DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: “Motel Postcard Pool Pose” in Wildwood, New Jersey.
The free motel postcard was once a vacation standard. Proprietors expected guests would send a pile of postcards to their friends and family telling them what a wonderful vacation they were having and the motel would reap the free advertising.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Pig and Whistle
“Pig and Whistle” is an old English phrase that meant to fall upon hard times or ruin.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Lemon Grove’s Giant Lemon
In the roadside world of Big Food, California has giant citrus lying around all over the place including Lemon Grove’s Giant Lemon.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Vulcan in Birmingham
World’s Fair Refugee: Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Steamboat Springs
Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where a sign perched at a precarious curve on U.S. 40 seems to challenge motorists to take their cars for a swim.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: The Plank Road
The Plank Road constructed across the Imperial Sand Dunes in 1915 was rebuilt by the California Highway Department a year later.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: The Molly Pitcher Hotel
The Molly Pitcher Hotel opened on South Hanover Street in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1919. It was built tight against the sidewalk and up against the adjacent buildings in the traditional way of the Pennsylvania Dutch towns.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: The Westporter
The Westporter was a sprawling, U-shaped motel complex built in the 1950s on the burgeoning Boston Post Road commercial strip between Norwalk and Westport, Connecticut.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Mayme Smith’s Motel and Service Station
Route 36 was the not-40 way across the Midwest in the pre-Interstate past, a less-traveled shortcut that went for miles and miles with nary a curve through not-much.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Golden Star Diner
The mobile, prefabricated restaurant known as the diner originating in the mill towns of New England in the 1870s, but shifted to New Jersey in the early 20th century where manufacturers like O’Mahony, Fodero, Kullman, Paramount, Paterson Vehicle, Mountain View, and Swingle scattered diners to the roadside.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Club Flamingo
The dinner-dance club was a staple in every urban entertainment district in the country from the 1930s into the 1960s.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Crazy Water
The gateway arch sign to Mineral Wells, Texas, advertises the home-ground CRAZY Water, the mineral-laden water that caused this small spot on the prairie west of Fort Worth to be the mineral springs spa of central Texas from the 1880s to the 1940s.
