We Have Met the South and It Is Us: Southern Souvenirs and the American Image

Abstract

Stuckey's is almost defunct. Even the Stuckey's next door to the home office in Eastman, Georgia, is closed on Sunday. Ever since the railroad bought the chain as a tax write-off, burnt down Stuckey's haven't been replaced, and few new Stuckey's have been built. The pecan rolls at the remaining stores were made, not by Stuckey's but were, rather, bought, mass-produced, from some nameless factory. And today, it is rare to see a roof bearing the admonition to “See Seven States from Rock City.” The three-foot letters on the barn roofs which still bear the familiar advertisement are faded and the words no longer dominate the countryside. Today, the message, extended only to literate birds, is private rather than public—new invitations to Lookout Mountain's Rock City are painted on birdhouse roofs, and the bird houses are sold to grace the back yards of nostalgia souvenir seekers. Even without Stuckey's and Rock City barns, the South ain't dead for tourists; rather, it's a New South—a South to which the travelling nation looks for the finest American virtues.