When I was a kid, my father would load the family into the Crosley convertible and we'd drive up the Delmarva Peninsula headed for Kent, Ohio, my father's hometown.

It took us an hour and a half to get to the Matapeake Ferry, which took another hour to cross the Chesapeake Bay. Then the real driving began.

We'd swing past Baltimore and steer northwest into Pennsylvania until we hit Breezewood, the town "Where America Begins." Through Bedford and Greensburg we'd follow Route 30 -- the Crosley, which was the size of a golf cart, would go only 45 miles an hour, so we avoided the partially completed Pennsylvania Turnpike with its semis -- and we'd climb into the Alleghenies.

This was the worst part of the trip for me. The rolling terrain made me carsick, and I spent the next five hours vomiting every couple of miles. My father firmly believed that the cure for carsickness was warm chocolate milk, which only worsened my desperate condition, and my memory of western Pennsylvania is still a blur (was there ever a more discouraging sign than "This is your last chance for the Howard Johnson's"?).

The entire trip took 13 to 16 hours, depending on how often we had to pull over so I could regurgitate globs of curdled chocolate milk.

On a good day, I can now make the same trip in about six or seven hours -- half the time! The road is mostly level and straight, I don't pass through any small towns and I no longer get carsick!

So, on its 50th birthday I'm inclined to be thankful for the Interstate highway system. Thanks to Congress for passing the bill! And thank you, Dwight Eisenhower, for signing it into law!

The Interstate system has made it possible for us to drive from New York to L.A. in days rather than weeks. The trucks that use the system are the backbone of our economy. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, even the cars we drive, come to us via the Interstate system.

But all this mobility has had negative consequences. With each passing year, it becomes more obvious that the Interstate system is unable to cope with the volume of traffic it handles, especially around our larger cities. If you need proof -- and I bet most of you don't -- drive from Southern Pines to Boston at Christmas. The trip will likely take you as long as it did in 1935 -- maybe longer. In '35, you could have taken the train.

The Interstate has become America's main street, and the inner cities have withered to pockets of racial discrimination, poverty, and crime. The growth of suburbs has exaggerated disparities of wealth, race, and class, and political power has shifted from the cities to the suburbs.

In the South, the system has bypassed small towns, and our old main streets are lined with empty buildings.

The Wal-Marts, Ramada Inns and Pizza Huts located on the bypasses have become town centers.

Other ill effects are less apparent. The Interstate system is lined with fast-food restaurants that have contributed to the obesity epidemic. The housing developments of the early '50s are rapidly deteriorating, and we're forced to build a second and third ring of highways to serve an ever-expanding suburban demographic.

The population of the United States will hit 300 million this fall, and rural America is in danger of disappearing altogether.

Even worse, the Interstate system has made us almost totally dependent on the automobile and foreign oil, the source of air pollution, global warming and international conflict.

The politicians who conceived the Interstate system couldn't have foreseen the long-term consequences, and now the genie, as they say, is out of the bottle.

Americans aren't about to give up their cars for an antiquated rail system. The future is gridlock, and the only solution we have is to build more and more roads.

These days, when I exit the Interstate after a long trip, there's not much worth remembering, only the ubiquitous McDonald's restaurants that have spread across the planet. Forget about Breezewood. These days it's difficult to tell where America begins and ends.

I don't miss the old curvy, rolling and dangerous roads of the '30s, '40s and early '50s -- but when I think of where we're headed, I feel a little queasy.