Craving a blast of nostalgia with a side of pecans? Pull over and explore Stuckey's, the Georgia highway staple. Beginning as a single roadside stand selling pecans in Eastman, Georgia, by the 1950s, the name Stuckey's was synonymous throughout the South with candy, souvenirs, clean restrooms, and the other necessities of automobile travel. During the 1960s, the Stuckey's stores moved into the new frontier of the interstate highways, where quite often they sat alone at the exits like oases in the middle of a desert. Their bright aqua-colored rooftops were a welcome beacon for those who had been driving long distances. Travel has changed a lot since then, but Stuckey's can still be found along the nation's highways, still providing dozens of types of candy and nuts, plus the same mix of souvenirs, as always. Anyone need a rubber alligator or a pecan log?
Author Tim Hollis has written 30 books on pop culture history, a number of them concerning Southeastern tourism. Stuckey's was a natural topic for him, and he searched corporate archives and private collections to pull together the story of the company's past and present.