It's amazing how things fade from your memory. I took my first trip around the United States in 1966. A friend and I drove 9,000 miles in three weeks. We went north across the northern plains and came back across the south, finally driving straight through from Carlsbad, New Mexico to Myrtle Beach, SC.
We were in a blue GTO Convertible (similar to the one pictured in my post Cars, A great movie). At the time Holiday Inns, A&W Root Beer, and Kentucky Fried Chicken ruled the road. There were no cells phones, and calling home often meant finding a telephone booth. Almost every gas station had one. Today they are rare. I'm betting that in less than five years, they'll all be gone.
At the time of that trip, much of America was very different. The great levelers, television and mall shopping, had yet to grind up differences and make one town much like any other one a thousand miles away.
I groan as I hear people wish for the arrival chain restaurants for their faceless mediocrity. I am not saying that the local restaurants are always at their best, but when they are at their peak, there is no way a carefully controlled portion pack destined to create corporate profits can match their magic.
I will gamble on a local spot anytime I get the chance. As I wrote in Dining with character the memories which you create are well worth the risk.
I sometimes wonder how each place differentiates itself these days. Someone once remarked that he had some exchange students visiting and wanted to send them back home with something made in Roanoke. He searched and searched and could no longer find anything made in our valley. The trinkets were all made in China.
I guess that's why today's memories and events carry so much more importance . There are some places still identified with their products. I can still send someone home with a piece of Mt. Airy granite. Mt. Airy is home to the largest open face granite quarry in the world, but I'm much more likely to give them something about Andy Griffith and Mayberry, the fictional village with tenuous links to Mount Airy.
We have become whatever we imagine in our minds or what we can create mentally, not necessarily what we build, shape, dig, or ship.
Being connected with one another took effort in the days of the phone booth. Today I see plenty of people far too connected to their personal world to be aware of the external world around them. Events and festivals bring us together and give us a sense of place. They try to create a sense of something more than the individual at least for those who can put down their cell phones for a few hours. Perhaps Festival in the Park is Roanoke now.
It is strange to think that as the telephone booth has disappeared some folks have become so connected that they are almost unaware of their immediate surroundings. They can be driving through a parking lot and talking with someone almost anywhere in the world. The parking lot, often even the rules of the road are ignored because the remote connection is more important than the real place.
Place has lost some of its importance as the connection to others has become a place in itself. Cyber-place and its somewhat virtual reality has become the important spot to some folks. The connection has become important enough that some folks lose touch with their surroundings.
You can sample the feeling of not knowing where you are by doing a lot of business travel. You wake up in a Marriott or whatever, but you don't know where it is. Some days if you read only USA Today, you still would be guessing your real location after breakfast especially if you were destined for another day of meetings in those windowless meeting rooms so popular in hotels.
It is easy to lose tract of your location these days, but it is just as important to not let it happen. Awareness of where you are, how you got there, and the factors that might take you from there are important. They are a large factor in the dynamics of the person you become even if it is hard to understand that.
I spend a lot of my time trying to connect to people who are really intertwined with their location. They know its rhythms, moods, dangers, and pleasures. Some new software such as plazes.com tries to tie being connected with a real place. You can check my plaze with this link.
We should not let the sense place disappear as the telephone booths surely will. We should fight for those little places that make our homes and lives different from each other. We don't want to get to the point that the only restaurants are all run by Taco Bell.
Those special spots, a hidden beach, a great fishing hole, a little known trail, a diner packed every morning and evening, a small local bookstore or coffee shop are all worth fighting for before the blender known as America goes from puree to smoothie.
Long live the Burger in the Square, Odell's, Bastian's, Fairway, the Smoke House at Holly Ridge, and the Dinette in East Bend. I have to add Clyde Phillips Seafood to the list, it has more character than all of the seafood departments in all of the supermarkets in the US put together. I silently scream as each local hardware store or bookstore gives way to to chains of sameness.
If you're looking for a spot where there are plenty of local characters, give me a call (info on my website). I might have just the spot. The view at sunset is outstanding. We even have some folks who are going to great heights to enjoy the action.
I love barbecue, and it looked for a while like I was going to miss the biggest barbecue event in the state. 
Because I had to be at work in early afternoon, we almost had a barbecue brunch or breakfast. We sat down for an early barbecue lunch at 11:30 am this morning, and we certainly were not alone. We also had some house wine (Sweet Tea) to go with the meal.
