There’s no road trip here. The Great American Road Trip is not a travelogue. Nor is it a guide for traveling to or through a particular place. It is a well-done, very inclusive, nicely illustrated catalog of stuff that people like me drive around the country to see.

The subtitle is more accurate. This book is indeed A Celebration of Roadside Americana, and that’s a celebration I’m always ready to put on my party hat for. It’s a celebration that Rolando Pujol is extremely well qualified to host. He is an award-winning print and TV journalist, and is the man behind The Retrologist website. Surprisingly, this appears to be his first book.

Pujol identifies seven categories of stuff people like me/us drive around the country to see, and has divided the country we drive around in into eleven regions. The chapters are the regions: Northeast, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, South Central, Midwest, Heartland, Desert Southwest, Mountain West, Pacific Northwest, and California. Sections in each of those chapters are devoted to the categories: Roadside Quirks, Roadside Eats, Mainstays of Main Street, On with the Show, The Inn Crowd, Sweet Stops, and Cheers! I bet most of you can come up with an example of something in each of the categories, even without a precise definition. Sidebars appear here and there to expand on or drill down on selected topics.

The book is jam-packed with bright color photos that range in size from small thumbnails, measuring only an inch or so on a side, to double-page spreads at the front of each chapter. Many are integrated into the book’s text layout. I believe that all photos were taken by the author.

Every photo is identified in the text, and a few points of interest are described without an accompanying photo. Some attractions are covered in a single paragraph, but many get a lot more. The city and state are always provided, and more often than not, some interesting history about the building, the owners, or both is also included.

For the first time, I’m writing a book review without reading every word in the book. I did read every word from the beginning through the end of the Midwest chapter. That’s where my home is, and there are quite a few familiar items in that chapter. However, there is no storyline or itinerary to move the reader forward, and I found my page-turning motivation beginning to fade at that point. The pictures are great, and the nuggets are well-written and informative. I may finish it in some short spurts over the winter, and in all likelihood, I’ll give it a look when planning a trip to a specific area. I have not removed my bookmark.

This is a good quality hardback publication with glossy pages that properly present the photos. It is fully indexed for help in finding specific points of interest. I ordered this book when it was announced that Pujol would be featured in the Society for Commercial Archeology’s August Zoom presentation. I thought I might get in some advance reading, but that didn’t quite work out. That presentation was recorded and, like other SCA Zoom presentations, has been made available for anyone to view. Learn more about The Great American Retro Road Trip straight from the Retrologist’s mouth here.

The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana, Rolando Pujol, Artisan (June 24, 2025), 7.2 x 9.25 inches, 320 pages, ISBN 978-1648293719
Available through Amazon.

This is the second book that I’m aware of about Medal of Honor recipient Doug Dickey. I was aware of the first one, Remembering Douglas Eugene Dickey, USMC, before its 2015 publication. I quickly bought it, but did not get my review written and posted until nearly a year later. Although A Final Valiant Act was published in 2020, I only became aware of it last fall when I spotted it in the Garst Museum gift shop. It then took me several months to get it read and reviewed. It shouldn’t have.

It’s a well-written, straightforward telling of the story. Doug enlisted in the Marines with four classmates as part of the Buddy Program, which assured they would stay together through boot camp. Lang met with the survivors of the group as he researched the story. He also spoke with members of Doug’s family and with many of the men he served with in Vietnam. These contacts provided lots of quotes and details. He also dug through military records and things like newspapers to produce a proper background for Doug’s Easter morning sacrifice. That background is so complete that the book’s dust cover calls Lang’s writing “the most detailed account of Operation Beacon Hill yet written.” I don’t doubt that, but the “detailed account” is so well woven into the flow of the story that it’s not something I would have guessed.

