Heritage Shared Essays, Papers, and Poetry
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The most famous roadside memorial on the Central Coast is the James Dean monument on Highway 46 in Cholame. The concrete, stainless steel and aluminum sculpture, erected in 1977 by a wealthy Japanese James Dean admirer, commemorates the famous actor's 1955 fatal car crash at the nearby intersection of Highways 41 and 46. The monument and its benches encircle a Chinese Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima). Located in the spacious parking lot of the Jack Ranch Café, the Dean
memorial is a popular pilgrimage destination for movie buffs, roadside
attraction enthusiasts, and students of American culture. A Google
search for "James Dean Memorial Cholame" yields nearly thirty-seven
thousand hits.
For all its celebrity, the James Dean monument is not the most
poignant or telling of Central Coast roadside memorials. The sculpture
was professionally designed and created abroad, funded by a distant
benefactor, and erected on private land to memorialize a famous
person. Except for the most passionate of James Dean fans, the
monument has a distant formality about it, rather like that of an
official war memorial in a town square. It lacks the intimacy of
spontaneous roadside memorials placed by family or friends to
memorialize the site of a traffic fatality. We've all seen them as we
cruise along Central Coast highways, often near intersections or
curves: little roadside clusters of brightly colored ribbons, flowers,
perhaps a balloon or a cross, a flag, a photo or a small plaque,
candles and trinkets all lovingly arrayed. These are sites of private
remembrance made public by their placement along roadside rights of
way. Many continue to be well maintained even years after the
tragedy they mark. Respectful mowing crews generally leave them be.
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These expressions of private grieving in public places carry on the
ancient tradition of memento mori, objects and images created both to
remember the dead and to remind the living of their own mortality.
Some roadside memorials are rich in religious symbolism. Others are
secular, often patriotic, and very personal, even quirky, in theme
and content. Spanish-speaking residents call them descansos, likening
these sites to the places where pallbearers pause to rest their burden
on the way to the cemetery. To their creators roadside memorials are
sacred ground. To passersby they are fascinating artifacts of
contemporary social history. What are their personal stories? What are
their cultural meanings?
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The roadside memorials pictured here are typical of those on the
Central Coast. There are many more waiting to be noticed and
appreciated. Heritage Shared will add more images to our gallery as
they become available.*
*Want to know more? The easiest way is to google the keyphrase
"roadside memorials," which will yield innumerable books, articles,
and internet links to the legions of private enthusiasts who
methodically document these expressions of popular culture along every
American roadway. The Wikipedia article on memento mori helps place
these compelling artifacts in their broader cultural context.
