Vintage Georgia Signs
By Tim Hollis
Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2024
Softcover, 160 pages, $26.99
Lost Attractions of Georgia
By Tim Hollis
Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2021
Softcover, 144 pages, $23.99
Reviewed by Peter Glaser
With a staggering 40 books under his belt, Birmingham native Tim Hollis is a veritable publishing industry. Having written on a diverse range of subjects, his focus is generally divided between pop culture history and explorations of Southeastern regional tourism.
Hollis first caught my attention with the publication of his second book, the fantastic Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun (University Press of Mississippi, 1999). In it, he celebrates Southern “home-grown theme parks and whimsical roadside showplaces” before the arrival of Orlando’s Disney World in 1971. Since its publication, he has written several books in the roadside realm exploring Florida springs, Rock City, Stuckey’s, theme parks, and Birmingham department stores.
In Vintage Georgia Signs, Hollis offers up a smorgasbord of signage delights, richly captioned and organized thematically into six chapters: shopping, food, automotive-centric, accommodations, Georgia tourism, and amusements. As noted in the introduction, most of the signs in the book no longer exist. As disappointing as this may be, Hollis has curated an impressive record of Georgia’s past, drawing from his seemingly limitless personal archive and bolstered by the photography of such stalwarts as John Margolies, Debra Jane Seltzer, Stephanie Stuckey (who also wrote the introduction), and the collections of others.
As with his other three books in the “Vintage Signs” series (Birmingham, Alabama, and Tennessee), Hollis writes in an informed and inviting conversational style, injecting a healthy dose of humor. Seemingly inspired by the road trips of his youth, Hollis takes the reader on a satisfying adventure along the highways and byways of Georgia, the trusty tour guide that he is.
An endearing feature of the book—indeed, of most he has written—is how it is affectionately personalized by his connections to the subject matter through real lived experiences. So, included here, for example, we see the author’s father in front of the Palms Court Motel in Waycross, a photo taken by a 5-year-old Hollis in 1968. Numerous road trips were clearly part and parcel of his upbringing and continue to this day.
As Hollis notes in his introduction, Vintage Georgia Signs serves as a companion volume to Lost Attractions of Georgia (another ongoing series in which he has penned six previous volumes). Here, the focus is on “any type of tourism-related business—roadside attraction, motel, restaurant, or other—that no longer exists.” On occasion, an attraction may still exist, but if it has been altered beyond recognition, it warranted inclusion here. Necessarily, then, both books are, for roadside enthusiasts, bittersweet: sadness for the losses, grateful for the documentation of what once was.
The book is organized into six chapters that explore lost attractions in the state capitol of Atlanta, those commemorating Georgia’s participation in the Civil War, the amusement park Six Flags over Georgia, the Confederate monument just east of Atlanta known as Stone Mountain, those on highways leading to the tourist Mecca of Florida, and concludes with the realm of gas, food, and lodging. While Hollis has penned books on both Six Flags over Georgia and Stone Mountain, he has been mindful to minimize duplication of material—and this holds true for the two books under consideration here.
A nice feature of Lost Attractions of Georgia (something not offered in Vintage Georgia Signs) is that, in addition to captioned imagery, Hollis provides chapter introductions to set the context and guide the reader for what is to come. For example, in the chapter dealing with Civil War commemoration, Hollis notes: “It is not our purpose to psychoanalyze these one-sided antebellum-heavy attractions but simply to present them in the same context as all the others in this book: as relics of their time.” Like Vintage Georgia Signs, this volume benefits by drawing on a wide range of sources for its visual material.
These two books have minimal shortcomings. The omission of dates for some of the photos was a minor frustration. Additionally, there were a few instances in which Hollis referenced something that was either too grainy or small to see in the printed image. These quibbles aside, both Vintage Georgia Signs and Lost Attractions of Georgia are examples of what Hollis does best: share regional roadside history in an engaging and insightful manner. I look forward to where the road will lead him next.
Peter Glaser has been writing the “Northern Roadsides” column for the SCA Journal, describing the Canadian roadside experience since 2008.
This book review originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Fall 2024, Vol. 42, No. 2. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.
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