10 things I miss about yesterday’s highways

Last year, I went on a “bucket list” tour of the Lincoln Highway, Route 66 and other highways across the country while compiling information for my latest book, Yesterday’s Highways. It reminded me of a lot of things I missed — highway sights and experiences from my youth that are just no longer there. So, I decided to compile a list. Here are my top 10:

The Sunset Drive-In in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

1. Drive-in theaters

Drive-ins are largely at thing of the past. At their peak, more than 4,000 such theaters dotted the landscape; today, there are barely 300 (The Sunset in San Luis Obispo, pictured at top, is one of them). Many of them made their home along the highway, close enough to town for easy access, but far enough away to keep the bright lights and revving engines away from quiet neighborhoods. Some drew attention to themselves with huge neon-lit murals on the back of their screens, where giant horses reared up in San Pedro and Van Nuys, and sailboats plied the ocean waves in Lakewood (all in California and all, sadly, gone today).

A juice stand, no longer serving juice, in Chowchilla, Calif.

2. Orange juice stands

I grew up on Highway 99 in California, and whenever I’d head north, I’d pass something called the Mammoth Orange in Fairmead, near Chowchilla. It was a juice stand under a giant canopy that also served “Alaska-sized” burgers. There was one at the southbound exit that, at some point, got painted blue and white with little stars and a red stripe. It was called Fast Eddie’s and got torn down in the 1990s. The stand off northbound 99 lasted a little longer, until a new interchange forced its removal in the middle of the next decade. Fresno radio personality Dean Opperman even recorded a song about it, as his alter-ego, Bobby Volare.

A Howard Johnson’s postcard touts its 28 flavors of ice cream.

3. Howard Johnson’s

At one point, HoJo seemed like it was everywhere. The roadside restaurant-diner-coffee shop started out as a Massachusetts ice cream stand serving 28 flavors back in the 1920s, and within a half-century, it was the nation’s largest restaurant chain. It had motels, next door, too. The chain exploded in the 1940s when it won contracts to build locations every 50 miles or so along eastern turnpikes. Everyone recognized its orange roofs, weathervanes and “Simple Simon and the Pieman” logo. But by the 2010s, the chain had been reduced to a single location, in Lake George, N.Y.

An old-style International House of Pancakes building in Burbank, Calif.

4. International House of Pancakes

Yes, this chain is still around, but somehow, it’s just not the same. Who can forget the days when it wasn’t called IHOP, and when it wasn’t just another boxy restaurant? The earliest International House of Pancakes locations were housed in steeply gabled A-frame buildings with Tudor-style siding and a replica gas lamp on the sign out front. The chain really did go for an international flavor back then, offering menu items like Maine Blueberry Pancakes, Viennese Potato Pancakes, Brazilian Banana Pancakes and Tropical Tahitian Pancakes. Ah, those were the days!

Sprague’s Super Service on Route 66 has been restored but no longer sells gas.

5. Full-service gas stations

There was a time when service stations really did offer service! When you pulled in, you’d hear a double bell go “ding-ding,” and an attendant in a spiffy (sometimes in a cap and bowtie) would come out and pump your gas for you. Not only that, he’d check your tires and your oil, wipe your windshield for you, and give you a free map of the area if you needed directions. Phillips 66 even enlisted former nurses to make the rounds to be sure its restrooms were clean. The era of full service went out the window for the most part in the 1970s with the Arab oil embargo, but a few places, like Oregon, continued to put the “full” in “full service.”  

Mom’s Cafe in Utah.

6. Coffee for a quarter (or cheaper)

Long before Starbucks was charging $4 or $5 for a designer cup of coffee, roadside cafés were keeping motorists and truckers awake with coffee for a quarter. Or a nickel. Back in 1977, Perry’s Chuck Wagon on Highway 99 ran a special charging a nickel for a cup of java (the regular price was just 20 cents). It was my parents’ regular stop between our home in Fresno and my grandparents’ place in Southern California, and we’d always pick up a sandwich and a slice of pie there. Unfortunately, the small chain went out of business, along with many other mom-and-pop roadside coffeehouses.

A bovine statue stands guard over a road in Winston-Salem, N.C.

