17 September. Tucumcari, New Mexico.
10:30 mountain time (we just turned our watches back an hour at Glen Rio, gaining an hour in an already-wonderful day). After the others turned in, I washed the dishes, showered, and now finally am able to sit down and reflect on the day and update where we’ve been since last we slept. We have internet here, so I finally can get online to post some updated news to the blog; yay!
Executive summary: Canyon, Texas to Tucumcari, New Mexico. Amarillo, Vega, Adrian, Glenrio, Tucumcari. 8:45 am start; 2pm finish; 126 miles. This day was another great one, starting out right from the get-go on Larry & Jere’s farm in Canyon. They’re having to put up with a construction detour from I-27 right past their house, so trucks roared by through the night with their Jake brakes on (just as Jere had lamented they would). Nonetheless, I was so tired (and so comfortable!) that I slept like a log until 6am. I tried to get back to sleep but couldn’t, so eventually I rose and studied the guidebooks and maps until everyone else was up and around.
Larry and Jere had been up for hours doing chores, getting their kids off to school, and whipping up an enormous farm-style breakfast for all of us. Mom sounded the alert that a hot-air balloon was about to fly over the house, so we took a short intermission to hurry outside and watch the great green balloon float peacefully past in the sunrise-bright sky barely beyond the house, before returning to sit down to a feast: stacks of Larry’s fluffy, freshly-made, perfectly-golden-brown pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, fresh orange juice, coffee, and chi tea, all of it fabulous! Too soon, it was time to say goodbye and be on our way, letting them get on with their day. I was touched almost to tears when Larry made a point of telling us how proud he was that we had stopped by on our trip: rather than mind having 5 strangers arrive and set up camp out in their yard, they were gracious and hospitable just like Steve & Cindy, Mark & Leslie, and Monica’s family before that. Truly, this world is filled with wonderful people!
Generous down to the wire, Jere picked fresh hot peppers from the garden for Dad and gave Mom a bunch of postcards before we were on our way. After filling the Skyliner’s gas tank in downtown Amarillo, we were on our way west, first stop: the Cadillac Ranch, the modern art piece commissioned by eccentric millionaire and art patron Stanley Marsh 3, who hired the artist group "Ant Farm" to install it in 1974. The 10 luxury-liners planted nose-down in the soil at an angle mimicking that of the Egyptian Pyramids beckoned us over to add our own touch to the graffiti adorning them. As we were leaving, the English group of Harley-Davidson riders who were at the Big Texan last night pulled up and walked in; many of them recognized and greeted us, while others lingered at the road to admire and discuss Tom’s car. I recognized Miguel, the guy who took the Big Texan Challenge in trying to down a 72-ounce steak and sides within an hour to get the meal free, and asked whether he had succeeded. He shook his head, ruefully reflecting that he still had 17 ounces to go. When we asked how he was feeling this morning, he sounded surprised to answer, "Just fine!"
We hummed along near I40, finding various quonset huts (refugees from old military bases in the area, but I didn’t feel compelled to photograph any – they’re everywhere on Minnesota farms), Wildorado, and Vega (Sands Motel, "end of the road" for Route 66 at one point). We intended to stop at Route 66 Antiques so that Mom could poke around there, but found nothing around Landergin and decided that the once-well-off antique shop there must have gone the sad way of so many other businesses out here and been forced to close its doors. Next up was Adrian, recognized as the geographic midway point along Route 66. There we easily found the Midway Café, where we ordered several slices of its signature pies, passing them around to taste (we ordered chocolate peanut butter, chocolate chip, coconut, and lemon, although they were out of lemon, so Mom had to settle for coconut instead. They all were delicious – as well they should be, at $7.95 per slice!). I was mollified finally to understand why the guidebooks had listed so many names as "the place" to stop for a treat in tiny Adrian: the café had changed hands – and names, half a dozen times – no wonder I had been confused! Again, the English Harley group arrived just as we were leaving; both groups were tickled. We took pictures of their Harleys, and they of Tom’s Skyliner – oh, for fun! :)
We found Miguel sitting alone on a curb just outside the restaurant and asked whether he was going to have a piece of the café’s famous "ugly-crust pie," to which he responded with a somewhat sheepish groan, "Nah; I just finished my steak from last night!" Hilarious! Their group planned to continue today all the way to Santa Fe, there to remain for 2 nights; we may encounter them again farther along the road, since we all plan to reach the west coast late next week. I do hope our paths cross again; they seemed fun! Many of them will be continuing from L.A. back up to Vegas to attend one couple’s wedding, at which they plan to dress up in medieval costumes – what a hoot all around!!
Before leaving, Tom put down the hard top on the convertable. When he activated the retractable mechanism, there was a shout and an audible gasp and hubbub inside the Café, as the entire group of 45 Harley riders whipped out cameras and crowded around to take pictures of the wondrous event. Great entertainment, all around!!
Having just bypassed the Bent Door, a falling-down former café in a structure that was once a control tower for an army landing field that I was keen to see just because it sounded interesting, we backtracked all of a quarter-mile to get to it. There, to our delighted surprise, we found that the Skyliner serves as a ticket for all sorts of things! As we paused in the lot for me to snap a picture, we saw a man come hurrying over from an auto repair shop next door, eager to ask Tom about it and inviting us to pull in. He owns the Bent Door, and he wanted to take a picture of the car there; how sweet! He amiably invited us inside to take a look around, which we did with awe, savoring the museum-like memorabilia from an old-fashioned juke box (it changed vinyl records from a fairly large rack) to twin carved-wood cherubian statues to the nose of an airplane sticking out of the wall/ceiling, its propellor turning as a ceiling fan – how clever! He and his wife are in the process of trying to refurbish the place, which they told us is at the actual Route 66 midpoint. I have no doubt that if they get this place up and running, they’ll do business hand over foot... an onerous task, but with great potential. I wish them all the best luck!!
So many frustrated, fallen, and forgotten dreams litter the roadside along Route 66. Deserted, dusty town after desolate, despondent town rolled by; vestiges of their former selves unable any longer to maintain their former glory, eventually hunkering down close to the dust and dirt as if hoping to fade into it. GlenRio was one such place. The name sounded exotic and exciting, and I imagined a once-beautiful location that would offer hints and suggestions of its former glory. Beaten by the bypass, that former bustling road-town straddling the Texas/New Mexico border is now home only to barking dogs and picturesque ruins that whisper amidst the ever-howling wind across time, the forlorn Texas Longhorn Motel (once boasted to be the "first" and "last" motel in Texas) barely recognizable. The town’s sign has long since faded and fallen, along with the hopes and dreams of another bypassed town.
We opted out of the Dirt 66 options, continuing to the New Mexico visitors’ center to pick up brochures and information. They had a computer available for travelers to check email, etc., and I scanned briefly through my work email titles but, finding no fires needing immediate dousing, opened not one, musing at how nice it has been not to feel tethered to my desk for the past week as we have traveled west beneath a wide-open sky!
Indeed, New Mexico is descended from the sky. Other places along old Route 66 were formed by rivers, mountains, and plains. Other states have been forged by iron-willed men meeting in urgency behind closed doors to make a truce, a compromise, a set of defensible boundaries. But New Mexico has no door on its history, no roof on its being. The first allegiance of most people here is to the land and the generous sky above. Boundaries here seem best determined where these two – earth and sky – meet. In the New Mexican view, cities are meant to be used as gathering points – for art as much as commerce – and not as population centers or power bases. Santa Fe is odler than any city of Colonial America and has been a capital for more than 300 years – yet its population barely tops 75,000. The oldest public building in the United States is there – yet even with such a head start, the city refuses to have a proper airport. Newcomers rarely understand this until they have lived there awhile and realize why there is no major airline operation in Santa Fe: it would interfere with the sky.
I had read that travelers along old Route 66 "begin to notice something different in the sky above about the time they reach Tucumcari, when its color – a deeper, more translucent lens of cobalt blue – can take even experienced color photographers by surprise. No wonder, then, that painters and writers began migrating here well before Route 66 first made its way across the state. Driving through New Mexico’s high country in crackling bright sunshine, or rolling through one of the long valleys with billlowing rain clouds so close overhead they seem almost touchable, everything here seems to put you at stage center. It’s easy for a traveler to get religion – any kind – in a place like New Mexico, where earth and sky and wind and water greet one another in such unexpected ways. All the simple distinctions of mind, former notions about what is and what isn’t, begin to blur. Following old Route 66 at a slower pace through the eastern hills, across the Continental Divide and into serious mesa country, perceptions change. It’s easier here, as an observer, to become part of all that is being observed, to feel a sense of connection with everything around. As a traveler, it is easier to slip loose from the sense of detachment and not-belonging that often seems to be a part of any great crossing. This enchanted land asks only one thing of you as a traveler: that you allow yourself to become enchanted, too." I couldn’t wait to let the enchantment begin!
Indeed, in this land that felt endless and eternal, it was easy to understand why some of the early westbound Route 66 travelers traveled no further, many realizing that they had finally come home.
We passed poor little San Jon (pronounced "San HONE"), devastated by a one-exit bypass. Now mostly ruins of old gas stations and motels, of which only one is still operating, line the broad main drag where we doubled back. It looked larger, but even more sad, than GlenRio. Continuing west of San Jon, 66 briefly cut away from I-40 as it dropped down through impressive red hills, heading over the escarpment from the Texas high plains and on toward Tucumcari.
For many old Route 66 travelers, the real West began with some meaningful event, whether that be their first glimpse of the long, low, fencelike sign for Whiting Brothers... or arriving in Tucumcari. "Tucumcari Tonight!" "City of 2000 rooms!" "The only place to spend tonight!" With powerful roadside advertising, it was tough to pass Tucumcari by, and few did. Picturesque old motels remain in Tucumcari, from the Safari Inn to the Tee Pee and countless others, but the Blue Swallow motel had called to me like a siren – particularly after yesterday’s Route-66-icon-near-miss at Shamrock. The Blue Swallow is on the National Register of Historic Places, a Route 66 treasure featuring some of the best neon on 66: a huge neon swallow tops the neon sign arching over the driveway at the office entrance; neon tubes outline the eaves; and little neon swallows perch on pastel-blue stucco walls. I couldn’t wait to get there! This being an iconic experience, I was glad for the short driving day – and knew that it probably would be good for everyone’s frame of mind; the rest of the group, I sense, is feeling fairly hard-driven by me and probably could use a break with a short, easy day.
A couple named Bill and Terry run the place now. We pulled in, ostensibly to leave the pickup and to let them know that we were leaving our camping rig there while we tooled around town in Tom’s Skyliner. However, as we got out of the car, the uncles suggested we look at our room, Mom looked aghast on learning there were no laundry facilities on-site, and Don started sounding like he needed to see the room before he could decide whether he wanted to stay here. I about snapped his head off, having a momentary flashback to yesterday’s mutinous decision to skip dining at the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock – I was not about to go through that again! There was no way we were going to have come all this way to Tucumcari, secure the last room available at one of the most renowned motels along the entire Route 66, and then decide not to stay at the famous Blue Swallow motel, for any reason. We stayed put. (And I apologized to Don, who of the whole group has been the most laid-back, mellow, un-irritating person imaginable – he was gracious, acting like he didn’t realize what I was talking about; Tom for his part joked that he was still mad, cracking us up.)
