American Road Trip Talk

Tunnel Vision always provides our readers with snapshots of fascinating places along the American Road. Our Autumn 2014 issue featured a story about a Contrary Barber Pole at the National Barber Museum in the Columbus, OH suburb of Canal Winchester. Mike Ippoliti is the curator/director of the huge collection of tonsorial memorabilia and he joins us to talk about a recent tragedy that almost wiped out these beloved mementos of what has been called “the second oldest profession”. Stick around to learn more about the harrowing tale.

Randy Goodpasture runs a national pigeon race that runs along Route 66 in OK. This is the second part of two podcasts featuring Randy talking about his Oklahoma flock of racing pigeons who use Route 66 as their guide in the +100 mile competitions at speeds near 80 MPH.

Randy Goodpasture runs a national pigeon race that runs along Route 66 in OK. This is the first part of two podcasts featuring Randy talking about the pigeons and the race.

In our winter 2014 edition of American Road Magazine, the Tunnel Vision column featured an article that is bound to get you started on the right foot…unless you’re a tea drinker. I’m talking about the Coffee Trail in Columbus, Ohio! In this podcast Meguni Robinson of Experience Columbus will tell you how a group of local businesses got together to create a unique way of promoting their themselves and the city of Columbus all at the same time. Oh and don’t forget the passport!

One thing American Road readers seems to have in common is that they are avid travelers. It’s not enough for most of us to get information about sites; we want to be there as well. A new tool to help you find a very special place to stay is the website of the National Trust for Historic Preservation which is found at www.historichotels.org. Heather Taylor is a spokesperson for National Historic Hotels of America and she will share some of the many features that the website has to offer you as you plan your next vacation.

It’s a brand new year for American Road Magazine and for American Road Trip Talk. Normally we use this podcast to introduce you to the people and places behind the stories in the magazine. This time around we are going to cast our gaze in another direction, forward into 2015 in Illinois, home of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Along Route 66 in Springfield, Illinois you will find the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which is turning 10 in 2015 which is also the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Our guest Chris Wills, a spokesperson for the library and museum, has a whole year full of suggestions for your travels. Get your calendar ready to circle some dates for 2015. You’ll find that we do a little Lincoln myth busting along the way. For more information on the ongoing events at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Il. visit www.tenyearslincoln.com

The fall 2014 edition of our magazine had fun with the theme of Rock, Paper, Scissors and included stories about everything from a Wall of Scissors to a Waffle Rock and a Paper House. In this podcast we visit with Edna Beaudoin, who is the current caretaker of the Paper House, which is located in the scenic seaside town of Rockport, MA just north of Boston. What started out as a summer project in the 1920’s became a lifelong passion for an engineer named Ellis Stenman who used over 100,000 pieces of newsprint to complete the project. His grand niece Edna tends to the family heirloom which is open to visitors from April through October.

In 2013 American Road Magazine featured a unique store in rural Indiana that has weathered the changes in American toy tastes for the past 75 years. Veach’s Toy Station has found a way to the heart of the child in all of us for three generation of the Veach family in Richmond, Indiana. In part 2 of the conversation that we had with John Veach, the current owner, he begins by reflecting on the reappearance of some of his favorite childhood toys.

It’s holiday time and that’s the time for giving toys to our favorite girls and boys. In 2013 American Road Magazine featured a unique store in rural Indiana that has weathered the changes in American toy tastes for the past 75 years. Veach’s Toy Station has found a way to the heart of the child in all of us for three generation of the Veach family in Richmond, Indiana. This podcast is part 1 of the conversation that we had with John Veach, the current owner, about the magic of selling toys for all those years.

In our Fall issue of the magazine, the Tunnel Vision column features a story about Old 41 Caters to Gaters. It was the tale of the valiant efforts of John Brady, a local photographer, to save one of the last everglade showplaces in Florida. The Everglades Wonder Gardens. In part two we will hear about the colorful history of the original Wonder Gardens and how it has come to be one of the last places in Florida where you can see pink flamingos and still be sober! Just kidding. Please enjoy part two of this Everglades Revival.

In our Fall issue of the magazine, the Tunnel Vision column features a story about Old 41 Caters to Gaters. It was the tale of the valiant efforts of John Brady, a local photographer, to save one of the last everglade showplaces in Florida. The Everglades Wonder Gardens. In our first part of the story in this podcast, John tells the story of how this famous, original Florida roadside attraction was about to fade into history. But John and some other lovers of Florida’s wild beauty with the help of some “enthusiastic young alligators” turned a fading roadside attraction into a botanical garden. Enjoy part 1 of this Everglades Revival.