7. Roadside wonders

Once upon a time, roadside architects put an emphasis on the creative. An ice cream stand might be shaped like and cone, or a root beer place like a mug of root beer. There was a chain of seven motor inns called Wigwam Villages, stretching from Kentucky to the West Coast, where you could spend the night in a replica wigwam. Giant “muffler men” like the Gemini Giant in Illinois and Big Chip in Pennsylvania guarded the side of the road, along with their female counterparts, the Uniroyal Gals. Attractions like the Blue Whale of Catoosa on Route 66 gave kids a break from the long, monotonous drive. Most of them are gone now, but a few are still there, remnants of an age when crazy was cool and creativity stole the show.

Valentine Diner at the Route 66 museum.

8. Diners

Yes, they still have diners, but most of them aren’t what they once were: long, rectangular prefab buildings that looked like rail cars because they were built at a factory and transported to their ultimate destination... yes, on rail cars! One manufacturer, Valentine Diners, sold small, boxy buildings for $5,000 a pop (or monthly payments of just $40). With just 8-10 stools, they were easy — and cheap — to operate with just a waiter and a cook. It’s no wonder so many of them popped up along the nation’s highways in the middle of the 20th century.

The Blue Whale of Catoosa on Route 66 in Oklahoma.

9. Amusement parks

Before Disneyesque super-sized theme parks, smaller roadside attractions dotted the highway, such as the aforementioned Blue Whale of Catoosa and an animal park behind Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurant on Highway 101 in Buellton, Calif., which operated around 1970. There was Santa Claus Lane in Santa Barbara, where giant statues of Santa (poking his head out of a chimney) and Frosty the Snowman held forth, overseeing a line of Christmas-themed shops and restaurants along the California Coast. They’re all gone now, but the street is still called Santa Claus Lane. One of my favorites was Lion Country Safari in Irvine, Calif., where you could drive a jeep through the park and gaze at African-wildlife like zebras and, of course, lions. Unfortunately, it closed in 1984.

Old Motel Drive in Fresno, Calif., is now just a memory.

10. Neon corridors

You knew you were coming up on a new town when you saw the glow of neon lights up ahead. Once upon a time, motels owners built neon gateways to many towns, offering travelers a place to bed down for the night. They were like miniature versions of Vegas, and they provided a template on which the Nevada gaming capital built its empire. But as new interstates bypassed old highways, those neon gateways lost their luster. The motels that once seemed so glamorous were torn down or forgotten, converted into apartments or seedy, low-rent shadows of their former selves. The neon went dark, turning out the lights on the golden era of America’s highways.

10 ways Trump and Dershowitz are kindred souls

It’s no wonder Donald Trump chose Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz to represent him at his impeachment trial.

These men are two peas in a pod. Trump personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is more of an attack dog in the Trump mold, but beyond that surface similarity, Trump and Dershowitz have far more in common, and it runs to the core of who both men are.

It turns out, Trump and Dershowitz have quite a lot in common. Consider the following:

1.

They both trample on the truth. Trump has done so more than 15,000 times since taking office, according to The Washington Post. And Dershowitz? Consider this gem: “The courtroom oath — to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — is applicable only to witnesses... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth.” When Dershowitz said this, he basically admitting he has no obligation to tell the whole truth. Which pretty much shoots his credibility. Of course, lawyers and politicians are both notorious for spinning the facts to benefit their own interests. In a list of 15 professions in a 2018 Gallup poll ranked lawyers 12th and members of Congress 15th (politicians) sandwiched around business executives and car dealers. But that’s just the beginning of the common ground between Trump and Dershowitz.

2.

They don’t care what the experts think. Trump thinks he knows more about war than four-star generals and doesn’t believe climate change is a problem, even though nearly every scientist says it is. Dershowitz, meanwhile, disagrees with the overwhelming majority of legal scholars who say impeachment does not require a statutory crime. His response, when confronted with this fact? “Most of the scholars disagree with me. I think they’re wrong.”

3.

