would go how can we provide more services to you? How about some running water?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then after the running water it was like, hey, we can put up a little shack, a little four wall thing, and you can stay in there if the rain comes, because it's not so fun in a tent with the rain and all that, if that's not what you like. So they started building these little sheds. And then they started building a little overhang with the shed so you could park your Model T and you don't have to unpack everything. You have all your stuff in the back of the Model T, park it in the little carport and then stay inside and you're really close to your vehicle, you could watch it. It was secure because you were right there, and so it was just a little bit more sophisticated as each year went along, sure, and then in the towns he started getting these motorcourts, which were typically U-shaped or a horseshoe shaped and they usually had some sort of ornate entrance. There's a old motorcourt in Austin called the Blue Bonnet. I think it's a Blue Bonnet motorcourt. I think it's still standing to this day.
Speaker 2:I think it's on Guadalupe Street and it's made of rock and I can't remember if it's petrified wood or just regular rock, but it has a rock front on it. It's just a wooden structure, but they put rock in the front of it and there's a little drive entrance into it and the purpose of that was to one catch attention. You know is a different type of building, so you would notice what it was. And I believe, if the history is right, the Blue Bonnet motorcourt was the first neon sign in Austin. Wow, really, I can't say that authoritatively, but I read it somewhere on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. It's gotta be true, right? You know, I would say that the modern version of motorcourts would be things like K-O-A-S right Campgrounds of America. There are V-Parks. You go in there. They're in a circle, there's places to camp, there's places to park your vehicle, it's safe. It's even, you know, laid out in a horseshoe, court-like layout and they have food and supplies and some of them you can get gas and you don't have to stay at the hotels or the motels. To me, it's the equivalent of a motorcourt going back into. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think you sort of had a fork there where, if you're really more of the camping type person, that would apply in that area of it To get the travelers more comfort. Then the motels started. So you went from a motorcourt to a motel, which they didn't have covered parking but you could park right at the front door. So you drove up parked at the front door of the motel and when you open your windows inside there's your car. So you always knew where your car was. You keep an eye on it. But now you didn't need so much. Cars were getting more advanced. They were getting watertight, you could keep stuff more secure, they had locks so they didn't have the need for parking your cars under the shelters anymore, and so they just became more and more sophisticated.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of where the motorcourts evolved and if you go down to Congress Avenue across from In Austin yes, I forget where this is national. I'm talking local, but there's several motorcourts on Congress, across from the Continental Club, over there the Austin Motel, I think, the famous sign there. So they're all around.
Speaker 1:The signs are something that I wanna talk about, because some of them are still attractions today and some of them are remnants. But when you were building these motels or motorcourts or gas stations, you wanted to advertise to the people that were driving by. Right, you wanted to bring people in. And that's where you get the giant Paul Bunyan. Right, you know, on the side of the road, that's where you get the giant rocking chair, the big ball of yarn. Yes, these are the things that they put out there to bring people into their business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somewhere in West Texas I can't remember exactly where it is right now but there's an oil well derrick type that's a gas station. So also in the gas stations you would get crazy structures that would attract people. So he's like, oh, let's stop there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, it's not a lack ranch.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, yeah, you know, that was put there to.
Speaker 1:You know, pull people down the road and then you'd go stay in.
Speaker 2:Amarillo right, right, absolutely. That's another rabbit hole of history of studying. Oh my God, that yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's another one. These roadside attractions were put in for a reason, and it wasn't necessarily just for people's entertainment. It was to make people stop. Yeah, right, and they had their motel, their hotel, their motor court, campground, gas station, right, they were for advertisement, just like the neon sign. This is how you advertise to people back in that day, right, you know.
Speaker 1:Now we have our smartphones and we can just jump on it while we're driving. Hopefully not while you're driving, but we can jump on it and you know, enter gas station, campground and hit Right.
Speaker 1:Send me that way you know, Right, exactly, and Siri will direct you to the things. So you know, it's not as important as it used to be as far as bringing people in, but now it's become an entire different subculture. It's pop culture at this point, and a lot of yeah, it's become a whole pop culture that has surrounded this old history of old roads and highways and how people used to travel and experience that travel. Right, and that's one of the things that I really wanted to get into with you, because you have a lot of experience. As you know, a photographer and someone who's really interested in this history is retracing those roads and you see these old. They're ruins of old motor courts and old gas stations and it's the things that you would drive right past if you weren't looking for them Exactly, but if you know what to, look for Exactly yes, and you're in a modern day archeological expedition, which is really fascinating.
