Summer nostalgia

A jubilant Native American warrior holds up the freshly cut scalp of a dazed-looking white man. A group of black kids giggles and a white boy smiles faintly. The back of the postcard explains: "INDIAN ATTACK ... Part of the thrilling show trip around the base of Stone Mountain."

If you go to Stone Mountain Park this summer, you won't witness reconstructions of Native American attacks. Those were phased out in 1975. You will, however, be able to view whacked-out postcards from the so-called good ol' days. This summer, Stone Mountain hosts Vintage Views: Seeing the Sunny Southland, the first major public exhibition of Southern roadside tourism.

The bulk of the memorabilia comes from the personal collection of Tim Hollis, an Alabama native and author of Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun, the definitive book of old-timey Southern attractions.

"From the time that I was a little kid," he says, "no matter where we went on vacation, my Dad saved everything. I've still got the tickets from where we parked the car for the Six Flags opening, and I have a stack of tickets from the riverboat and train rides at Stone Mountain. We were there!"

Hollis' 1967 map of the then brand-new Six Flags Over Georgia is unrecognizable. Back then, Six Flags was not just about roller coasters. The park was themed around Georgia's history. There was a British section about Georgia's time as a colony, and a Confederate section that included the animated dark ride, Tales of the Okefenokee.

"Oh, I loved Tales of the Okefenokee!" Hollis enthuses about the surrealistic ride featuring singing carrots and watermelons, hillbilly crows and goofy marionettes. "It was based on the old plantation tale of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and all o' that business. I was only 4 the first time I went to Six Flags, but we went back nearly every year."

Hollis has a diverse collection of brochures and menus from Southern roadside restaurants and motels -- KFC, Holiday Inn, Stuckey's -- that flourished throughout the '50s and '60s. The names are the same, but that's about it.

A vintage pack of KFC matches harks back to a time before smoking in family restaurants was taboo. The KFC logo is pink and white, not because the matchbook has faded, but because pink and white were the original KFC colors. "Most people wouldn't remember that," says Hollis, "but everything was pink in those days." A KFC take-home menu offers "A Complete Dinner" of three pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes, cole slaw, cracklin' gravy and hot rolls for $1.25.

Some of the exhibits are less than politically correct. A Smoky Mountains National Park map from 1955 is illustrated with a hillbilly blowing smoke rings out of his mouth and exclaiming "Holey Smoke." A Native American says, "Pipe the Peace Pipe -- I found these Smokeys to be habit forming."

Most Southern attractions were geared toward making a quick buck from the rich Northerners who vacationed here. A 1961 pocket "Guide Book and Dixie Dictionary" written by "J. Beauregard Horsepasture" hints at Southern attitudes toward the Northern invasion: "Folks here-about ain't seen the like of sech a quantity of Yankees since 1861-'65. ... This book was written foah cotton pickin' Yankees. Heah you will learn to speak the way all of us was intended to. You will learn what to oder in our fine eatin' places. You pea pickers will learn the real truth about certain battles of the recent conflict."

Road trips wouldn't have been possible without roads, of course, so the exhibition devotes a section to the growth of the interstate highway system. A feature in a 1956 edition of the Birmingham News' weekly magazine offers a "preview of the 40,000 miles of superhighway that will make driving faster and safer in every state." The writer enthuses about the $27 billion endeavor -- "the biggest public works project ever attempted" -- envisaging a time when Americans might travel at an average speed of 60 or 70 mph.

Many of the roadside attractions that are featured in the exhibition no longer exist. Some were killed off by cheap airfares, others lost out to competing commercial projects.

"People don't really think of tourist attractions as historic sites," says Hollis, "but many of them are. The Miracle Strip amusement park, for example, has been in Panama City since 1963, but now they're going to bulldoze the property and build a shopping center. No one would think about making that amusement park a national historic site, so when the property becomes too valuable, something else moves in. That's just the way it is."

Hollis believes that Rock City on Lookout Mountain is one of the only Southern attractions to have remained the same. "It's been there since 1932," he says, "and it looks exactly the same as it did when I was a kid. Someone always wants to rip out Fairyland Caverns and replace it with mechanical figurines, but so far they have remained intact. This is what you went to see on vacation in the late '40s. It still appeals to kids."

Even so, Hollis believes vacations are qualitatively different now. "Back then, families with children would stop at these places and there would be something for everyone to enjoy," he says. "Now the kids go off and play while their parents go off to the casinos or something like that. It doesn't seem as if things are geared so much toward families having fun together."

Hollis cannot fathom why kids watch DVDs while they travel across the country. "Whatever happened to looking out the window and actually seeing where you were going?" he wonders.

Of course, Southern towns look more and more alike as chains gobble up the landscape, but Hollis' collection reminds us that idiosyncratic attractions are still out there. Very out there. Where else could you find fluorescent gnomes but at the South's own Fairyland Caverns?

jenny.jarvie@creativeloafing.com

Vintage Views: Seeing the Sunny Southland opens Sat., May 29, at the museum in Stone Mountain's Memorial Hall. Tim Hollis will sign copies of his new book, Florida's Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast at the opening. The Stone Mountain Park entrance fee is $7 (one day, per car). Attraction pass, $7.50; One Day All-Attractions pass: adults $19, children $16. 770-498-5690. www.stonemountainpark.com.