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As a child on road trips with my folks, I was much like any other bored child in the back seat waiting to get to Grandma's house, or Disneyland, or wherever we were indeed headed. I was an avid reader and would have been content to do so, though the bumpy back seat of a Trans Am is not the ideal place for such activities. I'd content myself with road signs, the backs of semis, licence plates, bumperstickers, and roadside stands.
It took me years to figure out why so many places had a "Frontage Road". It didn't seem like a very pretty name for a street. (Ah, the young aesthete...) Nor did I fully grasp the "free" part of freeway until a visit to the East Coast many years later. 
The signs that always struck me as the happiest were the Rest Areas. What a wonderful idea, I imagined. In that stuffy back seat I'd concocted a little roadside nirvana; comfortable seats in the shade, with little restaurants. To my child's mind a Rest Area was a pleasure village, a breath of civilization to what I saw (and arguably, still see) as undeveloped, sprawling waste, devoid of life.
I always wondered why my father would fly past these tiny heaven-on-earths, grumbling that we'd stop for food and a bathroom at a little place up the road. My mother would slightly cringe at the thought of stopping there. Maybe I thought they were denying me some pleasure simply to be spiteful, or because I'd made such a stink about having to leave my stuffed dog (creatively named, Dog, of course) at home. No matter. I'd forget about it by the time we reached the plush green and orange alcove of a Denny's or Perky's, with its mysteries of the vinyl booths with button seats; the dangerous-looking (but strangely thrilling) men at the counter, who'd always give my mother a stare that my father surely didn't appreciate; the inevitable place mat to color and the paper cup with crayons that never had the right colors in it; the odd looking staff, whom time and isolation had mutated out here in the nothingness between the bright cities; and of course, the food, which was a mystery in that it was the same flavor, color and consistency at every restaurant we went. 
It was years later, of course, that I'd travel the stretch of 101 between the Bay Area and Santa Barbara at least four times a year. I was no longer in the back seat of a Trans Am, but driving my own Honda Civic (the Clamshell). Not my first car, but better suited to the task than the aging VW I'd learned on, ground the clutch down in, and driven without oil until the engine nearly froze.
The Clamshell had home-tinted windows (with a bright seam in the back window where someone had done a bad job) and always smelled of car upholstery shampoo, which previous owners had doused the mats and rugs of the thing with. I still associate that smell with a time when I was most free, wild, and, quite frankly, stupid. It was a tacky little car, but I loved it nonetheless. On a rare trip without passengers I was able to finally stop at a Rest Area. Flashes of what I'd imagined it to be suddenly came rushing back to me. I was enthralled with the idea of milk and honey given joyously by a host of fan-wielding angels and soft cushions to recline upon. 
Of course, by then I'd suspected what I would find: A stained urinal trough, soap that washed only as well as sand, a lone tree with an RV backed up under it occupying all its shade, and ugly families shitting, playing with their poodle, or screaming that somebody was "gonna get smacked in a minute." If one was lucky, someone worked a cart with never-before-heard-of varieties of ice creams and candies (or hot dogs, for those who enjoyed living on the edge of danger...)
To say this was a let-down would be a gross understatement. Of course my mother cringed at the thought of hovering over a filthy toilet and hoping that some of the paper was still dry. Of course my father would have rather sat in the air conditioned restaurant and only make one stop instead of two. With my highway Asgard crumbled, I had no further recourse but to get back in the Clamshell and hope that the Lyon's wasn't too much further up the highway than I'd remembered. It was somewhat later when I was still exploring the darker edges of public sex that I'd discovered that these dirty little restrooms were just like the cleaner ones at the University library, except, well, dirtier. And not filled with closeted frat boys. With new eyes I looked at these ugly roadside attractions, and saw yet another pleasure palace, albeit one I never would have imagined as a child. It was at one of these rest stops that I sat in a 16-wheeler for the first (and only) time. Moments after that experience I found the small, cramped sleeping quarters in said 16 wheeler and was, not surprisingly, soon also having sex for the first time in a vehicle of that size. He was a nice enough man, and although he smelled a little too strongly of the road, he was gentle and somewhat attractive. Embarrassingly, I still look fondly at tractor-trailers to this day. 
Those experiences were extremely rare, and never planned. Soon I'd hear about Such-and-such County's local authorities "cracking down" on the roadside attraction's main attraction. I think sometimes of the men I'd see standing around outside, alone: how many of them had to spend a night being called "faggot" by backwoods cops only to be released with a ticket for loitering? Or of the man in the 16-wheeler: was he beaten up by undercover cops because he flashed his dick in the wrong Rest Area? I don't stop at Rest Areas anymore, unless it's a dire emergency. I'm rarely travelling far enough to warrant a stop in between. But I still look at roadsigns and still dream of a true Elysium Fields on the Freeway. Somehow I've never found the exit that I once dreamed of. |