We left the camping rig, heading downtown to visit the Tucumcari History Museum at the suggestion of the Glenrio Visitors’ Center hostess, and we weren’t sorry. Though physically small, the little museum packed in a ton of information about the area, with intricate displays of memorabilia, clothing, rocks, and household items inside the museum. Outside we found a railroad car, a late 1940's Chevrolet fire engine (I was amused to read that its refurbishing cost a total of $400, teasing Tom that I wondered whether he was able to refurbish the Skyliner’s for about that amount), an old Air Force plane, and more. And because they’re having some kind of festival this week, we all got free Tucumcari lapel pins!
From the museum, we rolled around town admiring its many wall murals, finishing over near the high school with its enormous (mascot) Rattlesnake mural... and arriving just in time to watch their homecoming parade! Delighted, we alighted from the car and had only about 5 minutes to wait before the little procession approached. It was adorable, smalltown America all the way. The parade was all of about 10 vehicles long, starting with a local politician and his wife, followed by the girls on the homecoming court, all in convertibles or pickup trucks; then the football team and cheerleaders on flatbeds; then the sophomore, junior, and senior classes – meaning everyone in them, maybe 30-40 kids per class – riding on their own flatbed trucks. The parade-watchers consisted of the elementary and junior-high students, all of whom clamored up against fences beside the road under the watchful eyes of teachers (it was around 3pm, and school must not yet have been out for the day). For some reason watching this procession made me get all choked-up and teary-eyed, as if I were being allowed a secret glimpse into a private, untouchable world. Looking at all those young, excited faces, I was reminded of the lyrics to a Kathy Mattea song, Seeds, "... I wonder if they wonder what they’ll be someday. Some will dream a big dream and make it all come true – while others go on dreaming of things they’ll never do. We’re all just seeds in God’s hands: we start the same, but where we land is sometimes fertile soil, and sometimes sand. We’re all just seeds in God’s hands."
Happening upon a Friday afternoon high school homecoming parade in Tucumcari, New Mexico... What could be better than that?!
Returning to the Blue Swallow, we divided camp. Mom – who had been wanting to do laundry for a few days – and Dad headed off to find the laundromat 2 blocks from our motel, while the uncles and I checked into our "room" – the hotel’s suite, featuring two rooms connected by a 5-foot hallway, each room with a queen-sized bed and a second, smaller bed or futon; perfect for our group! And the price was right, at $115 for the night. We walked around exploring the motel’s several open garages, all featuring their own murals, taking pictures of them and of the motel itself; then strolled across the street to check out the kitchy-looking but eye-catching TeePee Curios, entering through a big teepee in front, and I took pictures of more murals in the immediate area.
After Mom & Dad returned from the laundromat, the uncles and I sat down to plan logistics over the coming week in order to try to coordinate our arrival on the west coast with family schedules and visits there, and arrived at a tentative overview: Albuquerque tomorrow (via the northern Santa Fe route), then Gallup, Holbrook, Flagstaff, Needles or Kingman, and on to L.A., probably reaching there late next Wednesday – with plenty of cushioned days to allow for serendipity. I’m a little concerned, though: I have space for fewer than 300 pictures left on my camera to last 6 more days!
We unloaded a tall stack of doggie boxes from the various restaurants where we’ve dined lately, hauling them and the microwave from the camper into our suite, where Tom and Don heated up tonight’s meal and I served it on a makeshift table out in front. Meanwhile, all of us enjoyed a rare chance to just relax, enjoying the chairs in front of our rooms facing the gravel u-shaped tourist court and the other guests, most of whom seemed just as friendly and eager to compare stories as we were. After introducing ourselves to Dave and Jill, another British couple traveling in a sports car (we had encountered them several times on the road today), we noted the surprising number of Brits out and about exploring Route 66 with us, from our friends with the Morgans to the Harley group today to this random couple – it would seem that Route 66 is as big of a craze in the U.K. as in the U.S.!
The Blue Swallow’s famed neon lights came on while we were finishing dinner, and we delighted in taking pictures of them. As darkness thickened around us, Tom moved the Skyliner over to the motel’s welcome carport – immediately attracting the entire clientele (and others) to eagerly snap away with cameras just as much as (or perhaps even more than) we were.
I’ve been at this longer than intended, and it’s almost midnight now; time to sign off and head to bed like everyone else. For my part, I’m looking forward to a sound night’s sleep in a spacious daybed.
As I lay me down to sleep tonight in Tucumcari, thinking of the steady stream of friendly people we have encountered so far along the Route 66, I am reminded that, "there are no strangers; only friends we haven’t met."
Friday, September 18, 2009
Day 7: Elk City, Oklahoma to Amarillo/Canyon, Texas.
16 September. Canyon, Texas. Midnight.
[Note: Again no wi-fi; apologies for the many belated entries that will post at once...]
Executive Summary: 9:30 start; 7pm finish; 175 miles through Sayre, Erick, Texola, Shamrock, McLean, Groom, and Amarillo. Rising tension over skipped Route 66 iconic experience alleviated by breathtaking natural beauty and time with friends.
We closed the camper door last night against chill evening air, though I reflected that in a very short time we likely will be longing for some cooler climes, as we continue southwest into the arid desert regions. Footage in yesterday’s museum movies reminded us of how drastically the scenery is about to change as we leave the grassy plains for mountains and then "the terrible desert" before continuing eventually to the California coast.
I think we all slept fairly well in the calm backyard, wakening feeling fresh and refreshed. We had just finished reviewing together yesterday’s journal entry when Steve and Cindy came walking outside to see how our night had been; all of us trooped out (prompting Steve to observe that "people just keep coming out of there!" with the camper resembling a clown car) and joined them inside for tea, coffee, and conversation, which was lively and fascinating. We traded stories about what the "adults" did for a living before they each retired, and Steve shared various amazing stories about friends of his: he knows a broad array of the most interesting people! LJS pilot Too soon, he had to leave for work and we had to hit the road west, wondering whether and when we would see them again.
Our first stops were in Sayre, first for gas; then to mail postcards at the art deco post office with its 1930s "land run" mural, then to circle the stately Beckham County Courthouse that was shown in the movie Grapes of Wrath – and which I was tickled to recognize from many of the pleadings I have drafted for Steve over the years, most of which have been filed there. We couldn’t find the abandoned bridge over the North Fork of the Red River on our way out of town, but further along we were mesmerized by the ghostly, abandoned original lanes of old Route 66, which for me evoked perfectly the nostalgic mood created by the museum movies yesterday, of wistfulness for a lost time. Approaching Erick, hometown of Sheb Wooley and Roger Miller, I merrily piped portions of their respective songs, "Purple People Eater" and "King of the Road" over the walkie talkie. We were underwhelmed by Texola, unsure whether we had reached it until we were past it (and the Will Rogers marker west of town) and already crossing the Texas border.
Without a river or some continental rift, border crossings between states usually pass without notice – but not here. Almost immediately after entering Texas, the land changed, almost as if someone looked carefully at this place and decided, without regard for political interests, that the state line just naturally belonged right there. Leaving the rolling, wooded hills of Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle opened like an immense natural stage. In the space of a few miles the land became flatter, more angular, and a little threatening purely by virtue of its endlessness. This would not have been a good place to have a horse pull up lame if you were a line-rider, nor to have your clapped-out old truck throw a rod if you were an Okie family trying gamely with your little ones to reach California. Not a gentle place at all. But a place magnificent, like the sea, in its sheer, endless expanse. And in the way the land challenges you to open yourself to it, to take it all in – or to scuttle quickly across to an easier region. Even our day would determine which type of people we were.
One of the guidebooks provided this introduction to Texas: "Few places in America scrape at primitive human emotions the way Texas does. People who live on this land are afflicted either with the fierce loyalty known only to those to have learned to hold adversity lightly in their hands – or the equally burning desire to get the hell out of here.
Even the remnant of old Route 66 has a hunkered-down look as it climbs toward the breaks just west of Alanreed. Beyond these crumbling bluffs, the high plains begin in earnest. A few miles more and the tumbled character of the land disappears almost completely, surrendering to a vast, treeless plain that flattens the entire horizon all the way into New Mexico. Windy, dry, appearing virtually limitless, even to the 65-mile-an-hour eye, the distances seem endless. So convinced were the earliest travelers that they were in imminent danger of simply becoming lost to death out here that they drove stakes into even the slightest rise to point the way. Coming upon these frail markers, riders from the south named this region Llano Estacado – the Staked Plain.
As you cross this land now with relative ease, imagine yourself out here alone, in an earlier time. Stakes or no, could you have walked this two-hundred-mile stretch in search of something better than you had back home? Would you have done that? Interesting to notice what a tight grasp old Demon Comfort can have on us, isn’t it?"
The wind communicates perfectly what no words or other medium could convey about what earlier passers-through must have felt here on this land, as they stood facing into a wind older than the plain itself. Even today that same wind blows almost incessantly, reminding us of what it means to be out here. In Texas.
Ironically, Texas – the largest of the lower 48 states – hosts the second-shortest alignment of Route 66, with only about 150 miles remaining of the original 178 across the panhandle. Our first stop, 13 miles in, was Shamrock, offering numerous remnants of old motels, cafes, and stations – and featuring the famous U-Drop Inn/Tower Conoco, an art deco masterpiece built in 1936 that now houses the welcoming local Chamber of Commerce and featured as Romano’s in the movie Cars. Seeing Tom’s car, they fell all over themselves to welcome us, chatting, offering water and coffee, and urging us to relax awhile over lunch at the restored U-Drop Inn diner – described in the literature as "one of the finest examples of art deco architecture on all of old Route 66." They have done a great job restoring it; the building looked brand-new despite its 1930s facade. Inside, they’re doing a marvelous job utilizing the space, using the back areas as offices, with interim kitchen and workspaces between there and the tourist area. The old diner has been cleaned up and restored in a simple style; just booths, tables, counterspace, and chairs, without frills – yet superior to roadside picnic areas at other welcome stations merely by virtue of this spot being located in such an atmospheric place; how many welcome centers can host picnickers inside a 1930s diner, not only out of the wind, but in a part of history, no less?! I thought it was an ingenuous idea, and it should be a great draw for the town and its passing tourists. Other tourists stopping through were eager to photograph the icon with Tom’s car in the picture; I was glad I had insisted on his parking it right in front, knowing it would add to the character of the place for as long as we were there.
Thinking Mom probably was getting hungry (it was approaching noon, and she’s pretty particular about wanting to eat on a regular schedule; nobody is really a fan of my "travel-Nazi" ways!), and thrilled at the thought of truly experiencing this Route 66 icon in such an authentic way (dining at a diner restored to a simpler version of its former glory, adapted for welcome center purposes as a delightful indoor picnic area), I was eager to take the elderly docent up on her invitation to enjoy our lunch there – at my questioning look, she gestured and repeated her instructions, making sure that we understood where to go inside, since it wasn’t obvious (we all had been simply peering into the plate-glass windows of the restored diner; she repeated that we could go inside through the double doors) – but I was outvoted 4-1, with the rest of the group insisting on hurrying off despite my imploring attempts to persuade them to relax awhile and soak up the ambience. (We would have had the place all to ourselves other than the docents, who probably were about to take their own lunch break there as well and might have joined us). But the more urgently I pleaded, the more the rest of the group seemed to want to rush away – no doubt hurting the feelings of the Chamber of Commerce folks, who seemed to be desperately trying to persuade folks to "stop and set a spell."