They hate admitting mistakes. Or apologizing. Trump hardly ever does (the rare exception being his televised apology for disgusting remarks made on an Access Hollywood tape). When confronted about his own record, Dershowitz tries to dance around the subject like, well, a lawyer. In 1998, he argued that abuse of trust was impeachable; in 2020, he said it wasn’t. When Anderson Cooper asked him if he’d been wrong before, he answered, “No, I wasn’t wrong.” He would say he was “much more correct right now.” People averse to admitting mistakes have one thing in common: egos. The big kind. The fragile kind.

4.

They love the spotlight. Most presidents do, to be sure. But most presidents don’t put their names on hotels. And while we’re at it, can you name another chief executive who has used $60,000 donated for charity to buy a portrait of himself? Dershowitz’s actions speak louder than his words. He’s drawn to cable news broadcasts like the Mothman to a disaster waiting to happen. Like Trump, a former reality TV host, Dershowitz loves those cameras. And he also loves those high-profile clients that ensure he stays in the headlines:  O.J. Simpson. Jim Bakker. Michael Milken. Jeffrey Epstein. ’Nuff said.

5.

They associate with shady characters. In Trump’s case, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rick Gates... In the case of Dershowitz, see the list directly above (which actually makes Trump’s bunch seem tame by comparison). These were, of course, not personal friends, but clients. Still, lawyers such as Dershowitz don’t have to take such cases. Why choose clients like these? Why not let the public defender do it? Because... see above: Ego. Spotlight.

6.

They defy common sense. Trump uses a mix of intimidation, media marketing and hot-button topics like immigration, religious issues and gun rights. Dershowitz does it through legal arguments that make no sense. According to Dershowitz, a mixed motive is not corrupt. But that’s what “corrupt” means! If you put arsenic in a glass of milk, you’ve corrupted it. The milk is still there, but the whole mixture is toxic because you’ve added the poison. Put it another way: Dershowitz and the president’s legal team argued that a president can’t be impeached if he has a mixed motive. So, if someone steals a car because his mom needs a ride to the supermarket... that must be OK.

7.

They shatter norms. Trump’s all about doing things his way: traditional standards be damned. (This is ironic when you think about it, since the Constitution is the ultimate traditional standard in American secular life.) Trump pulls out of treaties, sends unappointed cronies to foreign countries to dig up bullshit on political opponents, and governs by Twitter. You get the idea. Dershowitz, meanwhile, suggests that it’s impossible to impeach a president who does something underhanded to get elected. Why? Because the president thinks his election is in the public interest! And if he thinks so, it must be true, right?

8.

They love to fight. And not just fight, but fight for extreme positions. As Laurence Tribe, another Harvard legal mind, said of Dershowitz: “He revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible.” Sound like someone else you know? Former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told Politico: “If he’s not in a fight, he looks for one. He can’t stop.” And the more outrageous Trump’s position, the more people will criticize him, and the more he can...

9.

They play the victim. Trump is the all-time champ in this department, with his absurd claim that “no politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly” than he has. By playing the victim, he gains sympathy from his followers, and suggests any attack on him is an attack on them, too. It’s been an effective strategy. And Dershowitz? When Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin dared to challenge his “great and unmatched wisdom” (oops, sorry, that’s Trump’s phrase, not Dershowitz’s) on CNN, he accused them of being “two bullies.” Or maybe they were doing their job.

10.

They claim to be something they’re not. Trump, a billionaire, the champion of the common man? This is a guy who spent $25 million to settle a lawsuit alleging he’d defrauded students who signed up for his non-accredited Trump University. A guy who violated the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain with union workers at his Las Vegas hotel. I could go on. Trump the champion of churches? Yes, Trump belonged to a church New York City church in the mid-2000s, but the pastor didn’t see him there once in five years. Dershowitz, for his part, calls himself “a Hillary Clinton liberal Democrat.” Yet he’s called gun-control advocates “foolish liberals” and used a nonsensical argument to immunize presidents from oversight. Unchecked power is seldom, if ever, any friend of liberalism. I doubt anyone would have called King George’s lawyers liberals if they’d sued the rebellions colonies for breach of contract.

Critics miss the point, and the charm, of Downey's "Dolittle"

Hey, critics, guess what? You aren’t my parents.

You weren’t there to take care of me when I got sick, and you weren’t there when my first girlfriend broke up with me. My parents taught me to think critically, but they also encouraged me to dream: They never told me my imaginary dragon friend wasn’t real or that I should put down The Hobbit and pick up War and Peace.

