When you gotta go, where can you go?

The Mansfield rest area off I-95 North is getting a long-awaited makeover.

I'm old enough to remember the southeastern Massachusetts corridor without the Interstate highways that now dominate the flow of humanity to the north, south, east and west.

Interstate 95, which extends from Houlton, Maine, to Miami, a total distance of 1,923.8 miles, barreled through the Great Woods in the early 1960s. I was attending a Catholic elementary school in Plainville, which resulted in many bumpy rides over Routes 106 and 140 as the construction relentlessly advanced southward. But there was also a source of wonder in my young soul at seeing the mighty construction vehicles plowing their way through ancient forests to fulfill President Eisenhower's vision of a network of limited access highways that would connect all parts of the nation -- a network very similar to the famed German autobahn system that caught his fancy during World War II.

And Interstate 495, which is one of the longest spur routes in the entire Interstate system, followed not much later -- but it took a lot longer to complete. The section coming down from the Mass. Pike to I-95 near the Foxboro-Mansfield town line was finished not long after I-95's completion, but that's one of the places where it stalled. The extension to Route 24 in Raynham was finally completed in 1982, and it took many more years to extend the road (then called Mass. Route 25) to U.S. 6 in Wareham. The final connection to the Bourne Bridge was held up by court cases seeking to prevent access through farmland held in private ownership, and eventually, compromises created a convoluted route that finally got the superhighway to the doorstep of Cape Cod in 1987.

Before then, good ol' U.S. 1 was the main way to get to and from Boston or Providence and beyond. And as for I-495? Well, its long-awaited completion was a godsend to the residents of my hometown, which had to endure ridiculous summertime traffic jams as vacationers wound their way through our streets over Route 106 on the slow and winding way to Halifax, Route 3 and the Sagamore Bridge.

Sometimes, it doesn't pay to be in a slow-moving car, gulping down cups of coffee to stay alert, and suddenly finding one's self in need of a rest stop. No question about it, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

But in the years prior to the Interstates, three-hour drives that became 45-minute sprints in later years could be interrupted when nature called by stopping at any of the several gasoline stations that could be found in the towns along the route. And all of them touted clean restrooms, as well as attentive attendants that would fill your tank, check your tires and oil, and clean your windshields with smiles on their faces.

That is truly a lost part of Americana, but I digress.

My beloved 1968 Plymouth Fury.

As I grew older, I became quite reliant upon the Interstate Highway System. Starting in my sophomore year at Northwestern, I drove my 1968 Plymouth Fury back and forth to Chicago at least 19 times by my count, and additionally driving from Chicago to Florida and back when my grandfather died in 1974. I became quite familiar with the New York State Thruway, the Ohio Turnpike, Indiana Toll Road and the many expressways around Chicagoland. I even occasionally took sidetrips north, through Michigan and on Highway 401 in Ontario to Niagara Falls, because the Canadians were much better at removing snow from their highways in winter.

And you know what? It doesn't matter if you're driving 30 miles an hour or 70. The longer you spend in your car, you're eventually going to have to make a bathroom stop somewhere. And because the goal is to get from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible, you don't always want to find an exit, head into some unfamiliar town in the middle of the night, and just hope that there's some gas station or restaurant open where I wouldn't have to ask for a key to use the men's room.

That's why I was always glad to see the many rest areas along the Interstates. They had gas, they had food, and most importantly, they had lots of toilets.

Almost everywhere, there were HoJos.

Back in those days, some states called them an "oasis" to distinguish them from rest areas without services. Along the Connecticut Turnpike, they were called "canteens." Most of them would have a full-service gas station with multiple pumps, a restaurant (often a Howard Johnson's along the Northeast corridor), and maybe a gift shop. Some in lesser-traveled areas might have only a gas station and a lot of vending machines. And in New Jersey, the ones along the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway had multiple food choices and even possibly more than one brand of gasoline.

