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.