Suddenly, I didn’t know where I was. I looked around, I saw a thick wall of green trees lining the Interstate and signs for Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Chevron stations ahead. Relying on a GPS to guide me, I even forgot which highway I was moving on at 80 miles an hour. My car radio played the tranquil voice of a New Yorker podcast. I could have been in any state in the Union, mindlessly thundering through its terrifyingly vast network of looping cloverleaves, on ramps and off ramps. I felt panicked at the all-encompassing anonymity of this Anywhere, USA. Quickly I switched off the podcast to search for a local station and turned at the next exit, determined to see something specific to this unknown place — or at the very least, find a Waffle House.

If you’ve been reading this column in the last two months, you probably know that, for the first time in my life, I’ve been living in the South, and that I frequently discuss issues of American regionalism. Whether it be watermelon festivals, provincial politics or Elvis eyewitness testimonials, over this summer I have reveled in and been beguiled by the specificities of localities. In my fascination with all things local, however, I have also discovered that one needs to search out the eccentricities of place — the gas station with its own barbecue smokehouse or the gallery of folk art. These loci of local character are quickly rescinding farther and farther away from the interstate, fading deeper into the nether-regions of the heartland.

Oh boy, I wish the WPA still existed.

During the Great Depression, FDR’s New Deal programs paid writers and photographers to travel throughout the country and capture the essence of towns small and large in a series of travel guides. Much of the goal of this work — besides paying the salaries of unemployed writers — was to report on and preserve traditions and cultures of communities before they disappeared under the growing mantle of modernity. Ironically, the programs of FDR largely expanded the presence of the federal government in the everyday lives of Americans, and they may have inevitably eroded local autonomy and customs.

This summer, The New York Times has published a series of travel articles about these WPA guides, which have had a wave of renewed interest since the Library of Congress recently put them online. I’ve been reading this series with a rapt interest. Perhaps for our generation, so accustomed to the complexes of suburban sprawl and mall culture, the world described in the WPA travel guides seems entirely otherworldly and exotic. But for me, they are especially pertinent for my summer job; a fat WPA guide for Alabama sits on my office desk.

I write histories of Southern Jewish communities for a non-profit organization in Jackson, Miss. I think about disappearing cultures every day. The Mississippi-born Jewish author Edward Cohen writes in his memoir “The Peddler’s Grandson” of the melancholy similarities of these two cultures: “One can hardly hail from two more historically losing causes than the South and Judaism. Both my cultures have long tragic pasts, and not one jot of it has been forgotten.” In many ways, Southern and Jewish cultures have long been on the decline, one from historic and economic trends, the other from the simple truths of numbers and birthrates. Thus, the Southern Jewish experience is one of battling against a diminishing way of life.

From only one summer of studying them, I can attempt to summarize the story of Southern Jews. They were immigrants who came to fledgling frontier communities as early as the 18th century. They traded in fur and dry goods and fought for the Confederacy. Many settled during the emergence of the New South, hearing in their far-off homelands of the slowly booming Reconstruction economies. As members of the merchant class they profited from the wealth of these new industrial towns. They formed synagogues and community centers, and bought plots of land to bury their dead. They adapted their traditions to fit into local customs, bringing gospel choirs into their houses of worship and dropping matzah balls into their gumbo. Often, these merchants would become prominent civic leaders. Their stores would grow and shape Main Streets of downtowns throughout the South.

My boss likes to say that in many ways, “the story of Southern Jews is the story of sons not wanting to work in their fathers’ businesses.” But also, theirs is the story of almost every American downtown. In the second half of the 20th century, as the economy changed, when industries moved abroad and monolithic malls were on the rise, Jewish-owned businesses closed shop over and over again. And many Jews, once important figures in small-town Southern life, moved away to bigger cities. Synagogue after synagogue disbanded.

Conducting research with fellow interns, I have spent an inordinate amount of time digging through dusty archives and birth records, taking photographs of rundown store buildings with Jewish names engraved on their walls, and one afternoon, standing in the blazing sun of Southern July to write down the hundreds of Jewish names in a Selma, Al. cemetery. Knee deep in names, I have found some gems of Southern Jewish cultural fusion (the gravestone of Stonewall Jackson Lilienthal was one favorite) but I have also felt a sense of futility. After all, Jews make up a tiny percentage of the South. Why should preserving this culture matter? Records are incomplete; first-hand memories are all but gone. But then, I think of being insulated in my car, and around me the blurred American landscape wiped clean of identifying characteristics, stripped bare of indigenous names and landmarks, replaced only with the storming armies of 7-Elevens, Applebee’s and Big Lots.

I realize this elegy for the loss of local culture, and rant against chain stores, is one that has been written before and is obviously more complicated than there is space for in my nostalgic lament. However, in flipping through my WPA guide, driving around the South and studying the diminishing tribe of Dixie Jews, I feel it all the more. So I suppose, I simply wish to say: Remember your history, shop at locally owned businesses and fight against the loss of American sub-cultures — one dies away every day.

Dan Hirsch says that the South shall rise again. Though he is currently on his way home, driving back north on some “anonymous and terrifyingly vast” freeway, you can send him an email at djhirsch "at" stanford.edu.