Yes, there are roadside places in Hawaii. It’s not all four-​star resorts, ersatz tiki bars and national franchises. There are roads, after all; along the roads, away from the tourist areas, are many places to have a genuine roadside experience.

The Hawaiian Style Café, in the town of Waimea (also known as Kamuela) on the Big Island, is one of those places. Double screen doors open onto a horseshoe-​shaped counter and about a dozen booths and tables, almost always fully occupied from opening to closing (7:30 till 1:30 seven days a week).

Breakfast is served any time and the “specials” board lists a dozen or so items daily. Though much of the menu is typical diner fare, items such as banana macadamia nut pancakes and Kailua pork-​sweet Maui onion omelettes tell you you’re not on the mainland.

The food is very good and the portions are huge — almost legendary, in fact.

Above: a typical lunch for two. On the left, a fresh grilled mahi mahi sandwich, a scoop of macaroni-​potato salad and a huge pile of fries, about $9; on the right, chicken katsu (two chicken cutlets, breaded Japanese-​style with grilled onions and gravy), Korean barbecued steak, two scoops of rice and one of mac-​potato salad, about $10. Hungry yet?

With over 1500 restaurants in the US and a dozen other unfortunate counties, his signs are everywhere — towering over freeway off-​ramps, lining downtown arterials, visible out in the middle of nowhere. While most of us would admit to having visited a Denny’s, we’d also probably be quick to add that it was under duress (read: late at night, on the freeway, nothing else open for miles, we were with friends who didn’t know better, if we’d had a choice we wouldn’t have, but …).

Who was he? Was there actually a Denny? What were his humble beginnings? When he first put on his cook’s apron and fired up his grill, did he anticipate that someday his name would synonymous with prefab food, the prototype of cookie-​cutter franchise blandness — the antithesis of what Roadside Online is about?

Just outside the small town of Zillah in central Washington State stands a premier example of roadside architecture — the Teapot Dome Service Station. Built in 1922 and named after the infamous Teapot Dome oil-​lease scandal, the station was originally located about a mile east of where it now sits, on an original alignment of the Yellowstone Trail at a tiny spot called Dalton. The building was hand-​crafted by Jack Ainsworth; it has a conical roof atop a circular frame, a sheet-​metal handle and a cast concrete spout.

Ownership of the station passed to A.J. Thomas in 1928; he and his wife erected a small store and soda fountain to provide refreshments to weary travelers. When the I-​84 interstate built through the area in the 1970s the station and store were saved from destruction and moved to their current location. The station continued to serve motorists well into the 1990s but it now sits empty and in need of restoration. The city of Zillah purchased the station in 2007 and a non-​profit organization was created to assist in its preservation. Their site (Friends of the Teapot Association) has more information.

In the early days of highway travel it was apparently considered quite a novelty to drive one’s auto through a tree (intentionally, of course). More than a half-​dozen such attractions were to be found up and down the West Coast, most of them in the redwood/​giant sequoia area of coastal California where trees are TREES. A few still exist, such as the Chandelier Tree, located just off the Redwood Highway (US 101) near Leggett; others like the Wawona Tunnel Tree in Yosemite Park are gone.

The Giant Stump near Arlington, Washington was one of a very few examples to be found north of California. Unlike the examples in the redwoods country, which tended to all be full-​sized trees, the Giant Stump — at least in its roadside attraction days — was never more than that: a stump. Still, it was a giant, and as the vintage photo shows, there was plenty of room for an auto to pass through it.

Calendars on the wall. Whether or not he originated the idea, he certainly popularized it — in Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon recommended “an almost infallible way to find honest food at just prices: count the wall calendars in a café.” The more the better (the most I’ve seen personally is seven, at Mollie’s Café in Snowville, Utah; but they knew the story).

Until recently, there was another way. If a restaurant had a clock like the one shown above, you knew it was a place that had been around for awhile and thus likely to have good food — otherwise, how would it have stayed in business?

The unit is basically a rectangular box, maybe 30 inches wide and a foot tall, rimmed by a neon tube. On one side is a square clock; on the other, a rotating mechanism that “flips” display ads for local businesses. They were made by the Electric Ad Clock Company of Chicago. The advertisement cards were made locally, usually by hand. The clocks could hold 12 ad cards, displaying two at a time. Every ten seconds or so, a timer in the mechanism wound flip a new pair of ad cards into view.

These clocks used to be quite common, at least out West, but they seem to be disappearing. I can only think of a handful still in existence. The clock pictured is at the Pine Tree Inn in Shelton, Washington. There was one much like at the late, lamented Circle T Inn in Ritzville, Washington, before it was remodeled to become a Mexican restaurant (which is very good, by the way). I’m trying to track down what happened to the Circle T clock; hopefully it was preserved as an artifact of roadside history.

If anyone knows of additional example, please post a comment. Tell me where; write a review of the place it’s at; upload a photo. Help preserve the clocks!