Mammy's Cupboard: Natchez, Mississippi , USA

Mammy's Cupboard -- a roadside restaurant giant Aunt Jemima -- has spawned countless debates over its cultural and social merits. But no one argues that she's great at what she was meant to do: getting travelers to pull off the highway.

Mammy was built by Henry Gaude (Go-day) in 1939-40. Henry had a gas station, and wanted a roadhouse that would capitalize on the then-current craze for Gone With the Wind. One tale is that Mammy was designed as a white Southern belle by Annie Davis Bost, the wife of a prominent Natchez architect -- and Mammy's shape does seem more Scarlett O'Hara than Hattie McDaniel. Henry then transformed the big lady to black from white because black was better than white in the road-food visual shorthand of 1940 Natchez, conveying ideas of nurturing and nourishment.

"Here in the South, the mammy was good; she was revered," said Lorna Martin, Mammy's current owner. It's an aspect of Mammy's Cupboard that its later critics may have missed.

As the years passed, Mammy fell from grace. She was nearly bulldozed in 1979 for a widening of Highway 61, but was saved by early roadside preservationists. Old photos of Mammy -- she's always been popular with shutterbugs -- show that around this time her skin began to lighten, gradually, with each subsequent repainting.