Words Already Spoken
As editor of a small regional magazine in Georgia, one of my favorite contributions was my thoughts on page 8 of every quarterly issue, The Editor’s Pen. My random ideas came in right at 500-words, exactly as the designer instructed. As an editor, I know the importance of that number. I leaned toward topics found in the issue but sometimes I rambled. There were things I wanted to say, and with a forum at my fingertips, why not? No matter if I strayed from topic or inserted a personal quip, one thing always remained the same: the quote.
As fate would have it, there are writers in this world that have tapped into my emotions far better than I. Why reinvent the wheel? So, as always, I give them credit and feed off their words. I let inspiration carry me to whatever corner of the world it feels will satisfy my editorial assignments or deadlines. Those quotes have never let me down.
My first book—North Georgia Moonshine—took me by surprise. The pitch, the purchase wasn’t expected. When I found myself staring at a blank computer screen, I panicked. I had all the information I needed, but I had no inkling at how to start. So, I decided to follow the formula that had never let me down. Find the quote. And, I did. As crazy as it sounds (I’m sure every writer understands this totally), the words flowed. The chapters grew until there were 40,000 words smiling back at me.
So following a pattern that never seems to fail, I search for quotes on barns and the stories that will unfold. The essence of each chapter will be found in a single quote of introduction. The American Road Trip. Roadside Attractions. Billboards and Advertising. Rock City Gardens. Family Legacy. A Cult Following. And so much more. This book is about the iconic Rock City Barns, but the story does not stop with the boards or messages. There are so many people whose lives have been changed because there were Rock City Barns.
So read through this list. See if anything strikes your fancy. Tell me in the comments.
In 2016, our first MAJOR road trip was following Route 66. This is Monument Valley; it is NOT on Route 66. This is what you find when you take a detour.
"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you come from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." Terry Pratchett
“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.” Jack Kerouac
“Roads were made for journeys, not destinations.” Confucius
“You may not find a path, but you will find a way.” Tom Wolfe
“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” John Steinbeck
“Roads are a record of those who have gone before.” Rebecca Solnit
“Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.” Izaak Walton
“A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting and new places.” Tom Lichtenheld
"If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village she must seek them abroad." Jane Austen
“I may not have ended up where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” Douglas Adams
'“Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. Unknown
”It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way.” Emma Chase
“The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.” William Least Heat Moon
“Driving at night is about communicating with lights.” Lukhman Pambra
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Lewis Carroll
"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." Saint Augustine.
One of our favorite road trips was to Cumberland Island, Georgia. Once we arrived at St. Marys, we took the ferry to the island and explored the ruins of Dungeness, the house of Plum Orchard, and church where JFK JR married.
“Look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” Tom Stoppard
“If you’re on a road trip, you need driving music.”-Edgar Wright
“You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.” William Hazlitt
“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin ” Tony Robbins
"Not all those who wander are lost." J.R.R Tolkien"
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." Ursula K. Le Guin
“I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me.” Walt Whitman
“Look at life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.” Byrd Baggett
“A bend in the road, is not the end of the road….unless you fail to make the turn.”Helen Keller
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home." Henry David Thoreau
During one spring, we flew to Portland, Maine, and rented a car. We roamed the eastern coastline of Maine in search of the beautiful lighthouses we had always heard about. Our time there did not disappoint. This is West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, located on the most eastern point of the continental United States. It’s the only candy-stripped tower in the US and remains in need of restoration. It opens Memorial Day and closes during the winter.
“The open road is there, it will always be there. You just have to decide when to take it.” Chris Humphrey
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to make.” Angela N Blount
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” Erol Ozan
“The gladdest moment in human life, me thinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” Sir Richard Burton
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Scott Myers
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” T.S Eliot
“Discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.” John Steinbeck
“Every journey is simultaneously a beginning and an ending: I was leaving my old life behind and starting on a road trip to find a new me.” Debi Tolbert Duggar
“She wasn’t where she had been. She wasn’t where she was going, but she was on her way.” Jodi Hills
“Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere and sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.” Stacy Westfall
This is a road trip we take every year. We head to Thomson, Georgia, for the Blind Willie McTell Music Festival. We started going years ago, and now, we’re they’re official event photographer. No matter what, THIS is on our calendar every year. We saw St. Paul and the Broken Bones here, and we freaked out! You never know who will be on stage.
