America's longest small town, Route 66

The jumbled, part amateur collection museum, part shop, built over years as the continued passion of one local person, built onto their house, is "not small town America"? To me, on the contrary, those feel like a common presence in small town America, and that place seems to have fit the type quite well. It was a one local person, who was born in the town and seems to have spent all of his life there involved in the community, who went the usual route of collecting random stuff with unclear meaning as a collection, then putting it on display in his garage and barn, gradually expanding, and never really creating it as something other than himself, existing somewhat outside of modern capitalism. The story even has one of the usual endings, with the supportive partner who expresses their deep love of the place while the person is alive, and then, within a few months of the person's death, decides out of some argued necessity that the best thing to do is to break up and auction off the entire collection (the other possibilities often being the local community awkwardly trying to take on running it, or some apprentice-like situation where someone new becomes involved, or, in some rare instances, expanding to something larger and losing its soul somehow).

(It is a bit odd that the article shows, without any note in the caption, a place that hasn't existed since 2020.)

I've lived off of historic route 66 my whole life. Cars is a pretty accurate representation of the Sun Belt section of the road.

🚨Slightly relevant tangent incoming 🚨

I'm not an animated movie guy, but I saw Cars back in 2015 with my then-four year old cousin and it was kind of a life changing experience. A few days after watching the movie, I drove across the country and avoided the interstate the entire way. It was amazing, and ever since then, it's been the only way I do road trips. I highly recommend it to anyone driving across the US, even if it's not along a lively and historic tourist route/destination like Route 66.

For starters, you're much more likely to encounter long, quiet stretches of beautiful scenery or National/State Parks and Forests. You also don't have to compete for space with as many inpatient travelers or the endless fleet of semi-trucks. But best of all, there's so much more character in the tiny Radiator Springs-style towns along the highways than there is in the souless, chain-infested interstate stops across Copy-Paste America. Those that managed to survive usually had some local staple or mom & pop restaurant, like the ones mentioned in the article. The quality can vary, but a roll of the dice is still better than the usual fast food selection or Cracker Barrel, plus the likelihood of genuine human interaction increases significantly. Even the towns that didn't survive still left behind a picture of the mid-century Small Town USA that's heavily romanticized in American culture. Traveling by highway usually takes longer than the interstate, but it feels less like a repetitive chore and has the potential to be as rewarding as the destination.

When I made the drive in 2015, I ended up taking Highway 40 from Denver to western Utah, and it was one of the most breathtaking drives I've ever experienced (and that's coming from someone who grew up in the Rockies). I stopped in an empty little ski town during its offseason, slept in a run down hotel that hadn't been updated since the early 80s, and ate one of the shittiest meals of my life at local restaurant, and still enjoyed it simply because it was something unique. It had the charm and character that's missing in so much of Copy-Paste America. I also have this vivid memory of listening to Cake's Comfort Eagle while driving through a tiny town along Highway 40 and getting myself worked up about all the national chains that sucked the life and charm out of so many small towns. Ironic that a multi-billion dollar movie franchise from one of the world's biggest media conglomerates was the catalyst for that realization.

Sadly, when I made a similar drive across the country last year, I started to see the slow creep of Copy-Paste America working it's way into the last vestiges of Small Town USA. Many of the local mom & pop stores seemed to have been replaced by Dollar Tree and Dollar General, and there were an unsettling amount of freshly built fast food places. It's only a matter of time before the creep consumes us all, so get out there and enjoy what's left while you still can.