The book’s title comes from a phrase in Doug Dickey’s Congressional Medal of Honor citation. I suspect it is a phrase that appears in far too many award citations. In this case, it appears as part of the sentence, “Fully realizing the inevitable result of his actions, Private First Class Dickey, in a final valiant act, quickly and unhesitatingly threw himself upon the deadly grenade, absorbing with his own body the full and complete force of the explosion.” There’s more to the citation, of course, although that is the essence of it. It mentions that there was “a fierce battle” going on, that “a grenade landed in the midst of a group of Marines”, and that Doug’s actions “saved a number of his comrades from certain injury and possible death.” Lang describes that “fierce battle” and how it came to be. He puts names and personalities to the “group of Marines”, and he tells us what became of those “comrades” as they returned to their homes and eventually started having reunions. The first reunion was in Doug Dickey’s hometown, so that Doug’s parents were able to meet some of the men their son had saved. Some of the reunions that followed were held in the hometowns of other fallen comrades.

The book includes several maps and diagrams to help describe things like locations and organization hierarchies. There are even a few black and white pictures mixed in with the text. That’s nice, but they are on matte paper. What is even nicer is the section of twenty-two glossy pages containing higher quality images, many of which are in color.

When I reviewed Remembering Douglas Eugene Dickey, USMC, I recommended it, but not for everybody because of it being very comprehensive and somewhat scholarly. I have no such caveats regarding A Final Valiant Act. There are fewer historic details and less auxiliary information, but nothing central to the story is missing, and it reads more like a novel.

As mentioned several times on this website, Doug Dickey was a classmate of mine. I have attended events that honored him and read much that has been written about him. Two things from this book that I’d not heard before stood out. The common belief was that Doug fell on top of a single grenade, and that is what the Medal of Honor citation describes. But years later, when witnesses were able to compare notes, it was determined that there was a second grenade that Doug pulled under his body after falling on the first one. I was also struck by the sentence that Lang ends his book with, and with which I’ll end this review. It’s something that Doug’s mother, Leona Dickey, said when talking about her oldest son. “The guy who threw the grenade — he would have loved him, if he could have just met him.”

A Final Valiant Act, LtCol John B. Lang, USMC (Ret.), Casemate (April 28, 2020), 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches, 296 pages, ISBN 978-1612007571
Available through Amazon.

I had so much fun driving twice across the country for 20 in ’21 and the YT Too, that I did it again. This time, both coast-to-coast routes were from the era of named auto trails that preceded the U.S. Numbered Highway System. A drive on the National Old Trails Road was plotted years ago but never got scheduled. Only after I was given access to a guide for the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway, an auto trail with similar endpoints, did I get serious about scheduling a trip on the NOTR that I matched with one on the PPOO. Driving both trails in one outing didn’t fit into my life in 2024, so they were split into two. Both trips and both routes do fit into this book, however, despite there being over 200 photos included. Apparently, that’s a personal record. In prepping to write this review, I reread my review for 20 in ’21 and the YT Too and saw it was bragging about “nearly 200” photos. “Over 200” is now the new high mark. This book doesn’t have more pages, though, so I have to resort to bragging about “nearly as many pages as 20 in ’21 and the YT Too”. 

I also bragged about the title of the Yellowstone Trail and US 20 book and bemoaned the fact that it wasn’t as clever as initially envisioned. Of course, clever sometimes also means cryptic, and that might have been the case here. Anyone who thought 20 in ’21 and the YT Too overly cryptic will be happy to see that the title of this book isn’t cryptic at all and not the least bit clever either. It really is about going across America on two old highways and, since I’ve done that before, it really is about two MORE old highways. It just occurred to me that some folks might be unhappy about having to guess which two, and I can understand that. But putting the wordy names of these two auto trails in the title would have made it entirely too long, and it’s too late to do anything about it now anyway. Sorry.

To be honest, though, even if the names National Old Trails Road and Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway were right there in the title, they would not be recognized by everyone. Out west, some would recognize the NOTR as something that turned into US 66. Back east, a similar number might recognize it and think it had become US 40. In the middle of the country, I suspect that just a few would even recognize the PPOO’s name. Of those who did, some might say it was replaced by US 36, while others would claim it became US 22. There is a little truth in each of these claims, but my point is that not all that many people know that the PPOO and NOTR were both once routes that connected the East Coast with the West. Their names in the title would not be any more enlightening to many than the words “Old Highways”.