I didn’t want to make a scene in front of these kind people, so I resisted the urge to shout an exasperated lecture to our entire group. One of the workers, eager to discuss Tom’s car, came out to stand with us around it, seeming eager to talk to us and share stories about the town and its history – I was sure he would have loved to have us join them for lunch in the diner! But Mom somehow had gotten it into her head that we were going to be committing some kind of felony if we did something as radical as using the welcome center’s tables as... tables, and somehow seemed to have convinced the rest of the group that this would indeed be construed by the town (maybe even the great State of Texas) as some kind of terrorist activity. Truly not comprehending this kind of petulant refusal or inability to reason, I quietly but urgently suggested, "Okay, then why don’t we just ask again – ask this guy – he can tell you again that it’s perfectly fine to use the tables as tables." She looked at me as if I had suggested urinating in the town square by even considering asking such a question, chastising, "You can’t do that!" and gesturing as if she were the one dealing with an irrational child. Dad saw this and told me to "leave your Mother alone," hustling all of us out of there, and the uncles went along.
This might have been acceptable if we were hell-bent-for-election trying to maintain some kind of breakneck schedule, late for an appointment, or... whatever. But I was incensed when the group decided almost immediately that we had to stop and eat as soon as possible and we wound up pulling off to the side of the road at the first wayside area we came to, a drab field beside the road where the wind whipped everything and dust was in the air (as opposed to later stops, one just half a mile up the road at a charming restored cottage gas station; another a few miles farther along at a majestic lookout with a view for miles – no, we had to stop at the first tables we saw that were not the iconic ones back at the U-Drop Inn). I was enraged and perplexed: I couldn’t begin to comprehend why anyone – much less a group supposedly trying to explore the Mother Road and absorb its history – would rush away and forego a prime opportunity to experience a Route 66 icon like the U-Drop Inn, in favor of hunkering against the wind at a picnic table in a nondescript pull-off alongside a dusty road. I’m just not wired that way.
When we stopped, I was still too upset to even speak (I didn’t trust myself not to say something rude and hurtful, expressing my frustration), so I decided to walk on up the road and check out downtown McLean, the last town in Texas to have been bypassed by the interstate. I passed the "devil’s rope" barbed wire display at the former brassiere factory at the east end of town and found a number of interesting murals adorning a ghostly-quiet "downtown." Sadly, the McLean/Alanreed Area Museum (which apparently includes information about the WWII prison camp for German POWs nearby), in which I had been most interested, was closed for lunch.
At least my short walk around the all-but-deserted town provided a micro-glimpse into what it must have been like to have walked this prairie, alone with the wind, perhaps bitter about far more weighty matters than where to have lunch, while crossing the vast west in search of a better life. Tom and I did stop to check out the beautifully-restored Phillips 66 gas station and matching tanker truck, the first of its kind in Texas, and the first to be restored anywhere along Route 66, and the newly-refurbished Cactus Inn with its cool green cactus sign.
We encountered some navigational difficulty and troublesome dirt roads around Alanreed and Jericho (no doubt in part because I was still sulking over having missed out on dining at the U-Drop Inn back in Shamrock – Marilyn will understand completely when I describe the situation as being akin to Skagen in that we came all this way, had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience something memorable... and wound up skipping it for no logical reason that I could discern).
We resumed our westward progress and some great long-distance views from the narrow ridge line before Jericho. In short order we spotted the "leaning tower of Groom" (a crooked Britten USA water tower marking a former truck stop that was built that way intentionally in order to attract attention – it succeeded!) and the 190-foot-tall "Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," an enormous white cross erected in 1995 and billed as the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. Everything’s big in Texas – even religious symbols.
Next was the "Bug Ranch," an ironic satire of the upcoming Cadillac Ranch, with VW bugs instead of Cadillacs buried nose-down in the dirt. We skirted Conway, passing its pair of tall white grain elevators guarding the silence of the past, in an area where the speed limit jumped to 70mph – the only place in Texas where one can legally drive that fast on Old 66, on a long, straight, lonesome stretch that provided an isolated feel like none other.
Approaching Amarillo, we detoured to see the pavement end at the fence of the airport that cut right through 2-lane 66 decades ago before veering north slightly to join Amarillo Boulevard, following 66 again until up 6th Avenue, watching for painted fiberglass ponies and a place to have an ice cream treat. We spied Furrbies almost right away, parked, walked in, and sat awhile enjoying ice cream sundaes and coffee (the adults) and a 32-ounce house specialty cherry limeade for me – wonderfully refreshing! Continuing a short way on 6th Avenue through the "One Mile Shopping" district and the San Jacinto Neighborhood (where I noticed a minature San Jac monument, easily recognizable because of its likeness to the real one south of Houston).
At this point we left Route 66 for a rest-of-the-afternoon detour recommended by the books as well as by me: Palo Duro Canyon. The Route 66 guidebook recommended detouring to the canyon, calling it "one of the most beautiful areas to be found anywhere in the Southwest," and I’ve heard it described as "the Grand Canyon of Texas," which, although perhaps an exaggeration, does begin to describe how amazing it is, located out in the middle of all this endless flatland prairie. Our next homestay was directly on the way to it, so we drove there first, leaving the truck/camper rig at the farm of Larry & Jere, a high school friend of Bernie’s, while Tom drove the 5 of us in the Skyliner to see the canyon. Jere came outside to greet us when we pulled in, along with Ranger, their gentle-giant white Great Pyrennes, who immediately made the rounds to seek pets and to slobber on all of us. He’s a sweetheart; it’s really too bad that he drools so profusely; otherwise it would be so much easier to love on him!
Reaching the state park’s fee station, we were greeted with the best line yet, a Texas-drawled, "Well, I’m quite certain y’all must have violated some state law that would enable me to confiscate that vehicle." Dad roared with laughter, and we all agreed that that was the best line yet. Tom stopped to put the top down before we continued into the park, which was a great idea; we all enjoyed the wide-open views throughout our little driving tour. We stopped a few times for photographs of low-water crossings, cactus blooms, and the RLS trail in which my late, great friend Red Spicer took a lead role in building. It was fun to hear the appreciative exclamations from the rest of the group over this place that has been special to me for so many years precisely because of Red’s friendship. Palo Duro’s colors, in haunting desert tinges, and the unexpected formations in the canyon are unique, with well-laid-out hiking and running trails and miles of scenic drives. I was quiet all the way back, not least because we ran over a poor little box turtle as we were driving out of the canyon.
Returning to Larry & Jere’s, we walked around out back to see the livestock, and I delighted in playing with four frisky calves who were aggressive about nudging me with their heads and sucking on my fingers, shorts, and sleeves when they weren’t licking my legs. The kids will be so disappointed at missing out when they see the pictures later!
We all left shortly for the Big Texan, another Route 66 icon (albeit kitchy) in Amarillo, where the group had decided we wanted to dine, if only for the experience of hoping to witness someone trying to earn a free meal by consuming a 72-ounce steak (complete with side dishes) within one hour. We were in luck: while we were there, one such young man declared himself up to the challenge, and he was seated at a table alone, up on a platform in the center of the dining room for all to see. A waiter earnestly explained the rules to him and allowed him to sample and approve his steak before starting a big time clock at the end of the table, with everyone in the place cheering heartily. When we left, he had about half an hour to go but looked like he was seriously losing momentum, with barely half the meat – and none of the side dishes – put away. We opted not to wait out the remaining half-hour to see whether he made it – but that was some great entertainment! :)
Back at the ranch, Larry invited us to join them for a bonfire, which we did, following him and Jere through a gap between box cars that opened onto an outdoor fire pit and charming bricked patio area overlooking the pastures beneath a starry velvet night sky. We sat until a couple of batches of logs had burned a good way through, fascinated by Jeres many colorful and hilarious stories arising from her many endeavors; she always seems to have about a thousand varied projects underway, from doing grocery store demos to cleaning out foreclosed homes to distributing treats to collecting scrap metal for sale to creating tack sheds and various other ingenuous items from wooden Bell Helicopter box crates, to her newest thing, weaning and raising heifers to the point of being able to be grain-fed. She never ceases to surprise me with some interesting undertaking! She and Larry both are hardworking, resourceful, determined folks who could survive any test or trial – and they probably will survive the current economic downturn better than most, willing and able as they both are to utilize every asset and skill available. Larry is a wholesome, sincerely friendly man with a cheery smile and a merry twinkle in his eyes; they both were gracious hosts eager to get us set up for the night, either in the house or in our camper when we insisted again on staying out there... although I think I may take Jere up on her urging to try out the bed in their 5th-wheel, parking adjacent to my parents’. They use it as a backup, backup bedroom/apartment/crash pad, and she just made it up with fresh linens. I’m sitting in that trailer now, taking advantage of its electricity in order (for once) not to be disrupting the others’ sleep with light, movement, and the noise of page-turning and keyboard-clicking as I write this long after they’ve all gone to sleep.
We have reservations tomorrow night at the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, a vintage place highly recommended by every guidebook and other resource as oozing character and being another can’t-miss Route 66 icon. I’m almost as excited about it as I am about the Wigwam teepee Motel a few nights farther down the road!
I’m still sulking about the Shamrock incident, feeling slighted and frustrated by the sense that the group not only paid no heed to my suggestions, but actively dismissed them as outright wrong – while being too stubborn to even discuss them. I suppose part of that is just my stubbornly thinking I’m always right. But part is that I think that, in general I’m pretty careful (I already have used three equivocations in this sentence) to clarify when I am and am not certain about something – so that when I state something as unequivocal fact (like "it’s okay for us to eat lunch here"), there should be absolutely no reason to question the accuracy of that fact – and then I really can’t comprehend being so stubborn, or paranoid, or whatever, as to refuse to clarify something that isn’t clear: would it have killed anyone to follow my urging to ask again, if we were so concerned about doing something wrong? And what if we were really in a situation where I didn’t know the answer and we had to ask for clarification – would the world really have ended if we were told "no"?! Was that risk worth bypassing a Route 66 icon, on a trip intended to experience the Mother Road?! It didn’t bother me so much not to do what I thought we should do – what bothered me was reaching that decision based on a misperception – and it mostly seriously bothered me anytime someone flatly refuses to so much as discuss something to sort it out.
I do realize that part of today’s tension arises simply from our all spending so much time together – we have been on the road together now for one week, eating, breathing, and sleeping together in very close quarters; such uninterrupted time inevitably causes friction between even the fastest friends and family members...
I suppose I could look at it this way: perhaps today’s incident, albeit a low point, actually added to our Route 66 experience. Leaving home and hearth – however humble – behind, I can’t imagine that the early travelers had a picnic from one end of the road to the other. I can imagine families like the Joads piling all their worldly possessions onto rattletrap vehicles, saying goodbye to friends, families, and communities – everything familiar in the world that they knew – and setting out into the unknown in search of something better. They had to have had mixed emotions, likely even with some family members who either didn’t care about, or were adamantly opposed, to heading off into the unknown wild west. There were bound to be many moments of friction, and even some knock-down, drag-out fights among friends and family members along the way, with disagreements arising over where to stop, what to cook (or try to catch?!) for dinner, or where to settle, or... all manner of things – perhaps even some as petty as whether to use the tables as tables at a highway visitors’ center. So maybe our own such experiences actually are helping us to more fully experience the Route 66 experience, after all.
