Automobile Anniversary

I agree with John Steele Gordon about how far the car has brought us, but I think he strays into false nostalgia when he writes: “Unfortunately the spread of franchising in the 1960s and 1970s much diminished the regional diversity of American highway cuisine.” I remember all too well the diversity of roadside cooking in the pre-McDonald’s years: the fried chicken with its carapace of petrified lard; the dreadful regional variations that could be played even on so seemingly incorruptible a thing as the cheeseburger; the vegetables simmered in Vaseline early that morning (or that week)…