States of unrest.

Silence Dogood here. I was both pleased and appalled to see an article on MSN.com this morning about rest areas. As some of you may recall, when on road trips, I have what you might call a special relationship with rest areas. I enjoy sipping something cool (or hot, depending on the weather) to remain hydrated during the hours on the road. As a result, our friend Ben—who, camel-like, can apparently go for days without either drinking anything or going to the bathroom—has become accustomed to automatically stopping at every single rest area we pass. In fact, if for some reason I don’t want to stop at a rest area, it becomes a source of endless grief for at least the rest of the day. (“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to that one, Silence? It’s only 200 miles away!” GRRRRRR.)

But I digress. The reason I was pleased to see the article was that it mentioned that someone has in fact written a master’s thesis on the architecture, decor, and regional nature of interstate rest areas. Publishers, are you reading this? With a trendy title, this thesis could become a cult classic like that other study on vehicle-killed animals, originally written to help wildlife biologists determine population densities through identification of the characteristic shape of the dead animal on the road. God alone knows how some inspired editor recognized the potential of an obscure and unappetizing study, but rechristened with the name Flattened Fauna, it became an enduring hit. Certainly the same could be true of a book on rest areas! 

Once again returning to the point, the reason I was appalled was that the MSN feature, a blog entry by Emily Badger, was called “Rest Stops, R.I.P.” Say what?!!! I quote: “Across the country, rest areas… have been losing a long-fought battle to commercial alternatives, super-sized stops with eight blends of caffeine, free wifi, burgers, and gas. Traditional rest areas cost money to staff and maintain, and aside from the odd vending machine, don’t generate any direct revenue.” As a result, more states are trying to save money by shutting them down.

Ms. Badger also provides a brief history of rest areas, which originated in 1956 along with the interstate highway system. I’d always assumed they were designed by a benevolent state to give folks like me a chance to go to the bathroom at regular intervals, and had assumed the euphemistic name “rest area” was taken from the equally ludicrous “restroom.” (I’ve somehow never noticed anyone resting in one, have you?) But I was wrong. The government mandated the officially-named “safety rest areas” to give 1950s-era travellers, unused to long, unbroken stretches of highway, a chance to take rest breaks to avoid fatigue-induced collisions. The bathrooms were simply an added courtesy. Who’da thunk?!

Anyway, I, Silence Dogood, am appalled and outraged by this latest development, and am no longer speaking to OFB after numerous sarcastic remarks about the article and the whole situation. Let me say right now that there is no comparison between a rest area’s bathrooms and those of a gas station or fast-food chain. Rest area bathrooms are big, with numerous stalls, pretty much all of which are clean and working at all times, and plenty of sinks, mirrors, and other amenities.

The same can’t be said of the alternatives, which are typically one- or two-stall affairs, one or both of which may be broken or worse. After all, monitoring the plumbing isn’t high on the scale of jobs the hardworking and low-paid employees of these places have to contend with. If our rest areas are closed, diverting mercy alone knows how many more people into these places in order to go to the bathroom, I hate to think what state all those bathrooms will be in. Or what state those of us who are desperate to use them will be in. Not to mention that this entails getting off the highway each and every time, then finding your way to the bathroom and back on again.

Gack. Of all the causes I could imagine espousing, “Save the Rest Areas!” wouldn’t have been one of them. But in fact, I’m happy to crusade in their cause. I enthusiastically recommend the MSN post to your attention: It has some great photos of distinctive rest areas across the country, including a teepee-style picnic area in Oklahoma that’s just priceless. To find it, go to MSN.com and look for “Next rest stop: Never” on their changing feature panel at the top of the page.

To think, I was considering clearing out some of the wonderful brochures I’d collected at rest stops in states we love to visit, hoping that we’d manage to take in a few of the sights they described. Now I’m thinking I’d better hold onto them, in case it’s impossible to get more. And what about the free state maps every rest area offers? I’d always take a minute to make sure the one we had was the most current, and replace it with a newer version if it wasn’t. Sure beats paying for potentially outdated and less detailed maps at a service station.

Yikes!!! Surely rest areas aren’t really going the way of the Sinclair dinosaur and the Tiger in Your Tank. R.I.P., rest areas. I’ll miss you.

                 ‘Til next time,

                             Silence