In any event, I know I need to let it go; tomorrow is another day.
[Note: Again no wi-fi; apologies for the many belated entries that will post at once...]
Executive Summary: 9:30 start; 7pm finish; 175 miles through Sayre, Erick, Texola, Shamrock, McLean, Groom, and Amarillo. Rising tension over skipped Route 66 iconic experience alleviated by breathtaking natural beauty and time with friends.
We closed the camper door last night against chill evening air, though I reflected that in a very short time we likely will be longing for some cooler climes, as we continue southwest into the arid desert regions. Footage in yesterday’s museum movies reminded us of how drastically the scenery is about to change as we leave the grassy plains for mountains and then "the terrible desert" before continuing eventually to the California coast.
I think we all slept fairly well in the calm backyard, wakening feeling fresh and refreshed. We had just finished reviewing together yesterday’s journal entry when Steve and Cindy came walking outside to see how our night had been; all of us trooped out (prompting Steve to observe that "people just keep coming out of there!" with the camper resembling a clown car) and joined them inside for tea, coffee, and conversation, which was lively and fascinating. We traded stories about what the "adults" did for a living before they each retired, and Steve shared various amazing stories about friends of his: he knows a broad array of the most interesting people! LJS pilot Too soon, he had to leave for work and we had to hit the road west, wondering whether and when we would see them again.
Our first stops were in Sayre, first for gas; then to mail postcards at the art deco post office with its 1930s "land run" mural, then to circle the stately Beckham County Courthouse that was shown in the movie Grapes of Wrath – and which I was tickled to recognize from many of the pleadings I have drafted for Steve over the years, most of which have been filed there. We couldn’t find the abandoned bridge over the North Fork of the Red River on our way out of town, but further along we were mesmerized by the ghostly, abandoned original lanes of old Route 66, which for me evoked perfectly the nostalgic mood created by the museum movies yesterday, of wistfulness for a lost time. Approaching Erick, hometown of Sheb Wooley and Roger Miller, I merrily piped portions of their respective songs, "Purple People Eater" and "King of the Road" over the walkie talkie. We were underwhelmed by Texola, unsure whether we had reached it until we were past it (and the Will Rogers marker west of town) and already crossing the Texas border.
Without a river or some continental rift, border crossings between states usually pass without notice – but not here. Almost immediately after entering Texas, the land changed, almost as if someone looked carefully at this place and decided, without regard for political interests, that the state line just naturally belonged right there. Leaving the rolling, wooded hills of Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle opened like an immense natural stage. In the space of a few miles the land became flatter, more angular, and a little threatening purely by virtue of its endlessness. This would not have been a good place to have a horse pull up lame if you were a line-rider, nor to have your clapped-out old truck throw a rod if you were an Okie family trying gamely with your little ones to reach California. Not a gentle place at all. But a place magnificent, like the sea, in its sheer, endless expanse. And in the way the land challenges you to open yourself to it, to take it all in – or to scuttle quickly across to an easier region. Even our day would determine which type of people we were.
One of the guidebooks provided this introduction to Texas: "Few places in America scrape at primitive human emotions the way Texas does. People who live on this land are afflicted either with the fierce loyalty known only to those to have learned to hold adversity lightly in their hands – or the equally burning desire to get the hell out of here.
Even the remnant of old Route 66 has a hunkered-down look as it climbs toward the breaks just west of Alanreed. Beyond these crumbling bluffs, the high plains begin in earnest. A few miles more and the tumbled character of the land disappears almost completely, surrendering to a vast, treeless plain that flattens the entire horizon all the way into New Mexico. Windy, dry, appearing virtually limitless, even to the 65-mile-an-hour eye, the distances seem endless. So convinced were the earliest travelers that they were in imminent danger of simply becoming lost to death out here that they drove stakes into even the slightest rise to point the way. Coming upon these frail markers, riders from the south named this region Llano Estacado – the Staked Plain.
As you cross this land now with relative ease, imagine yourself out here alone, in an earlier time. Stakes or no, could you have walked this two-hundred-mile stretch in search of something better than you had back home? Would you have done that? Interesting to notice what a tight grasp old Demon Comfort can have on us, isn’t it?"
The wind communicates perfectly what no words or other medium could convey about what earlier passers-through must have felt here on this land, as they stood facing into a wind older than the plain itself. Even today that same wind blows almost incessantly, reminding us of what it means to be out here. In Texas.
Ironically, Texas – the largest of the lower 48 states – hosts the second-shortest alignment of Route 66, with only about 150 miles remaining of the original 178 across the panhandle. Our first stop, 13 miles in, was Shamrock, offering numerous remnants of old motels, cafes, and stations – and featuring the famous U-Drop Inn/Tower Conoco, an art deco masterpiece built in 1936 that now houses the welcoming local Chamber of Commerce and featured as Romano’s in the movie Cars. Seeing Tom’s car, they fell all over themselves to welcome us, chatting, offering water and coffee, and urging us to relax awhile over lunch at the restored U-Drop Inn diner – described in the literature as "one of the finest examples of art deco architecture on all of old Route 66." They have done a great job restoring it; the building looked brand-new despite its 1930s facade. Inside, they’re doing a marvelous job utilizing the space, using the back areas as offices, with interim kitchen and workspaces between there and the tourist area. The old diner has been cleaned up and restored in a simple style; just booths, tables, counterspace, and chairs, without frills – yet superior to roadside picnic areas at other welcome stations merely by virtue of this spot being located in such an atmospheric place; how many welcome centers can host picnickers inside a 1930s diner, not only out of the wind, but in a part of history, no less?! I thought it was an ingenuous idea, and it should be a great draw for the town and its passing tourists. Other tourists stopping through were eager to photograph the icon with Tom’s car in the picture; I was glad I had insisted on his parking it right in front, knowing it would add to the character of the place for as long as we were there.
Thinking Mom probably was getting hungry (it was approaching noon, and she’s pretty particular about wanting to eat on a regular schedule; nobody is really a fan of my "travel-Nazi" ways!), and thrilled at the thought of truly experiencing this Route 66 icon in such an authentic way (dining at a diner restored to a simpler version of its former glory, adapted for welcome center purposes as a delightful indoor picnic area), I was eager to take the elderly docent up on her invitation to enjoy our lunch there – at my questioning look, she gestured and repeated her instructions, making sure that we understood where to go inside, since it wasn’t obvious (we all had been simply peering into the plate-glass windows of the restored diner; she repeated that we could go inside through the double doors) – but I was outvoted 4-1, with the rest of the group insisting on hurrying off despite my imploring attempts to persuade them to relax awhile and soak up the ambience. (We would have had the place all to ourselves other than the docents, who probably were about to take their own lunch break there as well and might have joined us). But the more urgently I pleaded, the more the rest of the group seemed to want to rush away – no doubt hurting the feelings of the Chamber of Commerce folks, who seemed to be desperately trying to persuade folks to "stop and set a spell."
I didn’t want to make a scene in front of these kind people, so I resisted the urge to shout an exasperated lecture to our entire group. One of the workers, eager to discuss Tom’s car, came out to stand with us around it, seeming eager to talk to us and share stories about the town and its history – I was sure he would have loved to have us join them for lunch in the diner! But Mom somehow had gotten it into her head that we were going to be committing some kind of felony if we did something as radical as using the welcome center’s tables as... tables, and somehow seemed to have convinced the rest of the group that this would indeed be construed by the town (maybe even the great State of Texas) as some kind of terrorist activity. Truly not comprehending this kind of petulant refusal or inability to reason, I quietly but urgently suggested, "Okay, then why don’t we just ask again – ask this guy – he can tell you again that it’s perfectly fine to use the tables as tables." She looked at me as if I had suggested urinating in the town square by even considering asking such a question, chastising, "You can’t do that!" and gesturing as if she were the one dealing with an irrational child. Dad saw this and told me to "leave your Mother alone," hustling all of us out of there, and the uncles went along.
This might have been acceptable if we were hell-bent-for-election trying to maintain some kind of breakneck schedule, late for an appointment, or... whatever. But I was incensed when the group decided almost immediately that we had to stop and eat as soon as possible and we wound up pulling off to the side of the road at the first wayside area we came to, a drab field beside the road where the wind whipped everything and dust was in the air (as opposed to later stops, one just half a mile up the road at a charming restored cottage gas station; another a few miles farther along at a majestic lookout with a view for miles – no, we had to stop at the first tables we saw that were not the iconic ones back at the U-Drop Inn). I was enraged and perplexed: I couldn’t begin to comprehend why anyone – much less a group supposedly trying to explore the Mother Road and absorb its history – would rush away and forego a prime opportunity to experience a Route 66 icon like the U-Drop Inn, in favor of hunkering against the wind at a picnic table in a nondescript pull-off alongside a dusty road. I’m just not wired that way.
When we stopped, I was still too upset to even speak (I didn’t trust myself not to say something rude and hurtful, expressing my frustration), so I decided to walk on up the road and check out downtown McLean, the last town in Texas to have been bypassed by the interstate. I passed the "devil’s rope" barbed wire display at the former brassiere factory at the east end of town and found a number of interesting murals adorning a ghostly-quiet "downtown." Sadly, the McLean/Alanreed Area Museum (which apparently includes information about the WWII prison camp for German POWs nearby), in which I had been most interested, was closed for lunch.
At least my short walk around the all-but-deserted town provided a micro-glimpse into what it must have been like to have walked this prairie, alone with the wind, perhaps bitter about far more weighty matters than where to have lunch, while crossing the vast west in search of a better life. Tom and I did stop to check out the beautifully-restored Phillips 66 gas station and matching tanker truck, the first of its kind in Texas, and the first to be restored anywhere along Route 66, and the newly-refurbished Cactus Inn with its cool green cactus sign.
We encountered some navigational difficulty and troublesome dirt roads around Alanreed and Jericho (no doubt in part because I was still sulking over having missed out on dining at the U-Drop Inn back in Shamrock – Marilyn will understand completely when I describe the situation as being akin to Skagen in that we came all this way, had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience something memorable... and wound up skipping it for no logical reason that I could discern).
We resumed our westward progress and some great long-distance views from the narrow ridge line before Jericho. In short order we spotted the "leaning tower of Groom" (a crooked Britten USA water tower marking a former truck stop that was built that way intentionally in order to attract attention – it succeeded!) and the 190-foot-tall "Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," an enormous white cross erected in 1995 and billed as the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. Everything’s big in Texas – even religious symbols.
Next was the "Bug Ranch," an ironic satire of the upcoming Cadillac Ranch, with VW bugs instead of Cadillacs buried nose-down in the dirt. We skirted Conway, passing its pair of tall white grain elevators guarding the silence of the past, in an area where the speed limit jumped to 70mph – the only place in Texas where one can legally drive that fast on Old 66, on a long, straight, lonesome stretch that provided an isolated feel like none other.
Approaching Amarillo, we detoured to see the pavement end at the fence of the airport that cut right through 2-lane 66 decades ago before veering north slightly to join Amarillo Boulevard, following 66 again until up 6th Avenue, watching for painted fiberglass ponies and a place to have an ice cream treat. We spied Furrbies almost right away, parked, walked in, and sat awhile enjoying ice cream sundaes and coffee (the adults) and a 32-ounce house specialty cherry limeade for me – wonderfully refreshing! Continuing a short way on 6th Avenue through the "One Mile Shopping" district and the San Jacinto Neighborhood (where I noticed a minature San Jac monument, easily recognizable because of its likeness to the real one south of Houston).