Speaker 2:That was the exact word I was going to say Perfect, absolutely fascinating in my world. And I wanted to say something you mentioned kind of like ranch I don't know if people know about not many people know about bug ranch. Do you know about bug ranch?
Speaker 1:I actually. Deep in the back of my head. It sparks a memory, but I don't think so. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2:This is really bizarre. A Cadillac ranch is not an attraction to get gasoline, or a motor court or anything. It is pure art.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like 15 miles off the highway too.
Speaker 2:It's pure art, if I can visualize it, it's on the west side of Amarillo. So on the east side of Amarillo there's bug ranch. I've never read an article. I wrote an article about this, but I've never read one and I was fascinated by discovering bug ranch and it was Volkswagen's buried nose down into the ground, just like Cadillac ranch. No kidding, that's so interesting. But listen to this. This is totally like space alien geeky. Why is this like this? And I couldn't find any information anywhere about why or who did all this stuff. It's out there somewhere, probably, but I couldn't find it. But Cadillac ranch okay, what are those Cadillacs? It's on one side of Amarillo, the other side, bug ranch. What are those Volkswagen's?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you have this opposite of Cadillacs and Volkswagen's, but they're both buried into the ground. They're half the exactly half the number of Volkswagen's than there are Cadillacs. Is that something? I think that's a mystery. I don't know what that means Interesting, but that means something there. So in looking at that, I thought what was the intent of that? What was? Why did they choose that many Volkswagen's and why did they choose? Maybe they're cheap, but maybe there's some deeper significance to this whole story. We'll never know. I think it's a mystery. That's so cool. That's the thing about travel as you discover these quirky things and then you ponder them, you meditate on them and go whoa, that's, why did they do this? Who did this? I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in the bug ranch there was a gas station there and I think there was a motel there, and I don't know if the owners who did the bug ranch owned both of those, but it was clearly an attraction to stay there or to get gasoline there, whereas and here again it's an opposite of what Cadillac Ranch was. It was pure art bug ranch stop and get some gas. So I just thought that was an interesting little thing that I've never read about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't know that either. That's really interesting, I think.
Speaker 2:I might have come up with a couple of different opposites to them. I can't remember off top. I have, if you Google, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think that that was competition? I think you kind of said it was a mystery.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Competition, or was there just teaching? Well, there was nothing to compete with. Yeah, right, there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just you're competing with art.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like, hey, we can make art too. Yeah, but they did it in a way that it almost had an opposite vibe to it. Sure, the rich and the affordable, or whatever the saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Cadillac high end and you got your everyday car. For the Volkswagen, yeah, and half of the Volkswagen versus all of the Cadillacs. I can't remember exactly how many Cadillacs there were, sure.
Speaker 1:It might seem a little off topic of what we're talking about, but it reminds me of Mammoth Cave National Park and the whole Mammoth Caves system.
Speaker 1:It's one of the longest, largest system of caves in the world. There was an entire thing Back in I think it was the early 2030s. It was right when the National Park started really building road infrastructure to bring people and allow people to come experience these parks. And there was the National Park with the National Park cave entrance. But it's so big that all along the 10 mile road going into the National Park there was all these privately owned Plots of land that had their own entrances into the caves.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it became literally it was a cave war and People were trying come to our cave, come to our cave, no, come to our cave. And it was a huge advertisement battle. Right, our cave is better, our cave is better, yeah, come to it. Was people flocked on it as a Opportunity to make money, right, and then it got. It got weird, it got really bad. When they say cave wars, people were like getting lynched and People were literally firing guns on properties. Oh gosh, literally became a war of roadside attraction and it is very interesting. I have never heard that story. If you've never heard of the Kentucky cave wars, please turn this podcast off right now and get on.
Speaker 1:Google and check that out made a note of that. It's fascinating, but that, like I said, that goes back to you, reminded me of competing, or not just competing, but a complimentary roadside attraction and bringing these people into these places and People diving on the opportunity to take advantage of that, yes, and Make it their living.
