U.S. from the roadside

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 21

U.S. from the roadside

SIMON HOGGART

takes a look at

America’s roadside attractions — “one of the prides of a great nation.”

Nobody who travels the thousands of miles of interstate highways in the United States can miss them: “This exit for the ...” Roy Rogers Museum, dinosaur park, London Bridge transplanted to Arizona, Confederama, the Shuffleboard Hall of Fame, the World’s Largest Ten Commandments, a museum which contains Lee Harvey Oswald’s can opener. They are America’s roadside attractions, one of the prides of a great nation, and they have now been celebrated in a book called, aptly enough, “Roadside America.” The book, written by four young men and published in New York by Simon and Schuster, covers almost every state in the union. It is extremely tongue-in-cheek, very funny, and yet very affectionate: the authors plainly feel that the attractions they describe, like lava lamps, are fascinating in their splendid awfulness. There is Aquarena springs, for example, in San Marcos, Texas, where lovely young girls in togas invite you to watch a diving pig perform. The Cypress Knee Museum in Palmdale, Florida, has the world’s largest collection of bizarrely shaped pieces of cypress wood. There are at least ten places across the United States, from his home in Tennessee across to California, where you can catch mementoes of and tributes to Elvis Presley, including his sunglasses, his Exxon credit card, and his electric shoeshiner. There are stacks of celebrity

museums and parks: at the Liberace Museum in Las Vagas you can see his miniature piano, his sequined dolls dressed in his stage costumes, and a plaster cast of his brother’s hand. In Louisville, Kentucky, you can go to the Colonel Sanders museum and see a wire-sculpture chicken which flaps its wings and lays golden eggs. If you are passing Winterset, lowa, you can call in at John Wayne’s birthplace and see the eyepatch he wore while filming “True Grit.” The astonishing thing about America’s roadside attractions is not that they are fading but that so many of them remain. People used to a nightly diet of wonders on T.V. are less likely to be interested in mock Indian Teepees, caves filled with coloured lights, and hot dog stands shaped like hot dogs. Theme parks such as “Disneyland” and, nowadays, a host of others offer greater excitements than a tree you can drive through, or the world’s largest cow, or a wax museum. Worst of all, in 1965, the attractions were hit by the Highway Beautification Act, helped through Congress by Lady Bird Johnson, then First Lady. This all but eradicated road signs on the interstate highways used by virtually all long-dis-tance travellers. Parents who

might have been nagged by their children for up to 100 miles to stop for the Weeki Wachee Underwater showgirls in Florida, the Dalton Gang Hideout in Meade, Kansas, or the Witch Dungeon in Salem, Massachusetts, can now glide past them untroubled.

In spite of this, the attractions somehow manage to flourish. After all, people have to have something to do when they get to wherever they’re going. We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which is given over to little other than attractions, and which “Roadside America” calls a "Mecca.” It’s a stunning place, “sold” entirely to the vulgar and the gimcrack. It’s also clean, efficient, and rather attractive. The Chamber of Commerce keeps the streets appropriately decorated and, in case visitors should miss the point, there are signs thoughtfully labelled “Photo Spot” at places where

people might like to snap each other. Gatlinburg boasts the Elvis Hall of Fame, where you can see his rings, his Bible, his limousine, and his sunglasses, eked out with property belonging to other famous stars such as., Barbra Streisand and Sylvester Stallone. Nearby at the World of Illusions you peer myopically at a dark bronzed bust of the singer. Suddenly this turns into a living hologram of his head, which begins to sing a selection of his favourite hits. Another display magically recreates Superman using X-ray vision to peer at Lois Lane’s underwear. Gatlinburg also features a Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” Museum, the Guinness World Records Exhibition Centre, the Seven Gables Haunted House, and Christus Gardens, a religious theme park in which wax models, built in England, “complete with human hair and medically approved eyes,” populate well-known scenes from the Bible. Copyright — London Observer Service.