Song of the Day: 'Looking at the World Through a Windshield'

This isn't so much a commentary on my current vacation -- even though I've put just upwards of 1600 miles on my car in four days. It's about truck stops. I've seen a fair number in the last few days, and they are nowhere near as interesting as the truck stops of my past.

Back in the days before ubiquitous fast food at every interstate exit, truck stops were often the only place you could get food. In the daytime a truck stop was full of truckers and, if it was nice enough, families too. None were chains, and they all had full-service restaurants. Sometimes the food was quite good. I have fond memories of biscuits at Earl's Hot Biscuit, which was located in a truck stop on I-40 in West Memphis, Arkansas. At night it was a different story. Strange people could be found at truck stops at night. Not usually dangerous, just strange.

Tomorrow I am going to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I lived for three years while attending the University of Alabama. At the time my dad was playing guitar and pedal steel with a traveling band that played one-night "Salute to Elvis Presley" shows at National Guard armories and high school gyms throughout the South.

Whenever Dad would be passing through Tuscaloosa, he would call me and I would go out to the truck stop just south of town and sit there and drink coffee and visit with him and his decidedly odd bandmates. These calls inevitably came in the middle of the night -- of course, that's when they were traveling -- and more than one guy I dated in college was alarmed by the idea that I expected him to drop me off at my apartment at midnight and that I would then drive on my own out to a truck stop and hang around there all night, even if I was going to be with my dad.

Now many years later, that truck stop is gone and last time I was there, in its place is a chain truck stop that has none of the charms -- both real and dubious -- of its predecessor. I doubt I'll even stop when I pass by tomorrow.

So, in honor of my current road trip and my truck-stop history, here's former Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen guitarist Bill Kirchen doing "Looking at the World Through a Windshield":