Richard Ratay - Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip

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More Praise for

DONT MAKE ME PULL OVER!

Ratay has perfectly captured the essence of what it was like to embark on a road trip in the golden days of family vacations. Combining spot-on history and a great sense of humor, Dont Make Me Pull Over! feels so authentic I got carsick reading it.

Jane Stern, coauthor of Roadfood

I was laughing the whole way. As an expert on the 1970s (I was there), I encourage you to climb in, wait for that sweet Toronado engine to purr, and let Rich Ratay take you on his wonderful ride through the great American pastime known as the family road trip.

Tom Shillue, author of Mean Dads for a Better America: The Generous Rewards of an Old-Fashioned Childhood

Entertaining social history spiced with funny family memories. The characters include the first man to drive a car around the world, in 1906 (before fast food!), and Americas first highway czar, who served under seven presidents until Eisenhower fired him. And then theres Ratay himself, as a ten-year-old, on the CB radio: Blue Thunder here, gobbling up the zipper dashes like PacMan rollin for a power pill. Great stuff.

Paul Ingrassia, author of Engines of Change

Takes us back to the once popular family road trips of vacationing Americans in the 1970s. Stuffed into a station wagon filled with luggage and provisions, backseat-bound Rich typically set off on adventures that possessed all the idiosyncratic melodrama of family life but played out in a confined space. And the journeys were frequent. As he says, My family alone was responsible for approximately one trillion of the miles logged by travelers in the seventies. In chronicling the rise and fall of family vacations, this book is both witty and poignant.

Anthony Sammarco, author of Lost Boston and A History of Howard Johnsons

Smooth prose that entertains and enlightens... For anyone who has ever been on a road trip, or is planning to take one, this book is a must-read . Richard Ratay provides a concise history of Americas love affair with the internal combustion engine and the generations of concrete and asphalt highways crisscrossing the nation. The books clever titlea mantra for legions of weary and nerve-frayed drivers at the helm of a fully loaded family vehiclefits as well as a snug lug nut. Enjoy the journey!

Michael Wallis, coauthor of Route 66: The Mother Road and The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate

Are we there yet? In this unputdownable book, Richard Ratay takes you on a nostalgic tour of the great American road trip and proves that the ride really is more important than the destination. You can almost feel Mom slapping you from the front seat and smell Dads pipe tobacco as the miles roll by and a kaleidoscope of motels, greasy spoon diners, tourist traps, and other icons of twentieth-century travel plays on the windshields movie screen.

Mike Witzel, author of The Sparkling Story of Coca-Cola and Strange 66: Myth, Mystery, Mayhem, and Other Weirdness on Route 66

An excellent celebration of the great American road trip... Emphasizing his travels as a child in the 1970s, Ratay also offers a smart review of twentieth-century US highway and travel history, from the first paved roads to the rise of airport parking lots as travel by air substantially diminished vacation travel by automobile. An engaging read.

John A. Jakle, author of Remembering Roadside America: Preserving the Recent Past as Landscape and Place

Ratay has given us a fast-moving narrative of what it was like to travel the interstates in the 1970s. The pages of this book fly by as if they were mile markers.

Henry Petroski, author of The Road Taken: The History and Future of Americas Infrastructure

Scribner

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Copyright 2018 by Richard Ratay

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First Scribner hardcover edition July 2018

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Interior design by Erich Hobbing

Jacket design by Stephen Brayda

Jacket Photographs: Mountain Landscape by Csa-Print Stock /Getty Images; Car by Maxian/Getty Images; Retro Alphabet Letters by Dgbomb/ Shutterstock; Family by Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018000125

ISBN 978-1-5011-8874-9

ISBN 978-1-5011-8876-3 (ebook)

CONVOY

Words and Music by WILLIAM D. FRIES and CHIP DAVIS

Copyright 1975 (Renewed) AMERICAN GRAMAPHONE MUSIC

All Rights Administered by CHAPPELL & CO., INC.

All Rights Reserved

Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC

For Terri

I couldnt have asked

for a better copilot in life.

CONTENTS

A Family Boldly Leaves Its Driveway

The Long Road to the Interstates

Americans Set Off to Discover America

Join Us, Wont You?

Dodging Cops (and Stops) on the Interstates

Diversions, Directions, and Discoveries

Dining While Driving

Motels, Hotels, and Invaders from Space

Land Yachts, Station Wagons, and The Thing

A Crash Course in Seatbelts and Safety

All Roads Lead to the Airport

The End of the Road for Road Trips?

One winter evening in 1976, when I was seven years old, I went to sleep in my bed in Wisconsin and woke up in a snowdrift in Indiana. I had little idea how Id gotten there.

I dimly recall my fathers arms cradling me as I looked up through eyelids heavy with sleep. I watched the white ceiling of the hallway turn into the shadowy pine rafters of our garage, then the fuzzy tan fabric of our family cars interior. I remember being tossed across the laps of my older brothers in the backseat, a pillow pushed under my head, and a blanket thrown over my body. Then I drifted off again into blackness.