Thursday, September 17, 2009

Day 4: Springfield, Missouri to Claremore, Oklahoma

13 September. Claremore, Oklahoma. 10:45 pm.

Executive summary: 8am start, 6pm finish, 192 miles; Springfield, Carthage, and Joplin, Missouri; Galena and Baxter Springs, Kansas; Quapaw, Miami, Chelsea, Foyil, and Claremore, Oklahoma. The steady stream of mom-and-pop motels and cottage gas stations is beginning to blend together, so I’m really glad to be making a point of summarizing things every night, because there’s no way I would be able to remember one site from another after several days in a row!

It is a dark and stormy night. (It really is!) Okay, only a little stormy: just chilly, rainy, and windy... but what an appropriate way to begin an entry in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma! (Read "Death on Route 66" to set the mood).

None of us slept particularly soundly through the night, thanks to the frequent (at least hourly) trains roaring past the campground, perhaps 200 meters from where we were trying to sleep. Tom’s comment at one point was, "You know they’re close when the camper shakes! Nonetheless, we all wakened in fairly chipper spirits, and I delighted in finding the same gray cat I had befriended last night still hanging around; I teased Dad about taking "Smokey" along with us (he threatened to have cat steak for supper if I sneaked Smokey into the camper). After a lengthy petting section, Smokey for his/her part began earnestly licking his/her butt. There it is.

I got to drive the Skyliner this morning; a pleasurable experience in and of itself! Since I’ve been doing (or, perhaps I should say, trying to do! – there’s a lot of guesswork involved...) most of the navigating so far, we agreed that this morning’s first segment would be a good place for me to be able to get my head out of the maps and guides and just enjoy, on a special, I-44-free drive. This portion of Route 66 wound through pastoral settings of rolling wooded hills and green fields peppered with churches, barns, and roadside remnants. Rolling along through Ash Grove, we came over a rise and found a straight-out-of-the-past Sinclair station on our right. Deciding to pull off for a couple of photos, we wound up lingering for a couple of hours at what turned out to be Gay Parita, a restored 1929 café and gas station with an adjacent stone barn housing more old vehicles. We visited at length with the talkative proprietor, Gary Turner, who struck us as crazy like a fox with his practiced folksy offhandedness. He invited us to share in Cokes, coffee, and delicious doughnuts while snapping away with the cameras (he insisted that Tom pull the Skyliner in under the canopy of the old service station, from which 50s tunes sang forth from a radio during our entire stay), and we wound up collectively spending a couple of hundred dollars on souvenirs and gifts, mostly T-shirts and several copies of a great Route 66 photo journal with what should be helpful, in-order photographs of many of the sights we have seen and will be seeing along the way.

Nearly all of old Route 66 has been preserved and remains in daily use throughout eastern Oklahoma: since the interstate turnpike is a toll road here, most local and regional travel is done on the "Free Road" (old Route 66), which proved to be an excellent highway; we had little trouble following this unbroken section of the old road meandering from the Kansas border toward the heart of Oklahoma.

We rolled west through Halltown, Paris Springs, Spencer, Heatonville, Plew, Avilla, and Maxville to Carthage, where for once we were able to follow through on our breakfast plan: a big meal at the Pancake Hut, where the obliging waitress plugged in a mechanical "Chicago Band Box" while we feasted just down Garrison from the Boots Motel, world famous for its architecture, neon and history but now serving as run-down apartments. After breakfast we circled the picturesque town square with its Battle of Carthage memorial before retracing our steps to the outskirts of town to find Red Oak II, a site similar to Greenfield Village in that it is a cluster of relocated and restored structures: vintage homes and businesses painstakingly maintained and mostly open to the public – with some of the homes actually lived in by their owners! The site was created by local artist Lowell Davis, though it now has many different owners, who apparently own individual buildings at the site. One of the guidebooks, published a few years ago (at least before March 2007, when the Pig Hip Restaurant burned, since it recommends it as a place to eat), indicated that Red Oak II was then for sale; I wondered whether the current owners all formed a group to purchase it piecemeal rather than let it fall by the wayside. The turn-off to Red Oak was marked with a nearby folk art sculpture at the Flying W Store, a "flying manure spreader" sculpture by Davis comically named the "Crap Duster."

Continuing west, we stopped to check out the Carthage 66 Drive-In, a roadside theatre restored after years of being a junkyard. It’s still in use, though sadly we had missed seeing a show there last night (just as we missed some kind of bluegrass concert at Red Oak... although reaching Carthage last night would likely have caused us to miss Gay Parita, so it probably was a good trade-off; one memorable experience for another). Through Brooklyn Heights, we made our way to Carterville, whose downtown had many closed storefronts, and even quieter Webb City (apparently so named for the Webb Corporation, which must have been the mining company that developed this area), and on to Joplin, where we observed a succession of vintage motels and businesses along our way.

