030 History of the Family Road Trip, Richard Ratay Author of Don't Make Me Pull Over
Curiosityness
Travis DeRose
4.8 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2019
⏱️ 92 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is a fun and educational chat all about the history of the family road trip! Rich and I share our own similar but differing road trip experiences plus Rich shares his wealth of knowledge about the golden age of road tripping. We cover it all including road side attractions, the history of roads, why we have station wagons, and the demise of the golden age of road trips because of the airline industry deregulation!
Richard Ratay, the "King of the Road Trip", was the last of four kids raised by two mostly attentive parents in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism and has worked as an award-winning advertising copywriter for nearly thirty years. When not out traveling America's highways, Ratay lives in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, with his wife, Terri, their two sons, and two very excitable rescue dogs.
Don't Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2DnxkMx (affiliate link) or at Barnes and Noble.
Also check out Richard at his website: https://www.richardrataywrites.com
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And find me, the host of Curiosityness on Instagram: @travderose
Or send me an email to travis@curiosityness.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 30 of Curiosityness. Wow, 30 episodes. I am the host, Travis DeRose, |
| 0:10.5 | and we're back from the winter break. I took a little break and didn't release some episodes |
| 0:14.8 | because I wanted a vacation. But this episode is fun. I have on Richard Rite, who is the author of Don't Make |
| 0:22.7 | Me Pull Over, an informal history of the family road trip. And his book and this interview are just |
| 0:29.8 | super, super fun and interesting, because we just kind of reminisce and talk about, you know, |
| 0:34.9 | the golden age of the road trip and everything like that and |
| 0:38.1 | talk about roadside attractions and all this fun stuff. |
| 0:41.5 | And then he has a lot, a lot of really deep knowledge of the history of why road trips are |
| 0:49.2 | the way they are, including like the roads and why they started being built and station |
| 0:54.1 | wagons and why |
| 0:55.0 | they have wood paneling and why motels are called motels and the deregulation of the airline |
| 1:03.0 | industry all this fun interesting stuff we learn about in this conversation with rich so uh without any further ado, here is the episode. How's it going, |
| 1:16.6 | Rich? I am doing well, Travis. How are you? I am doing good. Thank you. Thanks for being on. |
| 1:22.9 | I'm pretty excited to talk to you. You're fun. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Thanks so much |
| 1:27.7 | for reaching out. Yeah, of course. And I mean, I found you through your book, Don't Make Me Pull Over, |
| 1:35.6 | an informal history of the family road trip. And I mean, it's just like, I read it. I got through |
| 1:42.1 | the whole thing in just the past, it took me like four days to get through the whole thing, because it's just fun. Like, it's just, it's just like I read it. I got through the whole thing. Um, in just the past took me like four |
| 1:45.5 | days to get through the whole thing because it's just fun. So you just plowed on through it. |
| 1:49.9 | Just like just like my dad driving us on vacation. Just plowed on through. Exactly. Yeah. I made |
| 1:56.7 | good time, you know. Excellent. Yeah. I mean, it's just fun because I guess how to, let's start with like what. |
| 2:06.5 | Yeah, and you know what, Travis, I'm going to be really interested to hear your perspective |
| 2:10.1 | because, you know, I don't know how old you are. |
... |
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