There is a chapter on the history of each of the subject highways that might enlighten you a little, but the majority of this book just tells about me trying to follow the paths of the historic routes while gawking at scenery and points of interest and taking some pictures.

Two More Old Highways Across America, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2025, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 185 pages, ISBN 979-8280457881.

Paperback and Kindle versions available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon and Goodreads are appreciated and helpful, and can be submitted regardless of where you purchased the book. All Trip Mouse books are described here with links to purchase signed copies.

My October Tinkertown visit began with a nice chat with owner Carla Ward. We had exchanged a few emails when I reviewed her 2020 book, The Tinker of Tinkertown, so of course, that was a topic, and talking about that book naturally led to her mentioning that the Tinker of Tinkertown’s daughter had also written a book about her dad. Leaving Tinkertown was published about a month after what had been my most recent visit to the museum, so maybe I can be forgiven for not knowing about it. It took a while for the copy that went home with me in October to reach the top of my reading list, but once it did, it quickly made an impression. Tanya Ward Goodman has remarkable writing talent — and she’s not afraid to use it.

There is a lot of not being afraid, or more accurately, overcoming fear, in Leaving Tinkertown. Ross Ward, Tinkertown’s creator and Tanya’s father, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease at age 57. Everyone around him had plenty of fear to overcome.

Tanya was living in Los Angeles at the time but was present in New Mexico when the diagnosis was delivered, and even moved back to the museum that had been her childhood home for a while to help with things as the disease progressed. On the day of the diagnosis, she found herself remembering stories her dad told her as a child and wondering just how the plaques and tangles the doctor tried to describe would affect her father’s brain. She asks herself, “Will he survive this? If he doesn’t, who will tell the story?”

It seemed pretty obvious that it would be Tanya who told the story, and that sort of reinforced the idea that the book was about Ross Ward. I did certainly learn a lot about the incredibly creative artist from this book, but I soon realized that the book really was about its author. I suppose I should have known that from the title.

Tanya’s life wasn’t exactly typical. That her parents divorced and her dad remarried when she was quite young is hardly unusual, but that her mother and stepmother were both important influences as she grew up was a bit so. Even more unusual were occasional trips with her father as he traveled the country, painting rides and signs for carnivals and the like. The house she grew up in had walls made of concrete and empty bottles. It was filled, like a museum, with her dad’s artwork, and part of it was an actual museum open to the public.

Alzheimer’s is a main character in the book. When Ross is diagnosed with it, his mother insists on leaving South Dakota to be with her son in New Mexico. Before long, the disease had grabbed her too. It moves fast and is a sort of high-speed preview of what to expect with Ross. Tanya writes about the strain this places on everyone in the family with complete frankness and uncommon skill. This is what I had in mind when I spoke of her not being afraid to use her writing talent.

Of course, she must have overcome a considerable amount of fear in writing about other aspects of her life, such as the budding romance she put on hold in California to spend time in New Mexico. And overcoming fear and other emotions surely played a role in dealing with all those issues in real life, too.

I have some experience with Alzheimer’s. It is what took my dad. But he was in his 80s, not 50s, and was as far from rebellious as it is possible to be. Also, I was close to it for only a few months and not a few years. So, there are many problems Tanya and others had to deal with that I cannot relate to. But watching a guy that could once do anything turn into someone who can do nothing… Yeah, that’s tough.

Leaving Tinkertown is part of the Literature and Medicine Series from the University of New Mexico Press. Part of their stated mission is to showcase “the texture of the experience of illness,” which this book does incredibly well. It’s been out for more than a decade now, so I don’t think anyone would call it a spoiler if I let it be known that the budding romance bloomed and that Tanya is happily back in LA with a husband and a couple of kids.

Leaving Tinkertown, Tanya Ward Goodman, University of New Mexico Press (August 15, 2013), 6 x 9 inches, 232 pages, ISBN 978-0826353665
Available through Amazon.