At this point we left Route 66 for a rest-of-the-afternoon detour recommended by the books as well as by me: Palo Duro Canyon. The Route 66 guidebook recommended detouring to the canyon, calling it "one of the most beautiful areas to be found anywhere in the Southwest," and I’ve heard it described as "the Grand Canyon of Texas," which, although perhaps an exaggeration, does begin to describe how amazing it is, located out in the middle of all this endless flatland prairie. Our next homestay was directly on the way to it, so we drove there first, leaving the truck/camper rig at the farm of Larry & Jere, a high school friend of Bernie’s, while Tom drove the 5 of us in the Skyliner to see the canyon. Jere came outside to greet us when we pulled in, along with Ranger, their gentle-giant white Great Pyrennes, who immediately made the rounds to seek pets and to slobber on all of us. He’s a sweetheart; it’s really too bad that he drools so profusely; otherwise it would be so much easier to love on him!
Reaching the state park’s fee station, we were greeted with the best line yet, a Texas-drawled, "Well, I’m quite certain y’all must have violated some state law that would enable me to confiscate that vehicle." Dad roared with laughter, and we all agreed that that was the best line yet. Tom stopped to put the top down before we continued into the park, which was a great idea; we all enjoyed the wide-open views throughout our little driving tour. We stopped a few times for photographs of low-water crossings, cactus blooms, and the RLS trail in which my late, great friend Red Spicer took a lead role in building. It was fun to hear the appreciative exclamations from the rest of the group over this place that has been special to me for so many years precisely because of Red’s friendship. Palo Duro’s colors, in haunting desert tinges, and the unexpected formations in the canyon are unique, with well-laid-out hiking and running trails and miles of scenic drives. I was quiet all the way back, not least because we ran over a poor little box turtle as we were driving out of the canyon.
Returning to Larry & Jere’s, we walked around out back to see the livestock, and I delighted in playing with four frisky calves who were aggressive about nudging me with their heads and sucking on my fingers, shorts, and sleeves when they weren’t licking my legs. The kids will be so disappointed at missing out when they see the pictures later!
We all left shortly for the Big Texan, another Route 66 icon (albeit kitchy) in Amarillo, where the group had decided we wanted to dine, if only for the experience of hoping to witness someone trying to earn a free meal by consuming a 72-ounce steak (complete with side dishes) within one hour. We were in luck: while we were there, one such young man declared himself up to the challenge, and he was seated at a table alone, up on a platform in the center of the dining room for all to see. A waiter earnestly explained the rules to him and allowed him to sample and approve his steak before starting a big time clock at the end of the table, with everyone in the place cheering heartily. When we left, he had about half an hour to go but looked like he was seriously losing momentum, with barely half the meat – and none of the side dishes – put away. We opted not to wait out the remaining half-hour to see whether he made it – but that was some great entertainment! :)
Back at the ranch, Larry invited us to join them for a bonfire, which we did, following him and Jere through a gap between box cars that opened onto an outdoor fire pit and charming bricked patio area overlooking the pastures beneath a starry velvet night sky. We sat until a couple of batches of logs had burned a good way through, fascinated by Jeres many colorful and hilarious stories arising from her many endeavors; she always seems to have about a thousand varied projects underway, from doing grocery store demos to cleaning out foreclosed homes to distributing treats to collecting scrap metal for sale to creating tack sheds and various other ingenuous items from wooden Bell Helicopter box crates, to her newest thing, weaning and raising heifers to the point of being able to be grain-fed. She never ceases to surprise me with some interesting undertaking! She and Larry both are hardworking, resourceful, determined folks who could survive any test or trial – and they probably will survive the current economic downturn better than most, willing and able as they both are to utilize every asset and skill available. Larry is a wholesome, sincerely friendly man with a cheery smile and a merry twinkle in his eyes; they both were gracious hosts eager to get us set up for the night, either in the house or in our camper when we insisted again on staying out there... although I think I may take Jere up on her urging to try out the bed in their 5th-wheel, parking adjacent to my parents’. They use it as a backup, backup bedroom/apartment/crash pad, and she just made it up with fresh linens. I’m sitting in that trailer now, taking advantage of its electricity in order (for once) not to be disrupting the others’ sleep with light, movement, and the noise of page-turning and keyboard-clicking as I write this long after they’ve all gone to sleep.
We have reservations tomorrow night at the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, a vintage place highly recommended by every guidebook and other resource as oozing character and being another can’t-miss Route 66 icon. I’m almost as excited about it as I am about the Wigwam teepee Motel a few nights farther down the road!
I’m still sulking about the Shamrock incident, feeling slighted and frustrated by the sense that the group not only paid no heed to my suggestions, but actively dismissed them as outright wrong – while being too stubborn to even discuss them. I suppose part of that is just my stubbornly thinking I’m always right. But part is that I think that, in general I’m pretty careful (I already have used three equivocations in this sentence) to clarify when I am and am not certain about something – so that when I state something as unequivocal fact (like "it’s okay for us to eat lunch here"), there should be absolutely no reason to question the accuracy of that fact – and then I really can’t comprehend being so stubborn, or paranoid, or whatever, as to refuse to clarify something that isn’t clear: would it have killed anyone to follow my urging to ask again, if we were so concerned about doing something wrong? And what if we were really in a situation where I didn’t know the answer and we had to ask for clarification – would the world really have ended if we were told "no"?! Was that risk worth bypassing a Route 66 icon, on a trip intended to experience the Mother Road?! It didn’t bother me so much not to do what I thought we should do – what bothered me was reaching that decision based on a misperception – and it mostly seriously bothered me anytime someone flatly refuses to so much as discuss something to sort it out.
I do realize that part of today’s tension arises simply from our all spending so much time together – we have been on the road together now for one week, eating, breathing, and sleeping together in very close quarters; such uninterrupted time inevitably causes friction between even the fastest friends and family members...
I suppose I could look at it this way: perhaps today’s incident, albeit a low point, actually added to our Route 66 experience. Leaving home and hearth – however humble – behind, I can’t imagine that the early travelers had a picnic from one end of the road to the other. I can imagine families like the Joads piling all their worldly possessions onto rattletrap vehicles, saying goodbye to friends, families, and communities – everything familiar in the world that they knew – and setting out into the unknown in search of something better. They had to have had mixed emotions, likely even with some family members who either didn’t care about, or were adamantly opposed, to heading off into the unknown wild west. There were bound to be many moments of friction, and even some knock-down, drag-out fights among friends and family members along the way, with disagreements arising over where to stop, what to cook (or try to catch?!) for dinner, or where to settle, or... all manner of things – perhaps even some as petty as whether to use the tables as tables at a highway visitors’ center. So maybe our own such experiences actually are helping us to more fully experience the Route 66 experience, after all.
In any event, I know I need to let it go; tomorrow is another day.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Day 6: Oklahoma City to Elk City, Oklahoma
15 September. Elk City, Oklahoma. Midnight.
I read out loud from the last couple of days of journal entries, putting Tom and Don to sleep, as announced by their snoring (that certainly runs in the family – they sounded just like Dad!). Hopefully this isn’t having the same effect on everyone else... If it is, you can just stick with the executive summary and ignore the rest; I won’t be insulted – a lot of this is intended just to help us remember where we’ve been, what we’ve done and seen, and who we’ve met. Because of the documentary nature of such a list, it’s tending to feel decidedly like a dry catalogue list at times.
Executive summary: 8:30 start, 5pm finish, 132 miles. Edmond, Warr Acres, Bethany, Weatherford, Clinton, Foss, and Elk City Oklahoma. Best day yet, bookmarked by time with friends on both ends, and bursting in between with learning about, and seeing more of, Route 66 in America’s heartland.
[Note: Again, no internet access, so we’re now 3 days behind posting to the blog... but eventually we’ll get back up-to-date. In the meantime, I hardly know where to begin describing this day – and words will not suffice.]
Dad was the first to come downstairs this morning, seeking out coffee early. The house stirred, and everyone else followed suit. Mark and I headed out the door for a short, easy run around the neighborhood, visiting about the many (significant) changes in both our lives since last we saw each other in April 2007 – some momentous milestones and turning points, both of us for the better.
The "adults" all relaxed over coffee and the news while Mark and I ran and showered. We said our goodbyes and hit the road around 8:30, heading south from Edmond and proceeding west through Warr Acres (proclaiming itself to be Oklahoma’s Almost-Capital City), noting the giant bowling pin at 66 Bowl and Ann’s Chicken Fry Steak House; then Bethany (Southern Nazarene University and Southern Christian University); pulling off to admire Lake Overholser, locally nicknamed for its "submarine races" as "Lake Holdercloser." Lake Overholser served as a seaplane base during WWII. In 1941, it was the first and only body of water in Oklahoma to be officially designated as a seaplane base. Pan American’s graceful Clippers were all the rage then, with transcontinental seaplane travel considered to be the next major development in air travel. But by the time WWII had ended, military and civilian engineers had built thousands of miles of long concrete runways almost everywhere. The seaplane era was over, even for small craft, and Lake Overholser’s hopes faded with the times.
Leaving the area via Yukon (Yukon’s Best Flour emblazoned on massive grain elevator, Chisholm Trail wall mural – we couldn’t find the WWII Flying Tiger fighter plane supposedly located 4 miles west of town), continuing through El Reno (WW II twin-engine bomber, tight turns through town, Fort Reno historic marker – but no more Deluxe Inn motel; the one-story green structure appearing in the movie Rain Man has been demolished, though its signpost remains, sticking out like a sore thumb in front of a nondescript storage building polebarn) before reaching a lengthy 1930's concrete section of Route 66 heading west toward Hydro.
The pristine curbed concrete headed arrow-straight for much of the way, interrupted by charming curves while crossing fields and woods, bridging deep gullies on long concrete-post spans. And of course I took a bunch of pictures of an unbelievably long 1933 pony bridge that utilizes 38 small "pony" trusses to cross the South Canadian River. Despite a variety of roadie explanations for the number of its spans (frequent washouts, the weight of tank convoys, a steel shortage, etc.), the truth is that each span is simply as large as the highway department’s early equipment could lift into place. This entire stretch of road was charming: pink, tree-shaded concrete with innocent-looking little half-curbs that once represented cutting-edge innovation – but wound up accomplishing more than intended by their engineers. Instead of promoting drainage, they apparently could turn a hill face into a solid sheet of water during a hard rain – which is the only kind of rain Oklahoma seems to have. Motorists who got between two such hills were likely to stay there until the weather cleared – and sometimes others would come slithering down to the bottom, too, creating an even bigger mess. The other thing the curbs were intended to do was to redirect errant autos back onto the roadway. They managed that – but many cars were tossed over onto their tops in the process. So it’s not surprising that we don’t see a lot of this kind of curbing anymore!
We opted not to follow any of today’s optional dirt road detours near Calumet, Geary, and Bridgeport, sticking to the pavement but enjoying the drive, which reminded Dad and his brothers of Highway 75 in northwestern Minnesota with its edging and rhythmic sounds (ka-THUNK-ka-thunk, ka-THUNK-ka-thunk, ka-THUNK-ka-thunk...) emanating from the concrete slab pavement.
