Dixie Before Disney 100 Years of Roadside Fun by Tom Hollis (Review)

Dixie Before Disney 100 Years of Roadside Fun by Tom Hollis (University of Mississippi, 1999)

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Dixie Before Disney 100 Years of Roadside Fun by Tom Hollis (Review)

by John Shelton Reed
Southern Cultures, Vol. 6, No. 3: Fall 2000

University of Mississippi, 1999

Among the many things we can blame the 1960s for is the end of the Golden Age of family automobile travel. Ten-hour days of being beaten by a hot, 55-mile-an-hour wind while trying to hear scratchy AM radio stations over the noise of the air and the tires. Sticking hands out the open window to make airfoils, waving at porch-sitters who were watching the passing traffic. (Usually they waved back.) Holding your breath over bridges, counting cows and horses. (A white horse doubled your score.) Reading Burma-Shave signs, and arguing about where the exact middle of the back seat was.

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