“Same Sh+t, different town. Diversity my eye. With the advent of TV, even accents in speech are disappearing.”
Indeed and its really boring to have a giant country with an increasingly universal culture and the same handful of stores everywhere. I drove east to west a couple years ago on the interstate helping my kid move and it was dull as dirt. You couldn’t tell whether you were in Kansas, California, or North Carolina. Every exit felt about the same. I did the same trip before the interstate spanned the whole way and it was substantially more interesting. We are becoming a more boring and generically antiseptic place to live.
The quirky, Mom and Pop establishments with local flavor and culture are still there, you just have to look harder for them; they’re not on the Interstate, but the local roads in each community.
I live in Maine, and while we have no shortage of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, Kentucky Fried Chickens, Starbucks and WalMarts, we also have Mom and Pop restaurants with giant, fake lobsters outside the front door, Jaspers Restaurant and Motel in Ellsworth, Maine with lobster 19 ways; quirky ice cream stands who sell blueberry cheesecake ice cream AND fried clams, along with scores of other items; lobster rolls; seaside eateries in coastal lobstering towns that have changed little in a hundred years, etc.
The same is true about the rest of the country.....you just have to look harder for these quirky establishments of local flavor.....look beyond the interstates and their national chains.
PS: In Bar Harbor, Maine, there is a restaurant called the Route 66 Cafe. It’s quite a distance from where Route 66 begins, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago!
We just did a I-40/I-10 coast-coast trip last summer and we specifically avoided the interstates whenever possible. While I-40 is unavoidable between OK & CA, we still took time to pop off onto old sections of US 66.
It is truly a sight to behold witnessing the various ghost towns along the route. Even more 'substantial' towns like Winslow AZ have a lonely, wistful, windswept presence.
We almost stayed at the WigWam (in Holbrook AZ), but opted for the HolidyInn Express instead because it was just too broken down. The old gas stations & hotels are fun to look at as you cruise by, but then it's time to hit the highway.
By the time you cross the Miss however, it's easy to get around between smaller towns on either old US highways or state highways. That's the way to do it if you want to eat & stay local. If you're just trying to get from one place to another on the interstate, you might as well fly.