American Scene: Ludowici, Ga.

Not all vanishing Americana is cause for nostalgia. Consider the speed trap, that once ubiquitous feature of Crossroads, U.S.A., now largely and mercifully extinct, the victim of interstate highways and perhaps even some slight evolution in civic if not human nature. One malignant exception to progress, however, is the southeastern Georgia town of Ludowici. Named after an immigrant German roofing-tile manufacturer who built a factory there at the turn of the century, it is one of the last remaining speed traps in the country. TIME Correspondent Joseph Kane drove slowly into Ludowici and...