Speaker 1:And to this day, you can drive to mammoth caves. I was just there and Some of these places they're still there from a long time ago. Some of them have evolved into a modern version, but it's the same thing when you are driving down that road towards mammoth caves National Park. It's no, come to ours, come to ours, come to ours. Our cave tours are $10 and we have a much cooler cave than the dude down the road and their cave is $20 to get in. It's the same exact thing in 2024. Interesting, it's very interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, you said this not, this is a bit of a rabbit trail, but that's. That's the kind of the Idea of this type of travel, is you leave room for the rabbit trails.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, well said, well said budget for him. Rabbit trails are just as important as game trails are as justice rabbit trails are the story.
Speaker 2:That's where you find the story, oh, man, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that. Rabbit trails that might be the name of this, changing roads into rabbit trails, heck, yeah. But I don't know, man, we've Going into this topic, that we've gone into it. It's a rabbit hole, right that there's Ranger.
Speaker 2:Hey right.
Speaker 1:Oh right, rangers, here he just wants you to know. Going into this, there's so many Directions you can go, there's so much information to unpack, so much history to dive into that you and me, in this episode, are not even gonna brush the surface. You know, man?
Speaker 2:you've hit a never, never, exhausting topic.
Speaker 1:This is. This is part one, part two, part three, part four. We could, we could talk about this, but in a general sense, I think that we've hit. You know a lot of you know good things on the topic that we're talking. Speak up Ranger. Ranger says don't stop. He's Ranger. It took me a long time to learn dog dialect, but he's saying talk about Route 66. You're forgetting to talk about Route 66. Ranger loves Route 66. He's been on it. Yeah, I just said that. And then Ranger said talk about Route 66. So quick shout out to Route 66 and Nat Cole King and to John Steinbeck, riding grapes of wrath about it and terming it the mother road. And it is just another example of something that became utility, that turned into Something that people love and cherish and like to drive upon. You know it was from Chicago to the West Coast and it was designed right to be able to travel as temperate on a temperate road they were trying to build.
Speaker 1:It's not the most direct route, but they were trying to build this road that went through really the easiest, best weather kind of place, exactly, exactly and you can drive it in a convertible. Yes, you could drive it in a convertible. Yeah, and a lot of people do. Heck, yeah, yeah, sorry, rangers, rangers, trying to get us to talk about Route 66, so I had to do the shout out. Thank you, ranger, ranger. What would I do without you? Awesome, he keeps me on track. Right on, james I. I think we're coming to the end of this episode of running out of time.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I'm sad like I said, this is so much fun. We. We could go into this for days, but absolutely I think. I think that for the most part, we got to a lot of really good things, but I wanted to ask you, what do you think that your Take away? Your biggest takeaway from what we just talked about is here what, what would you want Someone who's listening to take home with them out of this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we didn't talk about this in specific, but how easy it is on the weekend because we work and we have animals and we don't take our animals on the road trips with us, so we have to come back. So we really only had a short, have short times where we can go out and explore and what we learned is that it doesn't take much to find adventure. Get, get up in the morning, get in your car truth, truth. Get, get in your car and pick a direction and just go explore, go to the next town, go driving around the neighborhoods. You might say well, what a why, what are you gonna go see? It doesn't matter anything You're gonna find something?
Speaker 2:Yep, you would. That's the whole beauty of it, and you'll be amazed at what you find. And so we looked at Living in Austin. Looking at Austin is, you know, it's where you live. But then you had all these hub spokes you could go out, and every one of them was an adventure. Some days we would keep going. We actually went to One town it was getting towards evening and we were a long ways from Austin at that point and we pulled into a town it was I think it was Brinnum, texas and we pulled into the town square and there's these hot rods Pulling up in parking and it's like well, what's going on? We started walking around and more and more people come started coming in. Lawn chairs started being unfolded out in the square, more hot rods coming by, classic cars. There was a stage, people walking around drinking glasses of wine and Talking, laying their chairs out in the street, and they were having an evening July concert Downtown, cool. And we're like how did we discover this?
Speaker 1:Yep, the universe just brought us right into exactly what we love Amazing thing about that the road and I've talked on other episodes with people about things like this, yeah, where you just stumble across the most amazing Interesting things that you wouldn't normally.
