The passing of Labor Day only encouraged me to take to the road again. And once again the provisions packed into the family's trusty Volvo were just a couple of bottles of water, some celery sticks and half a bag of dubiously fresh pretzels. Financial responsibility be damned: It was time to forage and live off the land.

Many years ago, when times were tight in our family and my father still wanted to travel, mom had a knack for packing coolers full of edibles, if not goodies. Our standards were peanut butter and strawberry jam on white bread and roast beef and lettuce with mustard on rye.

Every family seemed to have their specialties, which were revealed if the end of the trip was a picnic with friends. One family down the street always traveled with tuna and my friend Marty's mom was known for salami (not the most friendly item on hot summer days in those years before cars were air conditioned).

My mother had that cooler. Sort of a magic refrigerator. There were pretzels, chocolate chip cookies, carrot and celery sticks and different types of fruit because my father liked to chew on apples. The gallon jug always held water and a Thermos carried my mother's killer coffee -- never good, but always hot and tempered with milk. The cooler enabled the family to save money on restaurant lunches and also to minimize stops on those days when the drive time was 10 hours per day in the direction of Yellowstone Park or the Grand Canyon.

I started out that way, too, tucking a cooler into the back seat of many different high-mileage cars. Mostly I did it to save time. There were many miles to cover and stopping wasn't always in my vocabulary. To tell the truth, I joined in the "I got there in blank hours" game. Plus, my experiences at not being served in some places tempered my desire to sit and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait.

A friend and I once cooled our heels in a south Georgia diner for more than an hour before we realized that it might be our shoulder-length (or longer) hair that was causing the waitresses to send us a message of exclusion.

And then there was the time that a Ugandan foreign exchange student and I couldn't get waited on in a Virginia cafe ...

Three people (and a dog) stopped me from doing this not-stopping routine -- my faithful Sherri Panza who, upon marriage, let it be known that 10-hour drives with 10-minute breaks to gas up just weren't going to cut it. She wanted to stop and sit and eat and talk. Also, our German shepherd seemed to resent the presence of the cooler in "her" back seat.

But it was the other two humans who really converted me. Hats off to Jane and Michael Stern for their first "Roadfood" book. Someone gave it to us as a gift and for those of us who were called "eaters" long before we were "foodies" the tome was great reading. It only required one major gamble -- to get off the interstates and try the back roads.

Our first long trip to Florida cemented our attachment to the book. We had snapper soup in Delaware, pulled pork in North Carolina, crisp chicken fried up in Hardeeville, S.C., and peanut-butter pudding -- aka Jimmy Carter custard -- at a tearoom in downtown Atlanta.

Of course, not all was perfect. We drove miles into nowhere in central Florida to check out what the book said was fantastic barbecued mullet (the fish, not the haircut.) We finally found the shack with a sign announcing that they were out of mullet. Thankfully, the regular barbecue down the road was worth the trip.

Over the years, we have mostly weaned ourselves from books and now do our own research. We start with Web sites such as Chowhound and Yelp and then question locals on the scene.

You never know what will turn up.

In the early '70s I attended Kent State University in Ohio, favoring such local landmarks as Jerry's Diner (home of the Big Howie), The Tavern (source of the first "garbageburger" I ever ate) and the Captain Brady for fantastic sweet rolls.

These were places I wanted to show my daughter four years ago when she chose to attend my alma mater (and the place I met Sherri).

But Jerry's is shuttered, The Tavern a memory, and the Captain Brady an outpost for a national coffee chain.

It was quite a shock to think that I had nowhere to take her to eat when we visited the campus. But on that first weekend, a student mentioned Mike's, which turned out to be a creative renovation, albeit in the form of a ramshackle roadhouse, of an old Dutch Pantry, complete with a menu of dozens of creative sandwiches such as the "Mad Hungarian" and the "Attack of the Crabzilla."

Not exactly four-star cuisine, but the wonderful result of an owner's creativity and imagination. Certainly a road food find.

I have discovered that the old adage about truckers knowing the finest spots is not always true.

A better indicator is the local police. One car means the eatery is good enough to break a patrol for. Two cars means it's good enough for a long meal and a talk.

But if you see three or more cars, continue driving, because the place is being raided.