Swimming pools! Color television! Air conditioning! The American motel — particularly the quirky, independent kind seen along highways in the 1950s and 60s — fascinates writer James Lileks, whose 500 or so motel postcards capture the motel's midcentury heyday.

Lileks.com's "The American Motel" postcard archive • Opening theme: "Keepers" by Still Flyin' • Closing theme: "Slow Draw/Feeling In My Heart" by Eric Frisch • Additional music by Tim Beek, Papernut Cambridge, and Chad Crouch • www.forkeepspodcast.com