Speaker 2:You're never gonna find those things if you don't hit the road right and it's just right there. You can you can easily go out and Explore each of the towns around where you live, yep, and the other thing is that Photography is makes it so much more fun too, because we love to take photos, pull off on the side of the road and photograph. To me they're the cars that are sitting out in the fields, that are rested, or art, yep, and we have. We have seen old movie driving, movie theaters with Abandoned cars in front of them, and what a photograph. No kidding, what a message.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's just moving when you, when you find shots like that and you go back and look at these things and you, it's different than going to a, a destination and say, leave us a photograph that we had when we went to Walt Disney. Yeah, something like that, yeah, it's a. These are the, the artist, the artworks that we found on the side of the roads, the things that moved us. Yes, because the beauty of the decay, the beauty of the rest of the beauty, thinking about All these cars that used to pull up in this drive, driving movie theater when it was booming the 50s, you know, and and the hot rods, and and the community, the things and you can just imagine. But now you're standing out there and you just hear the wind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of howling Yep, do the brush and the cactus, and and it's just, it takes you to another place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you you're immortalizing and you are capturing a Part of history that means something to you, right? And then, through your photography and your art, you are expressing to others how you felt about that and your vision. Right You're. You're putting your color right. I think, and that's that's beautiful, right? Yeah, stop, stop at the roadside ruins, yep, because there's a lot, there's a lot there, it's a lot of beauty.
Speaker 1:Look out the window. Yes, all right, I we're going to wrap this up. I had a question for you Did you drive your Model T here or your Tesla Cybertruck here today? Neither one. Where'd you drive Corvette?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yep, we're too advanced for Model T's and we're scared of Cybertruck's. Corvettes are much more reliable, you know what? And one final thought, because you and I had kind of touched on AI a little bit just in our pre-conversations for this and it dawned on me today this thought, and I think that AI might be the modern switch from manual to automatic and people in my experience, including myself, there's a personal connection to your vehicle and feeling that engine in your hands, and it's a physical connection as much as it's an emotional and mental connection, something about shifting gears and feeling that rumble. And I hope that with the rise of AI and the fact that the car will just drive itself, I hope that people don't lose that connection with their vehicles and with the roads that they travel on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's another rabbit trail that we got to because those are real interesting questions and I've solved those to some degree in my mind that I can break things into travel and then automotive pleasure. So these are two different things sometimes. Sometimes I would love to have a drive to, just so I could just 100% focus on looking out the window and go stop, stop, hang on, stop. So I'm jumping out. You know, taking a photograph of something and also, I think also having a friend to do this is helpful. So I appreciate two inputs on what's interesting to photograph, because I've learned so much about you know what your partner photographs versus what you find interesting, and then you also expand your artistic eye that way. So there's so many things, so many things to learn.
Speaker 2:It's just awesome, I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like I said, part one, part two, part three, part four, part five this is changing roads. This is a thing. This is a podcast about travel. So all these things we didn't get to today, I guarantee you at some point we will get to, and Ranger obviously agrees here. So one more question yes, you could travel any. What's your? If you could travel any highway in the world, what would it be?
Speaker 2:You know I spend. My goal is not to stay on highways or to even travel on highways. My goal is to ride, drive the back roads, yes, the county roads.
Speaker 1:Perfectly said.
Speaker 2:And I haven't even explored all of Texas, which is one of my goals is to go touch parts of Texas that before my bucket list Perfect and stay in these different cultural areas that I've never experienced before. I've lived in South Texas, central Texas, but I've never been to East Texas for a while, or I've never been far West Texas to stay for a while. I visited the Panhandle area. There we went through Route 66, through the Texas route, through Route 66, and did the mile by mile, pulling over, pulling over, keep pulling over. We'll never finish Route 66 that way, but we broke it down into. Let's just do the Texas version. We'll start at one side of the border and we finish at the other side, and that's doable. I love it. Rent a motel in Amarillo and do your Route 66 travel from border to border. You've accomplished something Done.
Speaker 1:Super cool. Take the back roads always. Always beautiful insight. Just if you're on the back roads in West Texas, know that you're going to be going through some border patrol checkpoints, so make sure you don't have anything in your car. Thank you so much for being on this. This was a really fun conversation. This is the most Ranger has ever talked in the podcast and I think that he agrees that this is really cool to have you on, yeah, brad.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much. This was so exciting and so much fun. I so appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I can't wait for people to hear this and love you, man, to another 10 years and know each other hopefully longer. Awesome, awesome. All right, guys, ranger say bye. Oh, now you don't want to talk. Bye, guys, love you.