Having decided to eat in Weatherford, we were sorely disappointed. We had looked forward to the Out to Lunch Café, anticipating "nice folks, good food, and pretty, down-home waitresses who aren’t required to babble their names and push the daily special. Here, they’ll just smile that wonderful Oklahoma Hi-y’all smile and let you make up your own mind. Next best thing to sharing the front-porch swing and a lemonade with your sweetie." Its location was described by the recommending book as being "at Midtown," but we could locate no such place. Between the Downtown Diner and Lucille’s, we opted for the latter, which probably was a mistake. It looked vintage, and its history sounded fascinating: famed home of Lucille Hamons, dubbed the "Mother of the Mother Road," which had closed when she passed away in 2000 but had been restored... but inside we found a restaurant with about the character of a Chili’s and poor service from a disinterested waitress. Ah, well; you can’t win ‘em all.
Our first planned stop today was the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton (straight across the street from the Trade Winds Motel where Elvis stayed), a well-done exhibit featuring Oklahoma 66 but with a national slant, following the history of 66 decade-by-decade from dirt road days through the 1960s, incorporating tableaus of antique vehicles, photos, memorabilia, and a drive-in theatre, as well as the restored Route 66 Valentine diner, and an image of the Illinois Department of Transportation workers who took down (and, for awhile, kept for themselves) the signs for the decommissioned Route 66. The exhibits were thorough without being overwhelming, with plenty of authentic items on display and interesting personal accounts, as well as interesting little factoids like the fact that when cars were first sold mainstream, they were taxed based on their horsepower (so many cents per horsepower, initially ranging from something like 20 to 50 cents per horse). One I liked was a narrative remembering the author’s boyhood when the road went through; his father was offered $1 a day to labor on it, plus $1 a day for use of his team of horses; the author remarked, "he said he hadn’t had any idea that the government had that kind of money!" The family had been excited, he recalled, knowing that they would eat well from then on, and his mother knew she would even be able to buy shoes for the kids for school that year. One day he had taken water to his father on the job; his father had passed around the gallon jug to share with the other workers; and the company boss called the boy over, gave him a dime, and told him that if he would bring two gallons of water to the crew every day, he could be their water boy, for which he would receive a dime every day. He remembered how ecstatic he had been at holding that shiny dime and how thrilled at the prospect of making sixty more, ruefully remarking that he wished he had paid more attention in math the year before, ‘cuz then he "woulda knowed how much money sixty dimes was..." but he knew for sure that it was a lot of money, enough to buy a pair of shoes and maybe even a shirt.
We also learned how Phillips 66 got its name: not (directly) from Route 66, but by chance, when two executives en route to a meeting at which to discuss a name for the company, brainstorming for a catchy title that would instill excitement about the power of their fuel, realized they were driving over 60; one remarked to the other, "60 nothing; we’re doing 66!" just as they passed a Route 66 road sign... and the company name was born.
West of Clinton we followed more pristine sections of original concrete around Foss, detouring through Canute to see the remains of several old businesses there including the former Cotton Boll and Washita Motels, now both apparently private residences. Next was a T-33 jet guarding the Elk City airport entrance, a 179-foot-tall oil derrick, and then the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City.
Each state along Route 66 has its own designated state Route 66 museum; the national one happens to be in Elk City, where one of my favorite clients ever lives and practices. He knows, and probably is known by, everyone in town after living here for years, a native Oklahoman from the panhandle who settled here with his wife from OKC to raise their two daughters.
Although I had been unsure of our scheduling, I had hoped to connect with Steve and his wife when we came through, and we were in luck: we touched base by telephone and decided to meet up after his workday ended, to go out to dinner, and he invited us to bring our rig out to his place to camp overnight; excellent! That meant we wouldn’t have to rush off to check in and set up someplace else. Although there was a KOA Kampground right in Elk City, I much preferred to spend the evening visiting, meeting his wife in person for the first time, and getting to know them both better.
Steve had personally taken me on a quick tour of the city when I had visited for a few hours in April 2007, so I knew roughly where things were, and we drove directly to the National Museum (next to an adorable city park, complete with sports fields, gorgeous swan ponds, and a restored carousel – also easy to spot anyway, with its enormous Route 66 sign and 2 giant Kachina dolls from an old trading post run by Wanda Queenan, who founded the museum herself – and she was in today, so we got to meet her in person) to spend the rest of the afternoon. The museum was well done, with sections about not only Route 66, but a general overview of America during the time period of the highway’s heyday. We strolled through the interestingly-narrated museum exhibit section, then wandered around several other buildings on the grounds of its Old Town Museum, where at least a dozen vintage buildings have been restored and moved to form a small city from the past, complete with a train and depot, a series of signs in the Burma Shave style, and a Farm & Ranch Museum full of old farm implements and surrounded by larger implements and an array of windmills. It was great!
Just before 5pm, I called to check in with Steve and his secretary Rosemary, who welcomed us warmly and took time to give us a tour of the quaint red brick house in which Steve’s office is set up, beautifully decorated by his wife and featuring lots of interesting airplane memorabilia, including several enormous wooden propellers and quite a collection of miniature model planes, many from the Texaco and John Deere series. I loved finally getting to see her in person, after all these years! From there we returned to the museum to meet up with Steve and his wife, Cynthia. I had never met Cindy, but she proved to be vivacious, charming, and full of spirit, life, and a great sense of humor – I liked her immediately; she’s the kind of person with whom I could (and would want to!) be friends for life! They have two daughters in their 20s, both of whom live in Oklahoma City, and they’re about to become grandparents in October.
They had decided on a nearby place for us all to go to dinner. Leaving the camping rig at their place, Mom, Dad, and I piled into their mini-van, followed by the uncles in the Skyliner, and headed northwest into countryside that was lush green from recent rains. They had chosen the Flying W Ranch and its restaurant called Sassy’s, which proved an excellent choice: another huge, delicious meal with great service and atmosphere. A client of Steve’s was our waitress; when we learned that today was her birthday, we sang to her, for which she thanked us profusely, confiding that nobody had done that before – making us doubly glad we could help celebrate her birthday in some small way!
A local man named Don started the place years ago; he apparently is a friend and/or fan of Steve’s, because he came out to greet him personally, and after Steve introduced the rest of us, he spent probably 2 hours with us, first visiting about the nearby buffalo kill site, an archeologically significant place where Native Americans used to chase buffalo over a cliff to their deaths so that they could butcher them and feed their tribes. He brought out a black buffalo horn so that we could see for ourselves how hard and solid they are despite being made of hard-packed hair; then he invited us to see the General Store, which topped any museum we could imagine seeing anywhere along Route 66. He has assembled there an unbelievably extensive collection of late-19th-and-early-20th-century artifacts, preserving them just as they would have been in a general store at the period-appropriate time: sewing machines, irons, buttonhole measuring implements, thread, flour, a wooden butter churn, a dress pattern imprinter, hats and other clothing, dry goods, tins, rope, cigar-making molds, tobacco leaves, food tins (some still containing food), an old-fashioned candy county (with some candy still there), a real-honest-to-goodness original-model Edison phonograph, rare tools like a sugar barrel bore, various types of kerosene lanterns, leather razor-sharpening straps, shaving razors, old-fashioned hair-cutting scissors, and more diverse items than I could begin to recount in several hours. The array included various pictures, posters, and shaped items portraying grinning African American cartoon characters that never would fly today; he explained that back then, it was considered socially undesirable to participate in advertising, so white folks didn’t want their likenesses reproduced in ads. He also riddled us about why Bull Durham products were more popular with the men who bought them than any other brand; when he stumped us, he explained that it was because of the "hoochie-cootchie" pictures: they came with risque images showing women baring their... wrists, forearms, ankles, and once even a knee!
Don was immensely knowledgeable and endlessly enthusiastic about every single item there, taking time and care to explain many of them in interesting detail and freely answering every question we asked him. We could have stayed 10 hours and not seen everything, nor gotten our fill. The man, and his collection, were a gem in the rough – what a wonderful, serendipitous chance, for Steve and Cindy to take us there, for him to be there, and for him to be kind and generous enough to share so freely of his time and his memories. We were all enthralled and could happily have stayed all night.
One of the museum films today had a line I liked, in which the narrator likened Route 66 as inviting, "World, come and look at us! You won’t regret, nor soon forget, that you drove Route 66." Likewise, there’s no way we’ll ever forget this evening.
Steve delighted in riding with Tom in the Skyliner on the way back to his & Cindy’s place, where the guys set up the camper (they invited us to stay in their two empty guest bedrooms, but we hated the thought of making a mess just to sleep, when we had the camper with us already – the guest rooms were beautifully made up; we would have felt bad leaving them disheveled), Cindy gave us a tour of the house, and we all sat around together relaxing and drinking coffee and tea (and Mom got to write some postcards, which she’s been wanting to do), petting and playing with their adorable butterscotch-colored dog Maggie, and generally enjoying a nice visit. Besides being a favorite client, I simply like Steve as a person – and now Cindy, too; I would love to be able to spend more time together, and I sincerely hope they’ll come visit Colorado so that I can return their hospitality!
Too soon, the hour grew late and we decided to say goodnight so that we could let Steve get some sleep, since he actually has to get up and go to work all day tomorrow while the rest of us continue our vacation.
Tomorrow we’ll continue west toward the Texas panhandle and Amarillo.
I read out loud from the last couple of days of journal entries, putting Tom and Don to sleep, as announced by their snoring (that certainly runs in the family – they sounded just like Dad!). Hopefully this isn’t having the same effect on everyone else... If it is, you can just stick with the executive summary and ignore the rest; I won’t be insulted – a lot of this is intended just to help us remember where we’ve been, what we’ve done and seen, and who we’ve met. Because of the documentary nature of such a list, it’s tending to feel decidedly like a dry catalogue list at times.
Executive summary: 8:30 start, 5pm finish, 132 miles. Edmond, Warr Acres, Bethany, Weatherford, Clinton, Foss, and Elk City Oklahoma. Best day yet, bookmarked by time with friends on both ends, and bursting in between with learning about, and seeing more of, Route 66 in America’s heartland.
[Note: Again, no internet access, so we’re now 3 days behind posting to the blog... but eventually we’ll get back up-to-date. In the meantime, I hardly know where to begin describing this day – and words will not suffice.]
Dad was the first to come downstairs this morning, seeking out coffee early. The house stirred, and everyone else followed suit. Mark and I headed out the door for a short, easy run around the neighborhood, visiting about the many (significant) changes in both our lives since last we saw each other in April 2007 – some momentous milestones and turning points, both of us for the better.
The "adults" all relaxed over coffee and the news while Mark and I ran and showered. We said our goodbyes and hit the road around 8:30, heading south from Edmond and proceeding west through Warr Acres (proclaiming itself to be Oklahoma’s Almost-Capital City), noting the giant bowling pin at 66 Bowl and Ann’s Chicken Fry Steak House; then Bethany (Southern Nazarene University and Southern Christian University); pulling off to admire Lake Overholser, locally nicknamed for its "submarine races" as "Lake Holdercloser." Lake Overholser served as a seaplane base during WWII. In 1941, it was the first and only body of water in Oklahoma to be officially designated as a seaplane base. Pan American’s graceful Clippers were all the rage then, with transcontinental seaplane travel considered to be the next major development in air travel. But by the time WWII had ended, military and civilian engineers had built thousands of miles of long concrete runways almost everywhere. The seaplane era was over, even for small craft, and Lake Overholser’s hopes faded with the times.
