As a kid growing up in the Sixties, my parents and I only went one of two places every year for vacation. One was Dallas, Texas and the other was Fort Pierce, Florida. We had a turquoise and white ’59 Ford Galaxie, which eventually was traded in for a brand new 1965 Ford Fairlane Sport Coupe. My mother grew up in Dallas and her family still lived there, except for one of her sisters who lived in Fort Pierce with her family. On any trip, we never got over sixty because if my father got one or two miles per hour over that, my mother would start having a conniption.
Neither car had power steering, power brakes or air conditioning, so we rode with the windows down. And the trip down I-75 and the Florida Turnpike meant the inevitable stench of a paper mill. We never actually saw one, at least not that I was aware of because I usually was holding my breath and had my head buried in a pillow until we passed out of range of the smell. Even that didn’t do any good. I would eventually have to come up for air and the funk would shoot up my nostrils, sending me into fits of gagging and coughing. When we drove to Dallas, occasionally we would get downwind of a mill, but nowhere near as many times as on the trip to South Florida. The drive to Dallas was about sixteen hours. We drove straight through only once. My father swore he would never do it again and he stuck to it. At sixty miles an hour, I can understand. We would stop at the Holiday Inn in Meridian, Mississippi on the way out there and at the one in Jackson on the way back. Both had a pool. Being a kid, that was all I cared about.
And along the way to both destinations, we stopped at Stuckey’s. Stuckey’s started in 1933 in Eastman, Georgia. W.S. Stuckey had a successful pecan harvest from the family orchard and he set up a roadside stand on Hwy. 23. Soon his wife Ethel began to sell the famous pecan log rolls and pecan divinity.
In their heyday, Stuckey’s stores were all across the interstates of the Southland. Under the familiar teal blue roof, you could fill up the car with gas, use the restroom and get refreshments or lunch at the snack bar. My favorite from the snack bar was a malted milk shake. They also sold what they advertised as souvenirs, which was in reality some of the most wonderful junk you imagine. There were all kinds of characters made from sea shells, rubber snakes, stuffed alligators and a host of other regionally themed stuff. I still have a knife that looks like a fish in my tackle box that I got at a Stuckey’s on the way to Fort Pierce. You pull it apart and the blade is inside. “Florida” is still visible in gold letters on the fish’s side.
Whoever was in charge of marketing for Stuckey’s back then was a genius. The stores were situated on the interstates at just about the distance for a car to burn a tank of gas and for a kid’s bladder to get full. The signs would appear advertising the next location about seventy-five miles away and appear in five to ten mile increments. I would watch the signs and about ten miles out start asking my father if we could stop. Sometimes he would, sometimes he wouldn’t. If I could have had my way, we would have stopped at every one of them.
One of the last times we drove to Dallas was for a funeral in October of 1975. I was twenty years old and passed the time on the road by reading a biography of The Rolling Stones. At one point my father asked me, “Jimmy, y’wanna stop at Stuckley’s?” That was how he prounounced Stuckey’s. My father, like my mother, had problems with a number of words. “Crystyal” and “flustrate” are two that come to mind. When we stopped at the store, I went inside, used the john, bought my customary malted milk shake and stepped back outside. It was a beautiful fall day and a woman was sitting at the picnic table with a beautiful little brown and white goat. Unable to resist almost any animal, I walked over to talk with the lady and pet the goat. The woman told me that she and her husband managed the store. “This is my lawnmower,” she smiled. The goat was a sweet little nanny goat that stood munching at the grass and patiently allowing me to pet her. Her fur was clean and soft and she didn’t smell bad like I assumed all goats smelled. I thought all goats were dirty, ate tin cans, had a bad disposition and a propensity for head-butting.
A month or so later I drove up to East Atlanta to pick up my grandmother for Thanksgiving dinner. On the way I told her about stopping in Stuckey’s and meeting the goat. She smiled and told me that when she was a little girl living in the country, she had a little nanny goat for a pet. She said they used to get milk and cheese from her. She said she loved the little goat very much and that she was clean and sweet as well. I decided I wanted a sweet little nanny goat of my own, but that idea was nixed in a hurry. My mother didn’t even like dogs.
The last time we drove to Dallas was the next summer, 1976. My cousin Glenda went with us. I don’t remember if we stopped at Stuckey’s or not, although I’m sure we probably did. The last time I stopped at a Stuckey’s was on the way to Florida in the mid-Nineties. I saw the billboard saying Stuckey’s was fifty miles ahead. By that time there weren’t near as many Stuckey’s signs on the road as there used to be. I checked the fuel gauge and sure enough, in about fifty miles we would need to fill up. When we arrived at the store, I pumped gas while my wife and daughter went inside. My mind went back to all those years past and it struck me that now I was the dad and the one driving. My daughter was about ten or eleven. Thank goodness my wife did not freak out if I got over sixty. Quite the opposite, she wanted me to cruise at about ninety.
After I had filled the car up and walked inside, it was like stepping back in time. The snack bar and souvenir shelves were still there. The restrooms were at the back of the store. The pecan log rolls and Claxton fruitcakes were at the counter with the cash register. We relaxed, refreshed and refueled, then hit the road again. On the way back home, there on the side of the road was the familiar yellow and red sign telling us Stuckey’s was seventy-five miles ahead. “Dad,” came my daughter’s voice from the back seat, “can we stop at Stuckey’s again?” I checked the fuel gauge. Yep, seventy-five miles was about right. “Sure, we can, honey,” I smiled. It had really come full circle. How could I say no?
Great article you wrote James!