Which brings me to Robert Downey Jr.’s Dolittle, the latest adaptation of Hugh Lofting’s novels about a physician who can talk to animals.

The critics hate it. I mean they really hate it. As of this writing, critics have given it a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But here’s the thing. Audiences don’t hate it – not at all. So far, they’ve given it a 76% rating.

It isn’t unusual for audiences on RT to like movies more than the critics do. But the spread is usually more like 10 percentage points. So, what’s going on here?

Here’s my hypothesis: Critics have become so jaded and “grown-up,” they’ve forgotten how to think like kids. Jokes that kids enjoy are dismissed as “juvenile,” and themes that appeal to kids are either simplistic or ignored altogether.

The themes addressed in Dolittle include:

• Learning to work together and appreciate each other despite our differences (Yoshi the polar bear and Plimpton the ostrich).

• Overcoming fear to stand up for ourselves and our friends (Chee-Chee the gorilla).

• Looking for the hurt behind someone’s bitterness and anger (the constipated dragon).

Perhaps most telling is the film’s message about grief, and moving past the cynicism it can cause in order to help others.

No wonder critics don’t like this film: Most of them are cynical by nature.

I suspect most of them were prepared to dislike this movie for a couple of reasons. First of all, word leaked out that the movie had been delayed for extensive reshoots after the film did poorly with test audiences. So, critics were looking for inconsistencies from the get-go and wound up labeling the film jumbled and disjointed.

But it’s not either of those things. There’s nothing difficult to follow about it, the plot is clear, and it moves quickly from scene to scene without any of the bloated storytelling that sank the first Dolittle adaptation, the 1967 musical featuring Rex Harrison.

Second, it’s geared toward a family audience. Remember, we’re dealing with an industry that almost never uses the “G” rating anymore because it’s considered the kiss of death: Not “edgy” enough; too “childish.”

Mistaking child-friendly for childish is something critics seem predisposed to do, and that’s a huge mistake. When it comes down to it, the messages you’ll find in Dolittle are the kind of messages good parents teach their kids. They also serve as reminders to adults who can become exhausted and even lost as we navigate a challenging, difficult world.

They’re the kind of messages that go down best with a spoonful of sugary sweetness. That’s not a quality critics like. But in a world often defined by conflict, defensiveness and fatalism, it’s precisely what we need – whether we’re kids or adults.

Mild spoiler: There’s a scene in which Dolittle encounters a bitter old tiger named Barry who’s always been told he isn’t good enough. The Doctor’s treatment? Reflect a bit of sunlight on the floor and have Barry chase it around like a kitten. On the surface, it’s a simple device to distract the tiger from attacking our hero; but it’s also a metaphor for the lost innocence of childhood.

That’s one reason this is actually a good film: It encourages us, like Barry the Tiger, to put aside our bitterness and play at being a child again.

Critics either missed this or don’t care, but audiences get it.

An approval rating of 76 percent isn’t perfect, and neither is the movie. Robert Downey Jr.’s weird accent makes him sound like he’s hoarse or whispering half the time. And at one point, he states there’s no map to their destination – so it’s a surprise to see the characters consulting maps later on. The villain, played by Michael Sheen, appears to have been left behind on the open sea, but somehow arrives at the island ahead of Dolittle.

But these things are quibbles when measured against the movie’s overall tone, which is upbeat and hopeful: something we could use a lot more of these days. Downey plays Dolittle as a very quirky but very human character, striking a good balance between lighthearted fun and insight into the human condition.

It’s also worth noting that this Dolittle film, at least so far, has easily the best audience rating of any Dolittle film on Rotten Tomatoes. Its 76% rating compares to a 57% mark for the 1967 film, a 34% rating for Eddie Murphy’s 1998 remake, and a 26% showing for Murphy’s sequel three years later. Three further sequels in the Murphy movies (without Murphy), garnered scores of 45, 45 and 52%.

The takeaway: Downey’s version scores nearly 20 points better than any of the others among audiences.

But critics somehow think it’s the worst.

Can we say, “Out of touch”?

