Don't Make Me Pull Over!

By: Richard Ratay

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Part pop history and part whimsical memoir in the spirit of National Lampoon's Vacation - Don’t Make Me Pull Over! is a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips - a halcyon era that culminated in the latter part of the 20th century, before portable DVD players, iPods, and Google Maps.

In the days before cheap air travel, families didn’t so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them - from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks.

The birth of America's first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming - sans seatbelts! - to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations. Frequently, what was remembered the longest wasn’t Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, or Disney World, but such roadside attractions as “The Thing” in Texas Canyon, Arizona, or “The Mystery Spot” in Santa Cruz, California. In this road tourism-crazy era that stretched through the 1970s, national parks attendance swelled to 165 million, and a whopping 2.2 million people visited Gettysburg each year, 13 times the number of soldiers who fought in the battle.

Now, decades later, Ratay offers a paean to what was lost, showing how family togetherness was eventually sacrificed to electronic distractions and the urge to "get there now". In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including 20-foot “land yachts”, oasis-like Holiday Inn “Holidomes”, “Smokey"-spotting Fuzzbusters, 28 glorious flavors of Howard Johnson’s ice cream, and the thrill of finding a “good buddy” on the CB radio.

A rousing Ratay family ride-along, Don’t Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, how its evolution mirrored the country’s, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together - for better and worse - have largely disappeared

©2018 Richard Ratay (P)2018 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

"Narrator Jonathan Ross delightfully handles the first-person narrative about piling into the family land yacht and driving across the country. Ross speaks with tongue in cheek about squabbling siblings, overconfident dads, questioning moms, and landmarks such as giant balls of string and even large animal statues.... This is a great book to listen to on just such a trip." (AudioFile)

Took a ride back t o my youth!

Great book full of nostalgia and stuff I totally forgot about! Great quick listen - super narration and just lots of fun to listen to. Just enough history and info mixed in without it being too boring! If you like this book next listen to Sting Ray Afternoon also.

Funny, Educational, Loooooong like a road trip

The author gives a lot of education on roads and cars as well as a history of ppl and how roads came about. He includes stories of his own and takes you along with home as he intricately describes his family road trips. It was long, but fascinating. I loved it like I love a good road trip.

don't make me pull over

This book brought back memories that made me laugh. it answered some questions like "whatever happened to Howard Johnsons motels".

Are we there yet

A bit like a long road trip. By the end I was just asking how long till we're finished. An informative history of road travel in America. But that history is pretty dry. And there's not a many jokes as I was hoping for. Performance is good.

Memorarble.But didn't hold attention.

I really enjoyed the telling of him packing up the kids in the middle of night, whisk them away only for them to wake up in morn . Has a very good start . Some places were even humorous..Overall, enjoyed.

Not funny stories

As the sample let me to believe this book is not about funny stories from driving across country. It’s a history lesson on roads and cars. Not exactly what I thought it was.

loved it

I didn't know what to expect when this was recommended to me but I absolutely loved it. I'm a car guy and a family man so it hit home for me.

Yep! That's what it was like.

I really enjoyed this one, It was all those trying times sitting in the middle of the back seat (middle child syndrome) in my parents' car and then the not quite instant replay of trips with my own family (at least I was riding shotgun now) twenty years later. Some observations made me smile and others groan and even a few that made me angry all over again. All were too true and brought back lots of memories. Had to call my sisters to relive a few of the funnier ones.

Ready to hit the road

This book makes me yearn to kid out on the open road with my kids. I enjoyed the diversity of subjects in this book. It’s neat to learn how many different influences from culture to technology impacted the family road trip.

Nostalgia and education in one neat little book

Not what I was expecting and that's not a bad thing. I did not realize there would be so much history of transportation in the U.S. but I did find it interesting. The author grew up in the same time as me so I could relate to a lot of his childhood memories which was very cool. Now I'm ready for a road trip.