In the 1970s, you could trust them to be clean and safe at all hours of the day. You might even trust them enough, as I often did, to pull into them and catch a quick cat nap before resuming the marathon drive. 

I recall all this because recently, my former newspaper ran a story about the rest area along I-95 northbound in Mansfield, at Mile Marker 10 north of the Rhode Island border. When it was first built, it featured an attractive central building finished in a red brick façade. Located within were modern men's and women's necessary facilities, vending machines and a staffed information desk where you could find pamphlets about local and regional tourist attractions. 

Mansfield's own rest stop fell into disrepair.

But after a lengthy period of financial belt-tightening, the state shuttered the visitor facility and boarded it up. It closed in 2009, re-opened briefly in 2010, but was soon closed for good and fell into serious disrepair. Now, however, relief is about to return to the rest area. Through the efforts of local legislators, the state Department of Transportation has decided to raze the old building and replace it with permanent portable restrooms -- and thankfully, not those stinky plastic kiosks with the noxious blue liquid festering at their bases. These are large trailers that should, if properly maintained, provide the traveler in need with a reasonable level of comfort and privacy while answering nature's call. 

The plan fell short of what the legislators hoped to get -- electric charging stations, automated information kiosks and vending machines -- but at least it's something, and it should open for your business by the end of the year.

Now, you may ask, "where's the Howard Johnson's and the Atlantic gas station?" But if you're asking that, you're my age or older.

In Pennsylvania, the stops are like mini-malls.

Surely, it would be nice to offer motorists a fully-functional oasis like you see on the toll roads, with a McDonald's, a Subway, a Starbucks or a Dunks, a gift shop, lots of clean restrooms and maybe even a Mobil station where the gasoline isn't priced 40 cents a gallon more than it is a mile off the highway. Problem is, they can't do it.

In 1960, Congress passed a law prohibiting private businesses to operate within the rest areas on Interstate highways. The idea was to protect local businesses from losing customers to the services operating on the highway itself. That's why there are signs along the Interstates telling you what restaurants, hotels and fueling stops are near the highway.

"But wait," you ask. "What about all those rest stops you just mentioned?" 

Well, many of those operate on pre-existing highways that were made part of the Interstate system long after the facilities were built. And if the states collect tolls in lieu of receiving federal funding for maintaining their portions of those numbered highways, they aren't subject to the ban. A quick trip around Google told me that there are 10 states -- Florida, Maine, Maryland, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana, New York and New Jersey -- where these types of service areas were grandfathered in. I recall some in Ohio as well, and Google Earth confirms to me that those still exist.

Massachusetts also apparently grandfathered in a few other service areas, like the one on Route 24 in Bridgewater and on the former Route 128 (now I-95) in Newton and Lexington. Those were built when the highways were state roads, as Route 24 still is. But I do recall a few that have disappeared from the landscape; one was near Sturbridge heading toward Connecticut on I-84, whose buildings -- orange roof on the former restaurant and red trim on the former gas station -- were clearly visible from the highway for years before finally being torn down. The overview from Google Earth still shows a small clearing where the facilities once were, but nature is reclaiming the site.

Rest areas on American highways have somewhat of a romantic notion about them. When high-speed travel became a possibility, the states that operated them often turned them into palaces. And many of the states added their own unique stamp to them. 

You won't find the Bada Bing at this rest stop.

For instance, New Jersey has always named its rest areas after famous residents of the state. People have long known of the Vince Lombardi Rest Area along the New Jersey Turnpike, as well as plazas named for entertainers Frank Sinatra and Jon Bon Jovi. More recently, the Garden State Parkway has added its service plazas to that list. 

In 2022, a rest stop in the Montvale area of North Jersey was named for none other than the late actor James Gandolfini, whose unforgettable portrayal of mobster/family man Tony Soprano was the force behind the groundbreaking HBO series that redefined episodic drama on television. That rest area was slated for a major renovation and closed not long after, but it re-opened in January. 

