Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that ate your new shoes: Scenes from Chattanooga, Tennessee

There really is a Chattanooga Choo Choo. It was nicknamed after the first train from Cincinatti to Chattanooga in 1880, connecting the north and the south by rail. There's a very nice park with some trains and a hotel commemorating it.

This handsome fellow is part of Chattanooga's Sir Goony Golf amusement center.

I had a Debra Jane Seltzer moment when I spotted this

wow-wee-wow-wow mid-century pharmacy.
.

Hit it, boys!

Unfortunately named business of the week

WDEF is a TV and radio station in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Some thoughts:

• I hope they offer closed-captioning.
• I believe their call-letters were formerly WHAT? and they have a sister station WDUM.
• Maybe their name means "cool" in a 1990s urban vernacular "Def Comedy Jam" way. I'd be jiggy with that.

Signing off now.

The thrill of vic-tow-ry: Chattanooga, Tennessee's International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum

Of all the great tow truck-themed quilts out there...

...I like this one best.

A classy Caddy wrecker

Ernest Holmes, father of the tow truck, and his wife Hattie

No tow truck driver can refuse any request on his daughter's wedding day.

So that's who snatched my cradle.

Certified, for your protection.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES:

Olaf Ekengard, Class of 1986

Russell Iodice, Class of 1995

Al Gregg, Class of 2005

...and the whole gang of 2003.

We'll go anywhere there's a museum devoted to an unusual subject. Barbed wire museum? Been there. Banana museum? You betcha. Tow truck museum? Funny you should ask, because there's an outstanding one in Chattanooga, Tennessee that I had the good fortune to visit last September. The International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum houses restored antique wreckers, towing-themed toys, sculpture, artwork, multimedia, ephemera, quilts, you name it. And there's a Hall of Fame, another one of our favorite eccentric roadside attractions, devoted to the movers and shakers of the recovery industry. Towing is to Chattanooga as cars are to Detroit and beer is to Milwaukee: the world's first wrecker was fabricated only three and a half miles from the museum's address by the Ernest Holmes Company back in 1916. The Hall of Fame has over 300 inductees from around the world who have distinguished themselves in their field. And there's a serious side to towing the layman may not consider: the Tow Truck Association of America estimates 60 operators are killed nationally each year, equal to the number of police and paramedics killed along the roadside. A tribute to these drivers is paid in the form of the Wall of the Fallen and sculpture garden in front of the museum.

I couldn't help but wonder if any of the museum's 10,000 annual visitors have ever broken down in the parking lot and had to call a tow truck. That would be quite a memen-tow.

Southern discomfort: Scenes from the Tennessee-Alabama Fireworks gift shop

As an eccentric roadside traveler unfamiliar with the deep south, I had a preconceived notion of what a 7-day driving trip through the region would have to offer visually. I pictured a Confederate flag flying from every flagpole and a "Git-R-Done" bumpersticker on every car. That was stupid. I saw virtually none of that the whole time I was in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, with the exception of one stop I made heading south from Nashville to Chattanooga on Interstate 24. Two giant fireworks emporiums sit at the bottom of Exit 152: Big Daddy's and Tennessee-Alabama Fireworks. Both have a fine array of retail explosives, billboard-sized signs on their fronts and a smattering of souvenirs to impress the folks back home, but only Tennessee-Alabama dealt in what I was craving: taste-questionable merchandise. Mixed in among the Confederate flags, Civil War icons and framable Elvises was a jaw-dropping display of ceramic Mammy teapots, old-black-manservant salt shakers and smiling-little-black-boys-eating-watermelon toothpick holders.

Watermelon.

In 2010.

Wow.

I consider myself a connoisseur of bad taste and, for my money, this tops them all. An about.com page by Barbara Crews has this to say about this kind of memorabilia:

Although many people consider black memorabilia to be offensive and insulting, it might surprise you to find out many big-time collectors of black memorabilia are, in fact, of African American heritage. Celebrity collectors include Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Bill Cosby and Billy Dee Williams. And oft-times these collectors look for and acquire the most offensive and slave-related pieces. Why? According to Philip Merrill ("Antiques Roadshow" guy), it's a way to remember and preserve the past, and to make sure history is not repeated.

Okay, I feel a little better, now that I know Spike Lee is on board with this. However, these pieces aren't antiques -- they're newly minted. Call me politically correct, but it's hard to picture a factory churning out black-people-eating-watermelon figurines in 2010.