Don’t Make Me Pull Over! with Rich Ratay

Welcome to the Can't Make This Up. I'm your host Kevin. A family cruising across the country crammed together in a wood-paneled station wagon has become the cliche icon of the American road trip, but it was a reality for many families in the latter half of the 20th century. Interwoven into the history of the Great American Road Trip was the economic and population boom that followed the United States' victory in World War II, a massive infrastructure investment on the part of the federal government, and an interventionist American foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s. The legacy of the road trip is a robust cultural history steeped in Americana and memories of a simpler, more family-oriented era. I'm joined on the podcast this week by Rich Ratay. Rich grew up in Wisconsin in the 1970s and remembers well his experiences during what he calls the "Golden Age of Road Tripping." His book, Don't Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip, weaves the history behind the nation's transportation network, today's speed-driven consumer culture, and the explosion of the amusement-tourism industry with his own humorous anecdotes of traveling cross-country with his family as a kid in the 70s. Rich was the last of four kids raised 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 twenty-five years. Today, Rich continues the tradition of road tripping with his wife and their two sons. “Don’t Make Me Pull Over!” is his debut book.

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