Leaving the area via Yukon (Yukon’s Best Flour emblazoned on massive grain elevator, Chisholm Trail wall mural – we couldn’t find the WWII Flying Tiger fighter plane supposedly located 4 miles west of town), continuing through El Reno (WW II twin-engine bomber, tight turns through town, Fort Reno historic marker – but no more Deluxe Inn motel; the one-story green structure appearing in the movie Rain Man has been demolished, though its signpost remains, sticking out like a sore thumb in front of a nondescript storage building polebarn) before reaching a lengthy 1930's concrete section of Route 66 heading west toward Hydro.
The pristine curbed concrete headed arrow-straight for much of the way, interrupted by charming curves while crossing fields and woods, bridging deep gullies on long concrete-post spans. And of course I took a bunch of pictures of an unbelievably long 1933 pony bridge that utilizes 38 small "pony" trusses to cross the South Canadian River. Despite a variety of roadie explanations for the number of its spans (frequent washouts, the weight of tank convoys, a steel shortage, etc.), the truth is that each span is simply as large as the highway department’s early equipment could lift into place. This entire stretch of road was charming: pink, tree-shaded concrete with innocent-looking little half-curbs that once represented cutting-edge innovation – but wound up accomplishing more than intended by their engineers. Instead of promoting drainage, they apparently could turn a hill face into a solid sheet of water during a hard rain – which is the only kind of rain Oklahoma seems to have. Motorists who got between two such hills were likely to stay there until the weather cleared – and sometimes others would come slithering down to the bottom, too, creating an even bigger mess. The other thing the curbs were intended to do was to redirect errant autos back onto the roadway. They managed that – but many cars were tossed over onto their tops in the process. So it’s not surprising that we don’t see a lot of this kind of curbing anymore!
We opted not to follow any of today’s optional dirt road detours near Calumet, Geary, and Bridgeport, sticking to the pavement but enjoying the drive, which reminded Dad and his brothers of Highway 75 in northwestern Minnesota with its edging and rhythmic sounds (ka-THUNK-ka-thunk, ka-THUNK-ka-thunk, ka-THUNK-ka-thunk...) emanating from the concrete slab pavement.
Having decided to eat in Weatherford, we were sorely disappointed. We had looked forward to the Out to Lunch Café, anticipating "nice folks, good food, and pretty, down-home waitresses who aren’t required to babble their names and push the daily special. Here, they’ll just smile that wonderful Oklahoma Hi-y’all smile and let you make up your own mind. Next best thing to sharing the front-porch swing and a lemonade with your sweetie." Its location was described by the recommending book as being "at Midtown," but we could locate no such place. Between the Downtown Diner and Lucille’s, we opted for the latter, which probably was a mistake. It looked vintage, and its history sounded fascinating: famed home of Lucille Hamons, dubbed the "Mother of the Mother Road," which had closed when she passed away in 2000 but had been restored... but inside we found a restaurant with about the character of a Chili’s and poor service from a disinterested waitress. Ah, well; you can’t win ‘em all.
Our first planned stop today was the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton (straight across the street from the Trade Winds Motel where Elvis stayed), a well-done exhibit featuring Oklahoma 66 but with a national slant, following the history of 66 decade-by-decade from dirt road days through the 1960s, incorporating tableaus of antique vehicles, photos, memorabilia, and a drive-in theatre, as well as the restored Route 66 Valentine diner, and an image of the Illinois Department of Transportation workers who took down (and, for awhile, kept for themselves) the signs for the decommissioned Route 66. The exhibits were thorough without being overwhelming, with plenty of authentic items on display and interesting personal accounts, as well as interesting little factoids like the fact that when cars were first sold mainstream, they were taxed based on their horsepower (so many cents per horsepower, initially ranging from something like 20 to 50 cents per horse). One I liked was a narrative remembering the author’s boyhood when the road went through; his father was offered $1 a day to labor on it, plus $1 a day for use of his team of horses; the author remarked, "he said he hadn’t had any idea that the government had that kind of money!" The family had been excited, he recalled, knowing that they would eat well from then on, and his mother knew she would even be able to buy shoes for the kids for school that year. One day he had taken water to his father on the job; his father had passed around the gallon jug to share with the other workers; and the company boss called the boy over, gave him a dime, and told him that if he would bring two gallons of water to the crew every day, he could be their water boy, for which he would receive a dime every day. He remembered how ecstatic he had been at holding that shiny dime and how thrilled at the prospect of making sixty more, ruefully remarking that he wished he had paid more attention in math the year before, ‘cuz then he "woulda knowed how much money sixty dimes was..." but he knew for sure that it was a lot of money, enough to buy a pair of shoes and maybe even a shirt.
We also learned how Phillips 66 got its name: not (directly) from Route 66, but by chance, when two executives en route to a meeting at which to discuss a name for the company, brainstorming for a catchy title that would instill excitement about the power of their fuel, realized they were driving over 60; one remarked to the other, "60 nothing; we’re doing 66!" just as they passed a Route 66 road sign... and the company name was born.
West of Clinton we followed more pristine sections of original concrete around Foss, detouring through Canute to see the remains of several old businesses there including the former Cotton Boll and Washita Motels, now both apparently private residences. Next was a T-33 jet guarding the Elk City airport entrance, a 179-foot-tall oil derrick, and then the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City.
Each state along Route 66 has its own designated state Route 66 museum; the national one happens to be in Elk City, where one of my favorite clients ever lives and practices. He knows, and probably is known by, everyone in town after living here for years, a native Oklahoman from the panhandle who settled here with his wife from OKC to raise their two daughters.
Although I had been unsure of our scheduling, I had hoped to connect with Steve and his wife when we came through, and we were in luck: we touched base by telephone and decided to meet up after his workday ended, to go out to dinner, and he invited us to bring our rig out to his place to camp overnight; excellent! That meant we wouldn’t have to rush off to check in and set up someplace else. Although there was a KOA Kampground right in Elk City, I much preferred to spend the evening visiting, meeting his wife in person for the first time, and getting to know them both better.
Steve had personally taken me on a quick tour of the city when I had visited for a few hours in April 2007, so I knew roughly where things were, and we drove directly to the National Museum (next to an adorable city park, complete with sports fields, gorgeous swan ponds, and a restored carousel – also easy to spot anyway, with its enormous Route 66 sign and 2 giant Kachina dolls from an old trading post run by Wanda Queenan, who founded the museum herself – and she was in today, so we got to meet her in person) to spend the rest of the afternoon. The museum was well done, with sections about not only Route 66, but a general overview of America during the time period of the highway’s heyday. We strolled through the interestingly-narrated museum exhibit section, then wandered around several other buildings on the grounds of its Old Town Museum, where at least a dozen vintage buildings have been restored and moved to form a small city from the past, complete with a train and depot, a series of signs in the Burma Shave style, and a Farm & Ranch Museum full of old farm implements and surrounded by larger implements and an array of windmills. It was great!
Just before 5pm, I called to check in with Steve and his secretary Rosemary, who welcomed us warmly and took time to give us a tour of the quaint red brick house in which Steve’s office is set up, beautifully decorated by his wife and featuring lots of interesting airplane memorabilia, including several enormous wooden propellers and quite a collection of miniature model planes, many from the Texaco and John Deere series. I loved finally getting to see her in person, after all these years! From there we returned to the museum to meet up with Steve and his wife, Cynthia. I had never met Cindy, but she proved to be vivacious, charming, and full of spirit, life, and a great sense of humor – I liked her immediately; she’s the kind of person with whom I could (and would want to!) be friends for life! They have two daughters in their 20s, both of whom live in Oklahoma City, and they’re about to become grandparents in October.
They had decided on a nearby place for us all to go to dinner. Leaving the camping rig at their place, Mom, Dad, and I piled into their mini-van, followed by the uncles in the Skyliner, and headed northwest into countryside that was lush green from recent rains. They had chosen the Flying W Ranch and its restaurant called Sassy’s, which proved an excellent choice: another huge, delicious meal with great service and atmosphere. A client of Steve’s was our waitress; when we learned that today was her birthday, we sang to her, for which she thanked us profusely, confiding that nobody had done that before – making us doubly glad we could help celebrate her birthday in some small way!
A local man named Don started the place years ago; he apparently is a friend and/or fan of Steve’s, because he came out to greet him personally, and after Steve introduced the rest of us, he spent probably 2 hours with us, first visiting about the nearby buffalo kill site, an archeologically significant place where Native Americans used to chase buffalo over a cliff to their deaths so that they could butcher them and feed their tribes. He brought out a black buffalo horn so that we could see for ourselves how hard and solid they are despite being made of hard-packed hair; then he invited us to see the General Store, which topped any museum we could imagine seeing anywhere along Route 66. He has assembled there an unbelievably extensive collection of late-19th-and-early-20th-century artifacts, preserving them just as they would have been in a general store at the period-appropriate time: sewing machines, irons, buttonhole measuring implements, thread, flour, a wooden butter churn, a dress pattern imprinter, hats and other clothing, dry goods, tins, rope, cigar-making molds, tobacco leaves, food tins (some still containing food), an old-fashioned candy county (with some candy still there), a real-honest-to-goodness original-model Edison phonograph, rare tools like a sugar barrel bore, various types of kerosene lanterns, leather razor-sharpening straps, shaving razors, old-fashioned hair-cutting scissors, and more diverse items than I could begin to recount in several hours. The array included various pictures, posters, and shaped items portraying grinning African American cartoon characters that never would fly today; he explained that back then, it was considered socially undesirable to participate in advertising, so white folks didn’t want their likenesses reproduced in ads. He also riddled us about why Bull Durham products were more popular with the men who bought them than any other brand; when he stumped us, he explained that it was because of the "hoochie-cootchie" pictures: they came with risque images showing women baring their... wrists, forearms, ankles, and once even a knee!
Don was immensely knowledgeable and endlessly enthusiastic about every single item there, taking time and care to explain many of them in interesting detail and freely answering every question we asked him. We could have stayed 10 hours and not seen everything, nor gotten our fill. The man, and his collection, were a gem in the rough – what a wonderful, serendipitous chance, for Steve and Cindy to take us there, for him to be there, and for him to be kind and generous enough to share so freely of his time and his memories. We were all enthralled and could happily have stayed all night.
One of the museum films today had a line I liked, in which the narrator likened Route 66 as inviting, "World, come and look at us! You won’t regret, nor soon forget, that you drove Route 66." Likewise, there’s no way we’ll ever forget this evening.
Steve delighted in riding with Tom in the Skyliner on the way back to his & Cindy’s place, where the guys set up the camper (they invited us to stay in their two empty guest bedrooms, but we hated the thought of making a mess just to sleep, when we had the camper with us already – the guest rooms were beautifully made up; we would have felt bad leaving them disheveled), Cindy gave us a tour of the house, and we all sat around together relaxing and drinking coffee and tea (and Mom got to write some postcards, which she’s been wanting to do), petting and playing with their adorable butterscotch-colored dog Maggie, and generally enjoying a nice visit. Besides being a favorite client, I simply like Steve as a person – and now Cindy, too; I would love to be able to spend more time together, and I sincerely hope they’ll come visit Colorado so that I can return their hospitality!
