Synopses & Reviews
Part pop history and part whimsical memoir in the spirit of National Lampoon's Vacation — Don’t Make Me Pull Over! is a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips — a halcyon era that culminated in the latter part of the 20th century, before portable DVD players, iPods, and Google Maps.
In the days before cheap air travel, families didn’t so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them — from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks.
The birth of America's first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming — sans seatbelts! — to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations. Frequently, what was remembered the longest wasn’t Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, or Disney World, but such roadside attractions as “The Thing” in Texas Canyon, Arizona, or “The Mystery Spot” in Santa Cruz, California. In this road tourism-crazy era that stretched through the 1970s, national parks attendance swelled to 165 million, and a whopping 2.2 million people visited Gettysburg each year, 13 times the number of soldiers who fought in the battle.
Now, decades later, Ratay offers a paean to what was lost, showing how family togetherness was eventually sacrificed to electronic distractions and the urge to "get there now." In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including 20-foot “land yachts,” oasis-like Holiday Inn “Holidomes,” “Smokey"-spotting Fuzzbusters, 28 glorious flavors of Howard Johnson’s ice cream, and the thrill of finding a “good buddy” on the CB radio.
A rousing Ratay family ride-along, Don’t Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, how its evolution mirrored the country’s, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together — for better and worse — have largely disappeared.
Review
"A book with a title as good as Don’t Make Me Pull Over! has a lot to live up to, and somehow Richard Ratay manages to deliver. It’s a memoir, a work of popular history, and a love letter all in one. Books this wise are seldom so funny; books this funny are rarely so wise." Andrew Ferguson, author of Land of Lincoln and Crazy U
Review
“If only this book were available to Clark Griswold, he and his family might well have stayed home. Don’t Make Me Pull Over! is an encyclopedia of road trip adventures. I can’t wait to read it.” Chevy Chase, star of National Lampoon’s Vacation and Saturday Night Live
Review
“As someone who missed the golden age of the family road trip, I found Don’t Make Me Pull Over! a wonderful revelation, filled with unexpected — and frequently amusing — insights into how so much of our culture was built.” Rob Erwin, author of Lost with Directions: Ambling Around America
Review
“With smartphones and rear-seat entertainment systems, the family road-trip experience has changed dramatically, writes Ratay in this enjoyable reminiscence on what they used to be...[His] informative, often hilarious family narrative perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips.” Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Richard Ratay 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 25 years. Ratay lives in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, with his wife, Terri, their two sons, and two very excitable rescue dogs.
Richard Ratay on PowellsBooks.Blog
Road trips and good tunes go together like rubber and asphalt. Great music not only helps the miles breeze by a little faster, it provides a soundtrack to the adventure. It anchors the experience in our memories, taking us back to a very specific and vivid place and time...
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