An Introduction

I was first introduced to Route 66, as closely as I can reconstruct, sometime in the winter of 1952-53, when I was six. We lived on a ranch in southern Colorado and my father needed to visit his parents in Pacific Palisades, a Los Angeles suburb, because my grandfather was aging and ailing. Our family car on the ranch was a WW2 Willys army surplus jeep, which had been fortunately outfitted with an after-market hardtop and doors. With Pop leaving the ranch in the hands of my mother and my two older half-brothers, and my older brother Albert and I taking time off from school, the three of us drove off to California. The route was to drop straight south to Albuquerque NM, take a right on US 66 and head west. I only remember a few highlights from that trip (e.g., Taos Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest National Park, desert, palm trees, water-pool mirages on the highway, the Pacific Ocean) – six-year-old stuff. We did make the trip and the visit successfully, and got back home without mishap. 

I never thought about Route 66 much then until my good friend and military school classmate Michael Wallis published the wonderful and immensely successful retrospective Route 66: The Mother Road. That 1990 book is credited with helping to launch a huge resurgence of interest in “America’s Main Street”, making traveling it, to this day, an internationally popular experience to undertake. Sometime after reading the book, and retiring, Route 66 got on my bucket list. So, after completing another bucket-list item, visiting my 50th state (Michigan) in a two-week road trip with my wife Delly, I was ready to start the trek from Chicago to Los Angeles, on the Mother Road. Delly flew home from Chicago.

During the drive I was never very clear on what my purpose, my experience, should be. Eventually I sort of settled into a mindset of “take a picture of anything that catches my interest – unless I can’t stop in time”. What follows then is a very imprecise commentary in which to nest many of those photos for you. If it whets your appetite for more, read Michael’s book. Or hit The Road.

Illinois

Let me say first that I went armed with two guidebooks, Wallis’s book, and a road atlas, which, together with surprisingly good signage in many of the eight states, kept me from going astray much at all. The guides taught me that the highway was rerouted many places, especially in cities, over the years it was an official U.S. highway (1926 to 1977 or so). The Chicago start then, was variously set at some combination of Michigan Ave., Jackson, Adams, and/or Lakeshore Drive.

I found out too late that there is some kind of plaque/marker at Adams and Michigan, so I didn’t see it. I settled for documenting my start at Jackson and Michigan.

I decided right away that I didn’t care to follow the road block by block out of Chicago, so I beat a hasty retreat south to Joliet, and rejoined 66 there. I gradually decided that in many cities there are not interesting US66 relics to look at any more, so I shot through a number of cities on the Interstate (I know, I’m not a purist, but that’s okay).

Joliet is where I was born. I went by St. Joseph’s Hospital, but learned that it was a newer location, and they had razed the old one where I had arrived. Oh well. I got on Route 66, and saw a few interesting things. Jake and Elwood, atop an old diner, were rockin’. (It is interesting that the next little town down 66 from Joliet is, right, Elwood.)

On the trip, I was going to see many businesses dolled-up to take advantage of the Route 66 theme, and Joliet had a few.

I noted the spot where US66 and US30 intersected, because Michael Wallis had written another wonderful historical book on The Lincoln Highway, which actually pre-dated Route 66. Michael advised me not to try to drive the length of it, NYC to San Francisco.

I was impatient to get down-state to settle in with friends, so left Joliet and moved along through farm country. I saw that the old road is well maintained, alternating between two- and four-lane stretches. Frequently it was returned from four to two lanes, and I could see the other half broken up and covered with weeds. Some little-used stretches (which I liked best) were narrow and lacked center-line definition.
I slowed through frequent small towns, wary of speed traps, but made good progress. In one town I encountered the first of several giants that were erected back in the road’s heyday along the route. I saw a couple as I went west. This space-age guy, I think, originally advertised a muffler shop. Another, down-state, a hot-dog stand?

Frank’s Old Station, in another little town, was one of many museum-piece filling stations that had been nicely preserved.

Further along I pulled into the Ariston Café in Litchfield. This excellent restaurant has been in business since 1924, and the current (third) location since 1935.

I sat down at the bar with a group of bikers. The guy next to me was drinking a Stag beer, which I had not seen in many decades. His evaluation of it was “not terrible”. So, I chatted with him over Stag beer, and after they rode on I had another while chatting with the new owner, Will Law. He doesn’t plan to change a thing. Good idea.