Sadly, among the many dining options on the site, there are not franchises of Satriale's Pork Store or Artie Bucco's Vesuvio II.

These Merritt Parkway stops aren't much different.

You can still find some mid-century charm in the tiny rest stops along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, a favorite alternative for westbound motorists looking to avoid the chaos on the Connecticut Turnpike. The tiny buildings have restrooms and convenience-store items, and there's usually just one row of gas pumps in the middle of a narrow strip of pavement off the travel lanes. Both have been upgraded and modernized a little over the years, but as the accompanying 1949 photo attests, the changes haven't been extensive.

I've waxed poetically about these rest areas thus far, but there's a darker side to them as well.

As time has passed and the highways have grown busier, the rest areas have grown more congested and don't always feel as safe as they might have 50 years ago. And from personal experience, I can tell you that I'm not always impressed with the level of cleanliness. We've seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our current Secretary of Health and Human Services, swimming gleefully in a bacteria-infested river, and from that, I surmise he'd feel right at home in some of the feces-encrusted rest rooms I've seen along today's Interstates.

And there are other, less savory issues. You may recall that several years ago, a woman was brutally murdered inside the Burger King on the northbound side of Route 24 in Bridgewater.

Across from the Mansfield rest area, on the southbound stretch of I-95 in North Attleboro, there's a much smaller parking area. There are no services, and it borders closely to Plain Street and the gravel pits in the vicinity. For many years, that area was widely known as a prime area for what the gendarmes called "lewd and lascivious behavior" between same-sex individuals looking for a secretive hookup.

There were frequent arrests made there, and I recall one day in the newsroom when our irascible police-beat reporter, Henry Reiley, stormed through the door and loudly inquired, "Has anyone here heard of (name of local former parish priest redacted)?" When I responded that I had because he used to be the parish priest at my church, Henry responded that the individual had just been arrested at the North Attleboro rest stop. It seems that he had been soliciting a hookup from a motorist, and received a significant beating because of it.

That did not surprise me at all, because when I was a pre-teen, trying to be a good little Catholic and confessing my sins before performing the Easter ritual of taking communion, this individual asked me a very inappropriate question of a sexual nature while in the confessional. Young as I was, I wasn't really sure what the hell I had just been asked, but I knew it was sketchy, and when I told my father (a very devout Catholic) about it later that evening, his face turned beet red and he wanted to head directly to the rectory and commit mayhem. Fortunately, my mother talked him out of it.

And this was long before anyone knew of what was going on at churches all over the state -- far more horribly in a neighboring town, in fact. 

That fellow died about a year ago. There was not one single word of his rest area escapade in his diocesan-approved obituary. Par for the course, I suppose. Pope Leo XIV has his work cut out for him in that area, I suspect.

Now, nothing awful has ever happened to me at a rest stop in more than a half-century of personal travel. But there's no way I could imagine myself taking the quick naps I once did, and thus leave myself vulnerable to who knows what.

Gradually, the rest areas' importance to travelers is waning in favor of the giant truck stops, huge convenience stores and the clusters of hotels and dining establishments that spring up around otherwise isolated exits all across this great land of ours. I'll probably not be availing myself of those in the years to come, because I'm getting a little too old for long drives -- and my bladder would have me stopping every 35-40 minutes at the rate that I consume caffeine-laced drinks to keep myself alert behind the wheel. 

But as I said before, there are just times that when you gotta go, you gotta go. And when you're in those desperate situations and you find yourself seriously considering peeing into an empty Starbucks cup while driving 70 mph, nothing says "Valhalla" better than a blue sign on the side of the road that says REST AREA 1 MILE, and with that, the unspoken guarantee that there will be relatively clean toilets and even a place to get that next giant latte.

I'm glad that my hometown will once again be able to satisfy the restroom requirement to those in need. 

MARK FARINELLA drove that beloved '68 Plymouth Fury through 36 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces before the gasoline crisis of 1974 doubled the price of filling its 24-gallon tank. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com