Leaving Joplin, it wasn’t far to Shifferdecker Park, which contains two historical museums telling the story of the Tri-State Mining District, and 66 Carousel Park, a local amusement park, before the turn for Old 66, passing vintage Paddock Liquors with its two "visible" gas pumps just before crossing the state line into Kansas beside a biker bar appropriately named the State Line Bar.
Route 66 traverses only about 13 miles in the Sunflower State, in which many of the signs sported cheerful yellow sunflowers. No interstate marred this small corner of Old 66. Once in Kansas, the road curved along with the railroad through a desolate former mining area and across a vintage, concrete-post viaduct above the tracks, making a 90-degree turn into downtown Galena, which was rather desolate but with a quaint old gas station featuring a rusting old one-ton International pickup towtruck that was "Tow-mater," one of the main characters in the cute Route-66-commemorative movie "Cars." Tom and I cracked ourselves up when I carefully positioned myself to get just the right shot of a really interesting-looking sculpture of a man taking a picture of a marquis; we liked the symmetry of a picture of someone taking a picture... and then the statue moved; it was a real person! :)

We couldn’t find the red-brick Eisler Brothers Grocery & Deli in Riverton, but happily took the Rainbow Bridge detour to cross a unique historic bridge, the last of three "Marsh Arch" bridges (named for their designer," the only one preserved through the march of progress, in a lush setting at Brush Creek, where we met up with three friendly Harley Davidson bikers, two of whom Dad had seen almost taken out by a careless driver not far back along the road.

In Baxter Springs we visited a 1930s-era Phillips 66 Station but found not much more of note. Even the Walmart looked too small to carry the supplies we needed, so we continued on across the state line into Oklahoma. Over the line, "chat piles" (old mining tailings) greeted us in the Sooner State en route to Quapaw. We passed a rural "Field of Dreams" before reaching Commerce, Mickey Mantle’s hometown. We got excited about ice cream treats at an adorable-looking Dairy King in a 1925-era Marathon station at Commerce & Main– but sadly, found it closed – across the street from a former cottage-style gas station that appeared to be "sunken" halfway into a brick wall, housing a hair salon. Continuing south into Miami (pronounced "My-AM-uh"), we stopped briefly to stock up on a few supplies at Wal-mart (or, as Dad – who refuses to set foot in it except to pee – refers to it, "The Evil Place"), before spotting the giant Ku-Ku bird popping out of the top of the building at Waylan’s Ku Ku Burger; we also stopped downtown to see the closed but nonetheless elegant Coleman Theatre Beautiful, a magnificent 1929 Spanish mission-styled showpiece.

South of Miami, we detoured along the 9-foot Highway (aka Sidewalk Highway or the Ribbon Road), a narrow strip of road with concrete base and curbs and an asphalt surface zigzagging toward Afton. Paved in 1922, it served US 66 until 1937. The book warned that "some sections are bumpy and gravelly, so go slow," but we found it all to be so bumpy that 11 mph was our top speed through there – and that felt wildly, out-of-control fast! We were somewhat relieved to return to the smoothly-paved main road, heading south toward Narcissa and Afton, where we crossed Horse Creek Bridge with its built-in sidewalks, and stopped to peer in the windows of the Afton Station / Route 66 Packards, a former DX gas station rehabilitated to house a collection of Route 66 postcards and memorabilia, along with the owners’ 12 antique Packards.

Farther along, we drove around Dead Man’s Corner (now toned down into more of a gentle curve) and continued on to Vinita (named for Vinnie Ream, the sculptress whose rendering of Abraham Lincoln now stands in the nation’s capital) finding its classic "Eat" sign at Clantons Café (owned by the same family since 1927), White Oak, and Chelsea (the very first oil-patch town, where we stopped to fill gas after crossing both the 1932 "Pony" truss bridge and the overgrown 1926 iron Pryor Creek bridge, then found nearby one of the few perfectly-preserved vintage houses mail-ordered as a kit from the Sears Catalog in 1913). Heading south from Chelsea toward Foyil, we detoured for 4 miles to find the Totem Pole Park, site of the World’s largest Totem Pole (90 feet), created over 11 years by the late Ed Galloway and in the process of being restored. The property also contained a collection of smaller concrete totems covered in countless critters, and an 11-sided "Fiddle House" (he hand-carved almost 400 violins over the years!).