I enjoyed spending the night with Darryl and Fran Slater in Edwardsville, near St. Louis. Darryl is another classmate from Western Military Academy (WMA) in nearby Alton. After dinner they showed me around Edwardsville, and pointed out a Route 66 marker made by an acquaintance of his. The next morning I would cross the Mississippi River. 

                    

                      

Missouri

I spent the next two days in the St. Louis area (where I had spent nearly all my school years) visiting friends and old haunts.  I had lunch with Karen and Bob Sutton, family friends forever, and spent the nights with a Navy buddy Bill Link and wife Elsie, and Chris and Joe Lange, another WMA alum.  One Route 66 classic I had to see was Ted Drewe’s frozen custard stand, but I was too early to indulge. 

Killing time, I went across town to the renewed Delmar Blvd. area where the St. Louis walk of fame is, and had to admire the life-size statue of that great hometown boy, Chuck Berry. 
                

  
I took my leave Monday morning and went southwest out I-44, which was built on top of a lot of US66 going across Missouri, but soon followed the old road through Eureka and Pond, where we lived and I did third grade.  The school is still there, greatly enlarged.

I soon started to see, in the sections of US66 separated from the Interstate, a scene of deterioration and economic devastation that the Interstate system caused.  In Illinois perhaps the local communities kept the businesses alive, but from Missouri west, unless a town is close to the “Super Slab” as Mike Wallis calls it, it is struggling or gone.  I soon stopped taking many pictures like this, of closed or fallen-down motels, cafés, gas stations, etc.  Pretty depressing.  It reminded me of scenes along US50 in southeastern Colorado years ago, when those towns were bypassed by I-70.  This destruction along Route 66 is of course the underlying theme of the great “Cars” animated movie (on which Michael Wallis was a consultant to Pixar).   

            

 

            

 

Sometimes places look like they are down-and-out, but they’re not.  The Elbow Inn is actually a going concern, along a great stretch of 66 called the Devil’s Elbow (dangerous curves, back in the day).

I loved the scenery along that stretch of 66 in the northern Ozarks.  And there are parts of the old road, pretty neglected, and nice old bridges.

          

 

          

 


Little towns like Spencer and Gay Parita get as much boost out of Route 66 as they can muster.

          

 

This great old white building may have been a diner.  Maybe a filling station.  And it was nice to see a few functioning drive-inn theatres along the old road.

          

 

Kansas

Back in the ‘20s when they were figuring out the route for the new US highway, an enterprising Kansan succeeded in getting his state included.  The result is a dozen-mile loop in the southeastern corner of the state, connecting US66 between Missouri and Oklahoma.


Immediately after crossing the Kansas line, I pulled up at a curious structure.  It was where previously some kind of open-air eatery had been, adjacent to Luigi’s Casa Della Tires (Pixar actually put Luigi’s in the “Cars” movie).  The building had some Route 66 graffiti (I like the Dorothy poster “Yes Toto, There Is Route 66”), and someone had gathered a set of ancient Burma-Shave rhyming signs and stacked them for a signpost.
Also in front of Luigi’s someone (Kansas US66 Assn?) had mounted a ’53 Buick on a post.  It saluted the “Cars” movie, with a Radiator Springs Sheriff decal and signature by Michael Wallis (whom Pixar recruited to use his deep bass voice as the Sheriff in the movie).

              

           
 

I got into an interesting conversation with a couple who stopped in there who were British, also driving the length of Route 66 as a vacation outing.

Around the curve, heading south toward Oklahoma, I went through the lovely town of Galena (which had a lively outlaw, mining and labor battling history back in the early 1900s).  I liked the old architecture and the gaslight-style street lamps – and of course a museum-piece 66 gas station.

          

From Galena I continued south to Baxter Springs.  City limits welcomes you to “Baxter Springs – First Cowtown in Kansas”.  This harkens back to the huge history of the town on the route Texans drove their herds to the Kansas City slaughterhouses.  In the day, it was pretty Wild West, with a rowdy lifestyle as the cattle were penned and fattened for the final drive to KC.

This town was also memorialized in James McMurtry’s masterpiece song “Chocktaw Bingo”, the hometown of two sisters in “sawed-off jeans and skinny little halters” and a large structure, on top of a midtown building, of Rolling Stones red lips, lit up “all night long, all night long”.  I drove up and down looking, but sadly I saw neither.  Poetic license?  Anyhow, for me James immortalized Baxter Springs.  Check out Chocktaw Bingo.  After lunch in Weston’s Route 66 Cafe, I ran a few miles south into Oklahoma, the real start of the West for me.

