Customer Reviews

Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun

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During the period between the advent of paved highways and the development of the Interstate highway system, tourism blossomed beside the road across the country. This book focuses on the attractions that sprang up in the southeastern U.S.

Filled with images of postcards and brochures (mostly from the author's personal collection, I would guess from the introduction), this book takes the reader to fairylands, western shootouts, candy stores, motels, and other former staples of the road. The text gives the colorful history of many of these places.

While most of these attractions are just memories, Dixie Before Disney makes them fresher, more vivid memories.

This book will be of greatest interest to those who traveled south on the old US or state roads before the advent of the Interstate system. It was a period of divergence that existed before the cloning process began to evolve that has made every town look like every other town with chain after chain of look-alike stores and restaurants. Mr. Hollis lovingly recreates those fun stops along the way that remain in the memory years after. The last point he offers is perhaps the most important. He notes we have become a bit jadded with the overabundance of things and things to do and have forgotten the thrill it used to be just to be able to take a long trip somewhere, not to mention the sheer excitement of stopping at one of the roadside fun-sites mentioned in his book. I enjoyed taking the tour and waxing nostalgic for a couple of hours.

To those of us unfortunate enough not to have been alive during the period this book encapsulates, Hollis brings it to life with this thoroughly well researched tome regarding the roadside attractions that littered the South before the Disney Corp came to central Florida.

Pre Disney, pre interstate, pre most things, some of the attractions are cute, some look awful and other just downright bizarre. I wholeheartedly recommed this book for adult readers of any age.

What a refreshing look at family travel! Even though many of the places mentioned are either greatly altered, torn down (or should be), Mr. Hollis's delightful peep into the past provides insight as to why we Southerner's are so eccentric and also makes many wonder about the eccentricity of those Yankees who were flocking to our aquarium-ski-lodge-Indian-reservation-botanical-gardens complete with wild-west-shoot-outs-in-the-sky! Mr. Hollis's humorous descriptions of the many 'um... "interesting" things the South had to offer families was like traveling with my brother!

This is an excellent resource of information on old roadside attractions but what a disappointment the visuals are. Half of the fun is seeing these places in color yet except for an 8 page section in the center all the rest of the book is small b/w photos of things you know had to be from color sources. It spoils an otherwise excellent resource.

Tim Hollis' book is an entertaining, informative, and evocative tour of the glory days of tourism in the South -- mostly before the arrival of the interstate highway system, but certainly, as the title suggests, before the opening of Walt Disney World in 1965 changed the nature of vacations. A veteran of many of the roads and roadside stops pictured here, Hollis has a real feel ... and a real affection ... for his topic. In these hip days, when so many writers feel the need to ridicule or treat with arched eyebrow anything less sophisticated and post-modern than *right now,* it's very pleasant to read a book about popular culture and "commercial archaeology" that's not encrusted in irony.

This book is also a celebration of Southern culture, especially that part of Southern culture that developed in order to separate visiting Yankees from their money. For, as Hollis notes, it was the arrival in the South of northern vacationers seeking warmer weather that prompted the birth and growth of the attractions listed here. It also promoted a number of important, and lasting, businesses. Among the companies born in the South to capitalize on the tourist trade, KFC (of course), Popeye's Chicken, Long John Silver, Red Lobster, Burger King, Hardee's, and Holiday Inn are just some of the more recognizable names.

From water parks to Wild West shows, Cypress Gardens to Stone Mountain, Dogpatch USA and the Grand Ole Opry to Stuckey's and countless attractions now nearly forgotten, this book is a great nostalgia ride through a largely vanished time. If you were fortunate enough to have seen that time, this book may bring back some happy memories. And if this is your first time through you may find yourself wondering what you're missing as you cruise in air-conditioned comfort on the soulless interstate.

Tim Hollis has done a great job of showcasing the unique, quirky, and sometimes down right bizarre, attractions of the South. I, too, am a Southerner and I miss the days when Gulf Shores was not more than a few cottages on the beach. I enjoyed reading about the places I remember and the ones I never knew. This writer has done a wonderful service by perserving the memories of a bygone era.

We southerners love our nostalgia.This is a great book to bring back memories of yesteryear.Pics and comments will keep you driving down memory lane for days on end.A must have for anyone southern.

Of all the books on America's kitchy nostalgic rich past, nothing competes with this. It is hands down the best, and I've read them all. It is very well written and beautifully researched with incredible pictures. The author manages to impart his love for this period of America, and as such conveys a wonderful sense of nostalgia and family and kitchy innocence, when America was young and seemingly homogenous. A first rate first class effort!

There's something about that nostalgic time of the 40's, 50's, and 60's, when it comes to "roadside attractions". We as a society have become so used to "bigger, better, spectacular", that it's fun to look back to those times when cheesy themeing was still different enough that it would draw them in droves. Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun by Tim Hollis covers those time periods, when Stuckey's and Rock City ruled the road in the South. Many of those places are now gone, but it's fun to look back at how we used to define entertainment.

Contents:
I Wish I Was in Dixie; Stuckey's, Ten Miles; Peachy Beaches; Head for the Hills; Fantasy Lands; Old Time There are Not Forgotten; The Nature of Things; Spring Training; A Tropical Paradise in the Wild West; Epilogue; Bibliographical Essays; Index

Now to get the most out of this, you'd probably have had to be raised in the South during the golden age of motoring. So many of these places were designed to draw the car full of family, either as a final destination or (most likely) as a stopping point along the way. Hollis does a good job in mapping the highs and lows to major cultural shifts in our society. World War II interrupted a number of plans, as rationing and service overseas took priority. The energy crisis of the 70's also ravaged many of the attractions as people stopped driving as much. The rise of affordable air travel, along with the emergence of mega-parks such as Disney closed the doors on many of the remaining places. But still, there are a few left that let you step back into the past, such as some of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museums and cities such as St. Augustine.

Hollis also does a great job of tracing how we've evolved (or not) in terms of minority and cultural understanding. Being that the book is focused on the South, slave stereotypes were quite common. He mentions how restaurants such as Mammy's Shanty and the Pickaninny Coffee Shop were open and operating in Atlanta as late as 1968. Today many of us would be amazed that anything like that used to exist. But back then, images like that were common and normal...

About the only thing I would have liked better in this book is the use of more colored photos. There's a seven page inset in the middle that shows a few locations in their full colorful glory. All other pictures are smaller black and white images interspersed with the narrative. If the publisher could have spent the additional money for more color, Dixie Before Disney would have been truly outstanding. Even so, it's still a very enjoyable trip back into yesteryear...