Having decided to press on to dinner and wherever we would sleep tonight, we forewent the chance to have a snack at the Top Hat Dairy Bar, missing Sequoyah completely as we made our way through an increasingly gray and now sprinkling afternoon to Claremore. Calling ahead to try to reserve a campsite at a KOA, I had been mildly alarmed to learn that the KOA in our book was no longer a KOA property. No problem; I called another Oklahoma location to get the phone number for the new Northeast Tulsa property and, though I couldn’t reach anyone live at reception, managed to get the address of the place, which I was informed was at a casino.

Entering the address into the GPS, I suffered some suspense, wondering if I had gotten it wrong as we approached the appointed destination with not a trace of any retail activity, approaching through miles of beautiful but ultra-rural countryside. Even when the GPS told us we would arrive in .2 mile, we could see nothing promising... but then suddenly, there it was: Will Rogers Downs, our destination.

It wasn’t much to speak of – a flat, desolate field next to a racetrack, with a casino basically under the grandstands – but the price was right ($34) and we were there, so we decided to stay put. Even Mom joined in our now-traditional evening toast to another great day, though she joined in the others’ disdain for my selected fine wine (to which Tom had referred as "slop") by agreeing with Dad that "that’s not even wine" after tasting it. (I do tend to go for the Kool-aid sweet, only-barely-alcoholic stuff, like Fruitezia and Arbor Mist; today’s selection was Boone’s Farm wild berry – hey, at $2.49 a bottle, the price was right! Nothing but class...)

The air was chill and damp, so we decided to go out to eat, setting out to find The Pits, a renowned local BBQ place. Sadly, we found both it and Ron’s Hamburgers & Chili, our 2nd choice, closed – perhaps not surprising, this being Sunday evening in the Bible Belt (we had run a gauntlet of fiery fundamentalist billboards along the road today lecturing us about the eternal damnation we all are tempting, if we needed any reminder). Mom still insisted on eating out, about which I wasn’t thrilled and had a very bad attitude – but it turned out to be a really good thing; we all were able to sit down and relax over a solid dinner and an opportunity to look at our various maps and books together. Up until now we’ve been winging everything from one minute to the next, trusting my instincts and Serendipity to guide us along, but the group collectively wanted to plan ahead a little, so both at the diner and back at the campground, we discussed our options, arriving at what should be a workable – and surprisingly laid-back – overview of the next 2 weeks, entailing shorter driving days and an arrival in California ahead of schedule, in time to allow us all to visit Lake Havasu on our way back east. We’ll see – one never knows what chance and Serendipity may throw our way – but it probably makes everyone feel better to have at least a rough roadmap in the back of our minds. The brothers and I continued our planning session back at the campground over wine in the restroom shelter area, at a picnic table that we moved out of the wind. We had the facilities to ourselves, with the campground barely 10% full and all the other campers we saw residing in monstrous RVs that certainly have their own restroom and shower facilities. (Mom & Dad’s Scamp does have a little bathroom, but we’re using it as a closet at this point.)

Today’s journey took us through towns in which the number of abandoned businesses and highway attractions increased markedly. That’s a sad fact – but it is also a reminder that there is a great need, and appreciation, for relics like these. There is a school of thought that since we can only experience history through our imaginations, the ruins we encounter serve as vital props for any journey of the mind in time. In viewing some roadside ruin, then, we are better able to recreate for ourselves the period in which it stood. An interesting concept: the notion that by seeing clearly what remains, each of us gives some ruin a second life; a chance to exist again in the projection of our mind’s eye. Just knowing this can make the traveling more passionate, the seeing more profound, as we make our way along this old road – which is itself a relic... Yet a relic that we may revive, if only for a moment, by our passing. This view hearkens back to my 1998 travels in Scotland with Mikala Keating: I distinctly recall something she said that struck me then and stays with me still. We were meandering through some nostalgic cemetery, perusing the various inscriptions on the gravestones, when I expressed the wonder that perhaps this was in some way disrespectful. She disagreed, sharing her thought that when we walked there, we were honoring them by remembering them – even if they were strangers, and even if only in passing. I liked that sentiment, and have recalled it often when trodding upon reminders of past peoples, experiences, and civilizations... And today’s drive sort of reminded me of it again, perhaps because in a very real way we were traversing a graveyard of sorts – a resting place not only for people, but also for businesses, communities, and dreams that burned bright at some point in the past but have since flamed out and died.

It’s 11:30 now and everyone else is asleep, as I hope soon to be. The wind is howling outside the camper, which could make for an exciting night if a real storm springs up... but it feels cozy with all of us safely tucked away for the night. And even if the weather turns temporarily nasty, our plans for the next few days center largely around museums, so the timing would be fine for that; to everything there is a season...

Tomorrow’s rough agenda: the not-quite-twin bridges and "blue whale" between Verdigris and Catoosa , breakfast at the highly-recommended, vintage Metro Diner in Tulsa, the round barn at Arcadia, and then on to Oklahoma City.

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