What Texas’s oldest motel reveals about the rural South

Rainbow Courts “follows the history of the automobile”, says Joan Ratliff, its owner. When her great-uncle Monroe Bullock bought land in Rockdale in 1918, cars were new. Since many models didn’t have windscreens and roads were unpaved, holiday-goers would arrive in the boonies spattered in dirt. Mr Bullock reckoned they would rather drive up to the door of their room than track mud through the lobbies of the town’s hotels.