Ever been to Breezewood, Pennsylvania?
Breezewood is a town that is not really a town in the middle of nowhere. Decades ago, I-70 was routed onto a lonely little road somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. It’s the strangest thing. This massive highway ends abruptly at a T-intersection, you drive for about a mile, then there’s a ramp, and you get back on the highway. It’s the only Interstate in America with a stoplight.* It’s like a pause in the highway.
Since then, that little strip has been heavily commercialized. The route is very busy, linking Washington, D.C. to the midwest. Anyone with anything to sell naturally wants to build on a road where travelers have no choice but to drive by their neon signs.
The town has no residents, except maybe a couple of people who own, operate, and live at a few small motels. The town does have countless chain restaurants, rooms for rent, and is busy enough to warrant two McDonald’s. It’s been called the town of motels and the traveler’s oasis.
If you look at satellite photos, you can see that there is nothing around it — absolutely nothing. There is only countryside for miles and miles. It’s a city of dozens and dozens of neon signs for motels and gas stations and restaurants. It’s a faint glow on an empty horizon. You travel during the darkness and come to this place of lights and concrete and food and fuel, and if you’re too tired to go on, beds. You get what you need and then hurry back into the darkness.
So many words have been written about how terrible Breezewood is, that it is “ruining the landscape,” that it is cheap and commercial, that it pollutes an unpopulated area with its lights. We’re conditioned to think that this is an ugly place, that untouched nature is what is beautiful.
I don’t think that at all. I like how Breezewood is an island of civilization in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It offers what people want when they’re traveling. I love the contrast between the emptiness of the country and the solidity of a little man-made world dropped in the middle of it. It’s the man-made that makes the country beautiful; otherwise there would be nothing to look at except hills and sky.
The prevailing attitude is that all of these roadside conveniences with big lighted signs and billboards on the highway are ruining the world somehow by trying to sell us something we might want. But there is no dishonesty in it. You can benefit from what they offer, or pass right on through.
It’s not a menace to me. I look at it all very charitably, and I’m glad it’s here. We need more Breezewoods.
*Technically there is a short “interstate” in Wyoming with stoplights, but it’s nothing more than a street that was labeled an interstate in order to exploit a loophole to qualify for federal funding.