In our Fall 2014 issue of American Road Magazine an article entitled Rock, Paper, Scissor featured a visit to the Cardboard Boat Museum in New Richmond, Ohio. Our guest for part 2 of our podcast about the museum is Ray Perszyk a colorful Ohio river man who is the chairman of the Cardboard Race Committee. It might seem remarkable that craft made of something so frail as cardboard could last up to 10 years and be featured in the museum. That is where we pick up our conversation with Ray in today’s podcast.

Normally you wouldn’t associate anything make out of cardboard with the word “racing” but the paper flotillas of New Richmond, Ohio defy that notion. In our Fall 2014 issue of American Road Magazine a clever article entitled Rock, Paper, Scissor included a visit to the Cardboard Boat Museum in that little Ohio river town. Our guest is Ray Perszyk a colorful local who is the chairman of the Cardboard Race Committee. In this part of conversation, Ray talks about the race and its origins and in part of our podcast he will focus on the museum that has collected some of these remarkable vessels over the last decade.

For many of us the image of North Dakota the pops to mind comes from the movie Fargo: A vast sea of white snow, bitter cold and knife like winds. Needless to say there is much more to the Peace Garden State than that and the newly expanded State Museum in Bismarck says it all. Our guest today is Kim Jondahl, Communication and Education director for the State Historical Society of North Dakota. At the end of October 2014 the state opened a magnificent 97,000 sq ft expansion that includes to very big and very popular figures.

A lot of our listeners/readers are avid travelers and many use the itineraries posted on our American Road Magazine homepage. The holiday season for 2014 is just starting to get into high gear whether grandma lives in Tampa, Fl or Topiniabee, Michigan, Spokane, WA or Seabrook Island, SC. The folks at the National Motor Club have your best interests at heart and have a special winter driving checklist to offer you. In this podcast we speak with Heidi Vincent, President of NMC about their services and specifically about their holiday driving tips.

In the Friends in the Fast Lane column of our Fall 2014 magazine, we highlighted the official designation of a portion of a famous California costal highway as part of the Purple Heart Trail. In reality the famous commemorative trail is not a contiguous, physical route but rather a symbolic system of roads honoring the men and women of our armed forces over the decades. In this podcast we speak with Kathy Long, Ventura County Supervisor, about the official inclusion of scenic coastal Highway 101 in southern California in this honorific highway system.

Drive in theatres have been featured in a couple of issues of our magazine because they are a unique part of the American Road heritage. The same goes for diners; we even have a regular column called Diner Days. In our summer 2014 issue we featured the Mayberry Diner and Drive In, a unique combination of these two classics. In this podcast we talk with Bob Craig the owner of this fine establishment located in the mountains of central Virginia near Smith Mountain Lake. You’ll never guess where Bob found his diner and how it came to be the dynamic doubleheader that it is.

In the summer edition of American Road Magazine Erika Nelson, author of the Think Big column, found a big bottle of pop to quench her thirst: a 66 ‘ bottle to be exact outside of Pops Restaurant in Arcadia, OK. We talked extensively in another podcast with her about the enormous roadside attraction but the restaurant behind it looked just as interesting. Enter Marty Doepke, General Manager for Pops Restaurant. In this podcast Marty gives us the background of why Pops has that name and describes the amazing 700 + kinds of soda on display from Kona Coffee flavor and Prickly Pear to Bacon and Ranch Dressing flavored Soda. Don’t miss the conversation.

Erika Nelson is someone who is hard to catch up to because she is always on the road and always traveling. The big game she is hunting, literally Big Game, are the largest attractions along the American Road. Erika then turns them into the smallest replicas of the Largest Attractions on the American Road. And she has a travelling collection. She also contributes a regular column about her finds called Think Big. True to form the story that appeared in the summer edition of American Road Magazine was about the largest soda bottle on the American Road. Erika Nelso tells us the full story of her find in our podcast.

In the summer issue of American Road Magazine we took a jog through the Deep South in Tunnel Vision and explored the Grand Gulf-Raymond Scenic Byway. Signs have finally been put up that tells the story of this 50 mile stretch of southern byway beauty which traces one of the most significant marches in America’s bloody Civil War. Our guest on this podcast is Ret. General Parker Hills, a Civil War military expert and longtime supporter of the Grand Gulf-Raymond Scenic Byway. Journey with us as he describes the route and its relationship to General Ulysses Grant’s pivotal victory at Vicksburg.