Before I even opened this book I was aware of Gloria Nash’s childhood fascination with the 1964 World’s Fair, the family circumstances that brought her back to the neighborhood, and her visits to the old fairgrounds that ultimately led to creating Looking Back at the Future. I was not aware of a high school photography class assignment to “locate and photograph remnants of the fair” that had recently closed. A few black-and-white pictures taken at that time are included in this volume where she wraps up that assignment in style.

Of course, that’s not the only thing I was unaware of and learned here. One that seems like a biggy is that the 1939 and 1964 New York World’s Fairs were held at the same location and that the real goal was the creation of a park. The fairs were simply one of the means to that end. In terms of smaller details, the book’s ratio of new revelations to things I already knew is overwhelming. A short time ago, I knew essentially nothing about the 1939 fair, and about the only things I knew about the 1964 fair were that it was home to the iconic Unisphere and that the Ford Mustang was introduced there.

The book’s subtitle, “Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs”, accurately describes its main thrust. Well-written text provides background on both fairs, and there are descriptions of buildings and other items that no longer exist, but photographs of what that subtitle calls “leftovers” fill the bulk of the book. Most were taken by the author although a few come from other sources. Some images from postcards and other promotional materials are also used sparingly. The book is printed on good quality fairly heavy stock but it is not coated gloss stock. All of the modern photos are bright and clear and look quite good but this is not a “coffee table” book.

Nash has done a phenomenal job in tracking down fair remnants and makes sure that others can “locate and photograph” these leftovers, too. The location of all leftovers at the fair site (now Flushing Meadows Corona Park) is shown on a map with color coding to distinguish 1939 leftovers from 1964 leftovers. Both chapters on “On-Site Leftovers” contain what amounts to a tour guide for a walk that visits each of them. Chapters on “Off-Site Leftovers” describe locations and give addresses where appropriate. An appendix provides these locations in a list format.

Some of the leftovers from 1939 became leftovers only because they could not be shipped back to a Europe at war. Poland, which was invaded in September 1939, did not reopen its pavilion for the fair’s second season. Others could have made it home but did not. I was surprised to learn that four 25-foot-tall columns that were part of my home state’s building at the 1939 fair have survived and stand at the entrance of a cemetery in Cherry Hill, NJ.

It’s not surprising that more leftovers remain from 1964 than 1939 but it might be surprising that what is probably the oldest fair leftover is from the more recent fair. Jordan made a gift of a nearly 2000-year-old Roman column from the Temple of Artemis. It remains on site but was damaged by vandals in June of 2023. Nash includes a picture of the full column along with one of the damage and another with the damaged section removed for repair. At least a candidate for the second oldest leftover is a carousel made by combining parts of a 1903 and a 1908 carousel. Although it has been relocated, it remains in the park and operates seasonally.

Although both of these fairs made lasting impressions on the people who attended them. neither was a success from the organizers’ point of view. Organizers in 1939 hoped for 50 million visitors but got only 45 million. The target in 1964 was 70 million, but only 51 million showed up. I wasn’t around in 1939, and even though I was very much around in 1964 and well aware of the fair, I did not attend. I have only attended one world’s fair in my life, and that was in 1983 in Knoxville, TN. Nash says that was the last profitable world’s fair held in this country. Coincidence?

Looking Back at the Future: Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs, Gloria R Nash, N R G Press (November 30, 2024), 8 x 10 inches, 124 pages, ISBN 978-1940046006
Available through Amazon.

If you would like to learn more about this book directly from its author, give a listen to her visit on the December 22 episode of the Coffee With Jim podcast. I did.

I’ve been anticipating this book for a few years now. Henry was probably well into his research for the book when he gave a presentation at the 2017 Lincoln Highway Association conference on trekkers who had incorporated all or part of the highway in their travels. The Lincoln Highway and other trails aimed at automobiles appeared in the latter half of the golden age of trekking, which Trekking Across America focuses on. Henry identifies this as roughly 1890 to 1930. Merriam-Webster defines a trek as “an arduous journey” and during that period just about any long-distance journey that did not involve the railroad was unquestionably arduous. I ordered the book as soon as I became aware of its publication but my own non-arduous travels and the winter holidays kept me from reading and reviewing it until now.

