Writing about roadside attractions yesterday got me remembering all sorts of other things about that 2003 trip. Not least that fate landed me in a PBS teevee show about roadside attractions, which I finally watched for the first time today.
PBS was a big deal to me as a kid. It was a channel that gave me both an anchor and insights after my family moved to Canada, when I was nine. We lived with my aunt and uncle in SW Calgary at first, until we found our feet and our own first home in NW Calgary. My brothers shared a room in their haunted basement, and I was given a little office-type space in the front of the ground floor, called “the teevee room”.
You could get 13 channels then. Five, plus a public access channel and including a Quebecois channel, were Canadian. But the rest, including PBS, were mostly beamed up from over the border to the southwest: from Spokane, Washington state.
I learned more about America than about Canada in those first few months, from watching teevee. The commercials, the music, the shows. The Lawrence Welk Show, The Electric Company, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Zoom are the ones I remember best. The last two were PBS shows. I loved Zoom because it had child performers, and they were freer, more diverse, more casual, and more zany than British child performers were allowed to be. Like many people, I imagine, I liked shows with kids best because I could imagine being them. (I liked The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, and The Partridge Family for the same reason). I found Mister Rogers strange but soothing.
PBS was also important because, for the most part, it was the only channel airing British programmes, especially dramas that fell under a series called Masterpiece Theatre. It was so good to hear those accents again, soothing my homesick ears.
In 2003, I travelled thousands of miles but often without a particular vision. There was limited planning-ahead. This was partly, I now know, because of ADHD; because it felt more adventurous to just wing it or be dictated to by Greyhound bus schedules; and because the internet wasn’t great then. (Only yesterday’s Cawker City – and, like Erika Nelson, the place that first put roadside America on my radar years before, Carhenge – were definite goals).
It was rare to find a hotel with internet, except for the occasional fancier one with a business centre when my budget allowed for or circumstances demanded it, and they charged an arm and a leg for dial-up then. I’ll never forget or fail to recommend Le Pavillon in New Orleans. (I booked there at very short notice after hating the grim, misrepresented place I spent one night in). It had free in-room internet which was remarkable then, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hot chocolate or milk in the lobby every night, and the best hotel breakfast I’ve had in my life.
Anyway. At some point I arrived in Cave City, Kentucky, hoping to stay at the Wigwam Village. I hadn’t booked ahead and just assumed there’d be a room free, but there wasn’t. So I stayed in an old motel nearby which, as usual, had fantastic neon signage but was very tired inside. I phoned Ivan at Wigwam Village a few times, staying in tiny Cave ‘City’ longer than intended, and it paid off. Someone with a booking had been unable to pay. Within an hour I was pulling my suitcase down a country road.
Within minutes of being booked into Wigwam 12, I was introduced to Rick Sebak and his crew, and lovely Brian Butko and his family. As with Erika Nelson, we’re still connected on Facebook to this day. Rick is a Pittsburgh legend due to his shows with WQED there. I didn’t even have time to unpack before he had me on camera. A PBS camera. They were only there for that one day. What were the chances?
It took me over an hour to find it this morning, but find it I did. Click here to view Unusual Buildings & Other Roadside Stuff. I’m at the very beginning, the very end, and about 15 minutes in, but the whole thing is absolutely worth watching.
Seeing it now, I wish I’d had time to change my clothes. I’d have liked to have been wearing my Coney Island Freak Show t-shirt. But then again, at least I look like a normal human being, like all the other people in the show.
I had very puffy eyes, as I’d stayed up very late reading Isabel Allende’s book Paula, about her daughter, and bawling my eyes out. Obviously I wouldn’t have had I known I was about to be on teevee. And little did I know that, almost exactly two years later, I’d be having lunch with her near San Francisco, and talking with her about that. Oh, life, my life, what a life it’s been sometimes.
After the filming, Rick and his crew Buck, Minette, and Matt – two of whom are in that show about Rick that his name links to – were horrified I’d never eaten ‘southern barbecue’ food, so took me for some. They were some of the loveliest people I’ve ever met and had so many great stories, including about working with or near Fred Rogers. I wish I’d recorded it all.
Tomorrow I’ll share photos from that trip with paid subscribers. Keep on keeping on.
They young Rachel! There y’are again seeking out the bizarre 😊. I was so struck by the craftsmanship of the older ones and the gorgeous wood.