“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” Rosalia De Castro
“I just go with the flow, I follow the yellow brick road. I don’t know where it’s going to lead me, but I follow it.” Grace Jones
“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.” Isak Dinesen
“The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” Alain de Botton
“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.” Charles de Lint
“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” Pat Conroy
“Look for chances to take the less-traveled roads. There are no wrong turns.” Susan Magsamen
“Map out your future – but do it in pencil. The road ahead is as long as you make it. Make it worth the trip.” Bon Jovi
Then, there are those road trips that take you home. To Italy. To Sicily. To the small town of Lentini. No, this wasn’t Len’s homeplace (but it was his family name), but just down the road, Castellemmare del Golfo welcomed us.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." Mark Twain
“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.” Elizabeth Berg
“I love being on the road. I love that lifestyle, traveling city to city, rocking out and moving on to the next place.” Caleb Johnson
“I climb behind the steering wheel… I drive off immediately without once looking back; it’s a long journey but it leads to freedom.” Corinne Hofmann
“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” Babs Hoffman
“Road trips require a couple of things: a well balanced diet of caffeine, salt and sugar, and an excellent set of tunes - oh, and directions.” Jenn McKinlay
“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move” Robert Louis Stevenson
“Still, round the corner, there may wait, a new road or a secret gate.” J. R. R. Tolkien
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by.” Robert Frost
“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of seeing things.” Henry Miller
“My favorite thing to do is to go where I’ve never been.” Diane Arbus
“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” Robert Louis Stevenson
“A passenger on a road journey is in the hands of a driver; a reader embarking on a book is in the hands of a narrator.” Romesh Gunesekera
“Road trips are the equivalent of human wings. Ask me to go on one, any one. We’ll stop in every small town and learn the history and the stories, feel the ground, and capture the spirit. Then we’ll turn it into our own story, that will live inside our history to carry with us. Always. Because stories are more important than things.” Victoria Erickson
“To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.
You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown.” Freya Stark
“I love road trips. You get into this Zen rhythm; throw the sense of time out the window.” Miriam Toews
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” G.K. Chesterton
Being on the road teaches you more than you even dare to dream about the destination. We followed this shepherd for miles down a dirt road in Greece. He never once lagged behind. We saw the same work ethic in the olive groves and vineyards.
“The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” Alain de Botton
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.” Hans Christian Andersen
“When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.” Steve Rushin
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” Jack Kerouac
“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.” Paulo Coelho
“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” William Least Heat Moon
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.” Anthony Bourdain
“If you’re not lost, you’re not much of an explorer.” John Perry Barlow
“In 1903, the Wright brothers invented airplanes, because in 1902 they took a road trip across the country with their family.” Bill Engvall
“We all have that one friend who is either on a roadtrip or planning a roadtrip or thinking about a road-trip or talking to people who are on a roadtrip or posting quotes about a roadtrip.” Crestless Wave
“A tourist is a fellow who drives thousands of miles so he can be photographed standing in front of his car.” Emile Ganest
“Sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason.” Jerry Seinfeld
“That’s why I love road trips, dude. It’s like doing something without actually doing anything.” John Green
“Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.” Izaak Walton
'“A journey is measured in friends, rather than miles.” Tim Chaill
“One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” Edith Wharton
In Northern Greece, we stopped at an olive grove just to take photographs of the workers. This man owned the groves. We asked permission to take photos, and three hours later, we did. He showed us everything, told us everything, took us to far reaches of the groves. He was so excited that we were interested. He told us stories of when he worked on the ships with Aristotle Onassis. He still texts Len to this day!
“No road is long with good company.” Turkish proverb
“We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world & the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” Robert Louis Stevenson
“In life, it’s not where you go – it’s who you travel with.” Charles M. Schulz
“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” Mark Twain
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” Ernest Hemingway
“Sometimes all you need is a great friend and a tank of gas.” Thelma and Louise
“There is an unspoken bond you create with the friends you travel with.” Kristen Sarah
“The entire road trip could be summed up as one giant attempt to keep from crashing the car during fits of rage and fits of hysteria.”Kari Martindale
“The road goes on forever and the party never ends.” Robert Earl Keen
“A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints.” Wilfred Peterson
“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.” Aaron Lauritsen
“It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.” Aaron Lauritsen
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn't mean to take.” Angela N. Blount
“And just like that, we're on our way to everywhere” Emery Lord
“The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.” Aaron Lauritsen
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh...” Jack Kerouak
Along the harbor in Castellemmare del Golfo, Sicily.