There are a couple of motorcycle-powered treks among those that Henry documents as well as a few powered by beasts of burden that include a bull, some goats, and a team of sled dogs from Alaska. But the vast majority were powered by the trekkers themselves and typically by just walking. “Pedestrian mania” was an actual thing in the latter part of the nineteenth century with all sorts of walking competitions and exhibitions taking place and being reported on by newspapers and magazines.

A fellow named Edward Weston is credited with getting the walking craze started by walking from Boston to Washington to satisfy a bet made on the wrong guy (Stephen Douglas) in the 1860 presidential election. Apparently, Weston decided that he really liked walking and was quite good at it. He proceeded to set records and win awards into his seventies. In some circles, the rampant pedestrianism of the time was referred to as Westonianism.

Henry is a longtime postcard collector and tells how he first discovered trekking through a misfiled postcard of two boys attempting to skate from New York to San Francisco in 1910. Trekking and postcard collecting make a very good match for each other. Weston financed some of his travels by selling photos of himself, and most of those who came after did something similar. Some postcards are just about the only evidence of treks that did not get very far. Others are the entry to sources such as newspaper reports that flesh out the trek.

Postcards are also a rather natural way to provide a visual connection with a trek’s story. Henry divides these stories into five chapters based — not all that rigidly — on the reason for the trek. Following a chapter’s introduction are several segments featuring one or two specific treks with at least one related image. Postcards often provide those images. These two or three page standalone segments allow “Trekking Across America” to be read in small doses if desired.

Individual males were hardly the only ones undertaking these long arduous journeys. Buddies, siblings, newlyweds, whole families, and even a few lone women appear on these pages. Incidentally, little evidence is presented here that a trekking honeymoon will lead to marital bliss. The rules for some of the contests and challenges were also interesting. Virtually every trek involved some sort of time limit but rules about clothing, starting with little or no money, and working en route were also common. After the turn of the century, gimmicks such as the aforementioned skating or rolling a hoop might be involved. One fellow fiddled every step of the way as he walked from New York to Los Angeles and on to San Francisco.

Trekkers were certainly a diverse lot and even included some handicapped individuals such as a man with one leg, a man with one arm, and another with no arms. All three remind us of unpleasant facts about the past. The leg was lost by a four-year-old playing in a train yard. That possibly could happen today but it’s not very likely. The three arms were all lost in factory accidents. The worker who lost his left arm was nine. Both arms were lost by a worker just four years older, thirteen. The Child Labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act might have prevented both of those but it did not come along until 1938.

When I first opened Trekking Across America and scanned the table of contents, I noticed that the epilogue carried the title “When Highways Were Stages”. Although it seems really silly now, I connected that with the divisions or stages of a route followed by stagecoaches. On reaching the epilogue, it instantly became apparent that Henry was referring to Shakespearean stages and not Wells Fargo stages and it added a layer of insight for some aspects of the stories I had just read. The earliest trekkers, such as Edward Weston, were respected and celebrated. That changed when baseball overtook walking as the nation’s number-one spectator sport and suffered even more as the twentieth century overtook the nineteenth. Whereas most, if not all, of the prizes pursued by the first generation of professional pedestrians were legitimate, this became less and less the case. Evidence of this is in the frequent changes in prize amounts, completion deadlines, and other rules claimed by trekkers as they traveled.

But even as confidence in cover stories fell and the trekkers became sometimes viewed as freeloaders, they were still welcomed to towns along their routes, their postcards. were purchased, and their lectures attended. Because, Henry believes, they were a break from the routine and they were entertaining. In Trekking Across America, they still are.

Trekking Across America: An Up-Close Look at a Once-Popular Pastime, Lyell D. Henry Jr., University Of Iowa Press (October 30, 2024), 6 x 9 inches, 278 pages, ISBN 978-1609389796
Available through Amazon.