Lolita was debauched in one; Kentucky Fried Chicken was born in another. Lots of interesting things happen behind the impervious, often cheesy facade of roadside motels, with their ''lumpy mattresses and broken ice machines/...those tiny bars of soap/grimy towels, empty pools, paper-thin walls/and forgotten wake-up calls.'' But that odd little haiku of a dedication notwithstanding, this book — part of a series on ''The Road and American Culture'' — isn't about poetry. This is a pretty dense annal, written by two geographers and a historian, and consequently stuffed with maps, facts, and figures about the motel's changing floor plans, its artful euphemisms (''inn,'' ''court,'' ''cottage''), and its predictable transition from mom-and-pop operation to corporate room-packaging industry. But the authors' love of the American landscape is a big neon sign blinking through the statistics; The Motel in America is a masterful scrapbook for fellow devotees.