July 23, 2006: Interstate 95

Even more signs of the South:

• Pickled okra and boiled peanuts, sold at roadside stands

• Year-round fireworks stores

• A billboard from the John Birch Society: “Get the U.S. out of the U.N.” (Thought the JBS was dead and gone? Think again. They've just shifted their paranoia from communists to illegal immigrants.)

• Salt marshes

• Country music on the radio

• South of the Border, a roadside distraction just south of the state line between South and North Carolina (more about this below)

Exactly one month ago, we covered 630 miles in one day heading south from the northernmost state on the West Coast. Today we made the same distance heading north from the southernmost state on the East Coast. But I take more pride in today’s journey as I drove it solo, whereas Debbie drove the last two hours of the West Coast marathon.

We again spent time in four states on one day, and it rained persistently in all of them. Leaving Brooksville at about 10:30 in the morning, we headed up I-75, then left the freeway at Gainesville, a pleasant college town where we stayed for a few days in the ‘80s, when my college friend Maria was getting her doctorate there. We crossed to I-95 and joined the freeway just north of Jacksonville, which is the largest city in the US by area: a whopping 874 square miles!

Before we left the land of citrus for the land of peaches, I bought half a tank of gas. It cost $2.92 a gallon, but I thought I could do better in Georgia. And I did: $2.79 a gallon.

We started seeing billboards for South of the Border in Georgia, but after we passed Savannah, which lies on the south side of the river that separates Georgia and South Carolina, the signs became omnipresent. It seems like we passed hundreds of them, each more absurd than the last. When we finally neared the North Carolina state line, a panorama of neon greeted us. Under a Space-Needle-like structure surmounted by a stupendous sombrero, dozens of flashing signs advertised an ice cream parlor, a video arcade, a fireworks store, a drugstore, a gas station, a bowling alley, a hotel, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a beach shop, a leather shop, a t-shirt shop, miniature golf, pinball, cigarettes, pornography, and a hundred other items.

Pedro, the mascot of this tourist trap, was everywhere.

I didn’t need any of the items for sale, and even if I had needed them, I wouldn’t have wanted to purchase them here. But I felt compelled to stop and take a few photos, although they really can't do justice to the garishness. Yes, it’s ugly, it's stupid, it’s racist, it’s an affront to the senses and the apotheosis of bad taste, but one can’t help but admire the nerve of Alan Shafer, the lunatic who built and ran the place until he died five years ago at the age of 87.

Debbie told me that she recalled SOB (as it’s affectionately known) from her college days, when her cross-country team at Wesleyan took a trip to Myrtle Beach for spring training. She compared the place to the infamous Wall Drug, South Dakota, which we will no doubt pass on our way home.

I’m blogging tonight on our word processor, but I can’t post my words, links, or photos since the Internet is inaccessible at our hotel, the Microtel Inn in Wilson, North Carolina. This is the third time a hotel promising “Free Wireless Internet” has been unable to connect us to the web because its router was malfunctioning or transmitting a weak signal. I've tried in the room and the lobby both, meeting with failure every time. The clerks never have a clue what to do about it. Very irritating. Our room, moreover, is supposed to be non-smoking, but it reeks of poorly-masked smoke, and there are cigarette burns on the bedspreads and bathroom counter. Most hotels look nice enough on first inspection, but caveat emptor…