George Bernard Shaw wrote that “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” I’d add this: “Those who can’t do either one, criticize.” Teaching requires in-depth knowledge of a process that can be passed along to students; criticism requires just one thing: an opinion.

Well, to quote Dirty Harry Callahan: “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.”

In this case, critics seem to have more than their share. I’ll take a constipated dragon over a constipated critic any day.

The Astros aren't the 1919 Reds, they're the Black Sox

Major League Baseball has lost all credibility.

Many are applauding MLB for its “harsh” judgment in suspending the Houston Astros’ general manager and manager for a year, and praising the Astros’ owner for firing them.

Fine.

But the Astros are still being recognized as the 2017 World Series champions. This one fact renders any other censure or punishment virtually meaningless.

Think the New England Patriots spying on opponents’ practices is bad? This makes the Patriots’ transgressions look like stealing candy from a drugstore, compared to a bank heist. This didn’t happen in practice; it happened in an actual game.

Here’s what the Astros did to their opponents: They used the centerfield camera to steal the catcher’s signs to the pitcher, which indicate what pitch is coming next. Then, they relayed that information to their batters, who knew what pitches to expect.

This is like using a hidden camera to see another player’s cards in a poker game. Try that at a casino and you’ll get banned for life. If you’d have tried it in the Old West, it would have gotten you a gunfight at high noon.

But MLB won’t allow the Dodgers to even make a statement about it. It’s issued a gag order against the team, forbidding it from even commenting.

Bogus argument

In light of all this, it’s a travesty that the Astros get to keep calling themselves “world champions.” But almost as offensive is the rationale being used to justify it: a supposed precedent set in the 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which the heavily favored Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds – intentionally playing poorly in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate.

Bob Costas relayed this argument when he appeared on CNN: “Look, we know that the 1919 Chicago White Sox ... threw the World Series, but the record books still say that the Cincinnati Reds are the 1919 World Champions.”

But this isn’t just comparing apples to oranges, it’s declaring rotten apples to ripe oranges.

In case the distinction isn’t obvious – and it should be to a second-grader – the Cincinnati Reds did nothing wrong that would have justified stripping them of the title. The White Sox were the guilty party. They gave away the Series, and punishing the Reds for the White Sox’s transgression would have been ridiculous.

In the 2017 World Series, the exact opposite occurred. Unlike in 1919, the winning team was the guilty party. Costas is right about this much: You can’t penalize the Reds for winning when they did nothing wrong. But he’s dead wrong about comparing the Reds and the Astros, because unlike the Reds, the Astros are the ones who broke the rules.

In fact, the 1919 Reds have more in common with the 2017 Dodgers than they do with the Astros. The Reds and Dodgers both played by the rules. One team won and deserved to keep its title; the other team lost and deserved better. Much better.

MLB vs. NCAA

The Costas argument is a sham. The truth is much simpler: Major League Baseball doesn’t want to endure the embarrassment of proclaiming the Dodgers 2017 champions, or at the very least, vacating the title by stripping the Astros of their crown.

Precedent? Just look at the 2005 Orange Bowl, in which USC destroyed Oklahoma 55-19 in a battle of unbeaten teams. The NCAA subsequently found that USC had used an ineligible player, running back Reggie Bush. Bush didn’t score a single touchdown in the game and wasn’t even his team’s leading rusher. But the NCAA forced USC to vacate every game that season in which Bush played a single down – including the Orange Bowl.

If the NCAA can do it, so can Major League Baseball. But it won’t. It won’t even allow the Dodgers organization to comment on its decision not to vacate the Astros’ pseudo-championship.

Major League Baseball wants to think it’s getting tough by issuing long suspensions and a “maximum” $5 million fine (a pittance for any major professional sports team in this country).

It’s not toughness. It’s cowardice.

Unless the Astros are forced to vacate the title, anything else MLB does is just window dressing designed to make itself look good.

The Dodgers deserved better. Fans deserve better. The game deserves better. We all deserve better.

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Photo: Astros Manager A.J. Hinch, sporting cool shades in 2015, apparently thought it was also cool to use technology to steal signs. He’s been suspended and fired as a result, but the Houston Astros got to keep their title. Photo by Eric Enfermero, Creative Commons 4.0 license.