Oklahoma

          

Interstate 44 in northeast Oklahoma, down to Tulsa, is called the Will Rogers Turnpike, because Will was born in this territory, not far from Claremore, site of the WR museum and park.  I didn’t go there, or even to Claremore.  Probably more interesting to me is that Claremore was the birthplace of Lerskov Harold ‘Les’ Hardin, my stepfather for many years.  Les was “quarter-Cherokee”, probably not unusual in eastern Oklahoma, traditionally referred to as Indian Territory.  It was the settling place for many of the groups of Native Americans herded here from the Southeast along the infamous Trail of Tears.  Anyway, Les was a rough-hewn, rough-and-tumble Westerner, jack of all trades guy.  After being a WWII army explosives specialist, Les spent his life as a mountain man, mining explosives expert, gold miner, and wanderer.  From what I saw Les came from a tough crowd.  His grandfather’s brother was John Wesley Hardin.

But I digress.  I happily made my way south on the Old Road, keeping away from the Super Slab.  Some little towns were as dried-up as those I had seen in Missouri.  One sent me out on a lovely rough stretch of the highway that, after a few miles, ended in a cornfield.  Wrong turn.

                 

On the road to Tulsa I contacted Michael Wallis, to firm up our dinner arrangements for that night.  He instructed me to make two stops on the way down, both of which I found entertaining.

At tiny Foyil, I headed east several miles to Totem Park, created by a sculptor named Ed Galloway through the thirties, forties, and fifties, which includes the world’s largest totem pole.  Here are a couple of examples, world’s largest in the rear.

                  

 

  
Then at Catoosa I stopped at a long-decaying former tourist stop to see the Big Blue Whale.  This structure in a pond was once a popular place to climb and dive as kids enjoyed the swimming hole.  All that is left is a small souvenir shop whose proceeds go toward maintenance of the whale and the grounds.  
                    

     









Michael Wallis and I spent a long evening over dinner, reminiscing about many things, and I enjoyed many tales about his ongoing work on behalf of Route 66.  From his immense research for his book he has become a walking encyclopedia on the Mother Road.  He gave me a tour of downtown Tulsa, including the midtown promontory over the Arkansas River where he and others of the Route 66 Association are planning and fund-raising to build The Route 66 Experience, a headquarters/museum/visitor center.  It will overlook the spot where Route 66 crosses the river.  The next morning I stopped at a memorial park near that crossing to enjoy a great sculpture (above) signifying the transition between old and new roadway transportation.  I crossed the Arkansas and headed west out of Tulsa.

The road to Oklahoma City is pleasant, passing through numerous small towns.  Near Stroud, I saw the Rock Café with its complement of mockups of vehicles from the “Cars” movie.  It also shows off a good example of the local flat beige/rust rock (like flagstone) used in this region to side commercial buildings.  Further on, outside of Arcadia, stands the very old but nicely maintained Round Barn.

          

Chandler boasts one of the more interesting Phillips 66 filling stations.  Incidentally, Route 66 played a part in the decision by Frank Phillips and his cohorts to name their new gasoline that way.

  

Northeastern Oklahoma seemed to me a land of rolling hills and woods largely cleared for farming.  After I went through Oklahoma City and west toward the Texas panhandle, the land steadily flattened and dried out.  The highway is in varying states of repair, but interesting, with an occasional very old bridge.


                                           

Through the little towns blindsided by I-40, it was sometimes hard to tell at a glance whether a motel was dead and gone, or still on life support.  Also, I have noticed that an ongoing prop for parading Route 66 awareness is the old (preferably rusty) truck from the 1940s.  (I actually have one of those . . . next year may be when I get it painted and running again.)

           

Incidentally, the Glancy Motel-Hotel in Clinton, pictured above, was next door to the long-running Pop Hicks Restaurant, known far and wide for marvelous fried chicken.  Oops – Michael told me the Pop Hicks burned to the ground some years back.  Grease fire, no insurance.

Though I was pushing to get well across the Texas panhandle to Amarillo for the night, I did make a visit to the wonderful Route 66 Museum in Clinton.  It presented an extensive history of the life of the Mother Road, with many props from different periods.  A prop I loved was a slick Chevy Nova convertible (circa 1963) in the front window.

By this time Route 66 is climbing imperceptibly, through land that seems steadily more sparse and featureless.  I passed through a few towns along very flat open country, and soon left Oklahoma.