Too soon, the hour grew late and we decided to say goodnight so that we could let Steve get some sleep, since he actually has to get up and go to work all day tomorrow while the rest of us continue our vacation.
Tomorrow we’ll continue west toward the Texas panhandle and Amarillo.
Day 5: Claremore to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
14 September. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Executive summary: 8:45am start, 9pm finish, 169 miles. Claremore, Verdigris, Catoosa, Tulsa, Red Fork, Oakhurst, Bowden, Sapulpa, Kellyville, Stroud, Arcadia, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A varied day of vintage sights seen under rainy skies, emotionally powerful reminders of the impact of violence on our world, and the milk of humankindness among far-flung friends. Hearty, delicious meals, pictures of so many bridges that the rest of the group began teasing me about it, heartrending reflections on senseless violence... and a wonderful visit with friends.
[Note: We had no internet access at the luxury (not) digs at Claremore’s Will Rogers Downs & Casino, so apologies for the tardy postings. Love the comments; keep ‘em coming! :)]
14 September. Oklahoma City. Nearly midnight. I had read that in Oklahoma as nowhere else, art and architecture go hand in hand with folk history, down-home hospitality, and the sweetness of the green-on-red land, which today seemed to bear that out tenfold. The birthplace of old Route 66, Oklahoma – and its people – is well worth knowing. One of the guide books advised, "Take some time here. Let the people of Oklahoma get to know you, too." And that we would do, for sure.
We slept last night to the steady sound of rain on the roof of the camper. Not unpleasant – even cozy – but we woke to a cool, gray, drizzly morning, leaving me impatient to get on the road: I much preferred to get going to see things (even if it meant braving wet weather to do so) than to sit around a cold, soggy, gray, un-atmospheric campground.
None too soon, we were on our way. First up were the not-quite-twin bridges in Verdigris, immediately after Route 66 crossed over the McClellan-Kerr Navigation System, a 445-mile waterway linking Tulsa to the Gulf of Mexico (due to the navigation system, the tiny Port of Catoosa is billed as the furthest inland seaport in the United States!), next to an impressive railroad bridge. The "almost" twin bridges cross the former Verdigris River (now Bird Creek); the 1936 and 37 spans are respectively 24 and 28 feet wide, and are nicknamed Felix and Oscar by locals. Nearby, we tried to find a 1913 one-lane bridge along a detour on the old Ozark Trail, without success, though we drove back and forth past the Arrowood Trading post along it, so we decided it must have been updated. We did find the nearby blue whale, the grinning, concrete-cetacean star of a former swimming hole, now renovated as a park with swimming prohibited (although, had it been warmer, I might have been tempted to plunge off of its tail or slide down its chutes into the water).
Entering Tulsa, we stopped at an Oklahoma welcome center ostensibly to scoop up some Route 66 information, but wound up staying more than 30 minutes, after a tour busload of senior citizens arrived and inundated the single woman on duty manning the information desk. However, we did pick up some maps and brochures – as well as the unwelcome news that today’s planned breakfast destination was now closed. However, she recommended Talley’s Café at Yale; we followed her advice, and it turned out to be terrific: an authentic diner straight out of the 50s, in the heart of old Tulsa, where we had our biggest, best breakfast yet en route to paying a visit to The Golden Driller at the fairgrounds, a 76-foot tribute to Tulsa’s oil heritage (it was formerly the "Oil Capital of the World"). Driving through Tulsa, we admired its abundant art deco architecture, including the streamline-style Tulsa Monument Building east of Utica, the colorful terra cotta tiles of the Boston Avenue Church downtown, and the Blue Dome gas station on a pre-1932 segment at 2nd and Elgin that was worth a little extra trouble to find. Apparently it is such a Tulsa institution that the neighborhood around it is known as the "Blue Dome District."
Many remnants of gas stations, burger joints, Mom-and-Pop motels, and other now-defunct businesses littered our path today through Red Fork (where we saw Ollie’s Station Restaurant, decorated in a train motif), Oakhurst, Bowden (its Frankhoma Pottery shop not nearly as picturesque without the row of vintage cars featured in a photo book we had bought yesterday at Gay Parita), Sapulpa (giant Coke bottle and Happy Burger, the oldest hamburger stand in Sapulpa – since 1937 – a restored trolley car and caboose at the offices of the Tulsa-Sapulpa Union Railway Company on Dewey, and repainted "ghost signs" (old advertisements) on downtown walls), Kellyville (where Tom and I followed the Tank Farm Loop option which, though bumpy in places, was worth the drive, crossing a 1925 iron bridge with its red brick deck over Rock Creek, passing a defunct drive-in, and curving under a narrow railroad trestle), and Bellvue (featuring a building with two boats jutting from its front). We couldn’t find the giant penguin in Bristow, missed the turnoff for the DePew Loop, and decided to skip the "shoe tree loop" (figuring we didn’t need to see the tree into which lots of people have thrown shoes) and the rocky, gravelly, muddy Ozark Trail Option from Stroud – though we did see the famous Rock Café (an historic 1939 café built with original rock dug up for Route 66 construction) and Davenport’s Gar Wooly’s Food-n-Fun, decorated with old gas pumps and signs and the Old 1933 Texas Co. Station. The 1937 stone Armory in Chandler looked like an amazing building; it apparently is being renovated to become a Route 66 Interpretive Center. We wanted to see the bird-topped totem pole supposedly at Pioneer Camp near Wellston, but, finding the place long closed, with no sign of a totem, we nonetheless took the detour through little Wellston, deciding that our idea of "nice little downtown" differs slightly from that of our guidebook’s author.
The group started getting petulant today about the many photo-op stops, complaining that we’ve seen enough bridges, and starting to tease me when we drove over some nondescript bridge that maybe we should stop and take a picture. It does seem that at every turn we find another 19-teens or 1920's structure spanning some waterway or other, which probably back in the day was how it was determined where the roadbed would go. Many of them are incredibly picturesque and/or have some interesting story associated with them; however, at risk of sounding like Ronald Reagan, I do have to admit that they are all starting to look somewhat alike.
We finally reached Arcadia, after passing the ruins of the old Little Brothers Station, an historic marker about the Land Run of 1889, the Route 66 Rock of Ages Hay Farm, and the remains of an old stone service station that once was home to counterfeiters, then taking a mile-long detour that is on the National Register of Historic Places; the east portion is 1928 Portland Concrete; the west section (paved in 1929) is blacktop over concrete, with pristinely-preserved curbs. In Arcadia we easily found its centerpiece, a completely-restored 1898 round barn with a loft that can be rented for dances and events. I was impatient with Dad and Tom’s insistence on parking in the designated lot rather than just pulling off to the side of the road long enough for us to snap pictures and be on our way; however, we wound up lingering a good while longer than that, taking the time to talk to one of the volunteers who man the barn’s Route 66 tourist exhibit downstairs, and it was great. Today’s docent, who introduced himself as Mr. Sam, had a tiny waist, a huge smile, and dancing eyes; with his blue jeans, plaid shirt, and cowboy hat, he looked like a caricature from some old western, and at first we thought he must be a figurine – until he began moving and rapidly talking to us. He had endless lively tales to tell about his 82 years (to tell us how old he was, he gave us a riddle, explaining that he was born the year they stopped making the Model T and started making the Model A – Tom knew right away that that meant 1927). His ancestors participated in the Oklahoma Land Rush to stake the beautiful family farmland (he described it as the most beautiful farm in Oklahoma), his restoration of an old surrey, restoration of the round barn itself, and the surrounding local area and entire state of Oklahoma. Workers were busily replacing the cedar shake roof, an interesting process in itself. We passed on Pop’s, featuring countless flavors of soda (though I wondered whether they might have Coke with lime!), heading on into Oklahoma City.
Like Chicago and Los Angeles, Oklahoma City was not heavily influenced by Route 66, so there is comparatively little to experience in the way of strictly-Route-66-era businesses or attractions – but there was plenty for us to see, do, and experience here.
We diverted onto the interstate to whiz downtown; I was a little concerned about the group feeling rushed at the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum, which I felt should not be rushed but was worth any effort to see. Our timing wound up fine; we all were through the museum, unhurried and at our own pace, with time to spare before it closed. I had visited here in April 2007, finding it to be a powerful, epiphonic reminder that life is too short and too precious to spend it just marking time. (I could go on and on about that but won’t do so here – I’m being plenty long-winded enough.) Despite having been through the museum already, I found it just as profound this second time, struck all over again by many of the same personal stories, as well as new ones, from the young woman who happened to be in the building to get a Social Security card for her new baby, with her mother, baby, and other small child, all of whom were killed in the blast, while she was pinned under a beam and freed only by a through-the-knee amputation performed by a surgeon who used a makeshift pocketknife to perform the difficult surgery after twice being evacuated while trying to do so, due to safety concerns; or Julie Marie Welch, a young woman roughly my age who had traveled, had foreign-language skills, tried to help others, and was excited about her new job as a Social Security claims representative; or the 37-year-old nurse who came running from elsewhere, saved the lives of 3 bombing victims... but was struck in the head by falling debris and died four days later because of her heroic efforts. These and countless other stories struck just as deeply as they had during my first visit here – perhaps partly because of the awareness that there but for the grace of God go I (or any of us – many of the victims were present purely by chance, in the process of running mundane errands just after 9am that Wednesday morning): I worked in the federal building in Houston at the time, and it was pure chance that this one and not mine was selected by a nutcase for destruction. Looking at the exhibit of photos and personal items or symbols selected by family members of the 168 victims, I wondered (yes, somewhat morbidly) what photo and what items my family would have chosen to represent me had I been one of these lost. Most profoundly, though, I was again struck by the overwhelming outpouring of generosity and acts of kindness by everyone around: those who lost loved ones but returned to console other families still awaiting news in agony; those who anonymously washed and folded rescuers’ clothes while they were out working the site, or donated clothing, toiletries, or food for them and displaced victims; those who risked their very lives to try to save others; the rescue animals whose paws were cut and bloodied by their tireless efforts; the bottomless compassion exhibited by the people of Oklahoma City, themselves in deep morning, that came to be referred to as the "Oklahoma Standard." Literally from the ashes of inconceivable evil, kindness and compassion rose to win the day.
We strolled through the memorial park with its Gates of Time (one end reads 9:01; the other 9:03, reflecting the minutes before and after the bombing), the Field of Empty Chairs, the children’s gardens, the deceptively shallow and still reflecting pool, the fiercely-defiant, inspirational Survivor Tree, and the statue of Jesus, face in hands, mourning, labeled simply, "And Jesus Wept." We remembered and mourned the victims, the survivors, and the frustrated rescue workers, leaving feeling sobered but inspired.
I was keen for them all to see the monument at night, which we did a couple of hours later, appreciating the memorial anew with the different perspective that the darkness brought, bringing alive the floating empty chairs, the etched names appearing even more clearly in the dark, and the reflecting pool shining calmly through the night. The evening air had become a perfect temperature: mildly cool and absolutely comfortable, a light breeze moving in the deepening dark, not unlike that emotional night that I came here with old and new friends two and a half years ago, full of reflection after a weekend packed with intensity, action, and emotion.
To kill time before dark, we decided to do a little sightseeing and then have a nice dinner. We drove over to the Capitol with its new dome, approaching up Lincoln with its grand view, stopping to admire the sculptures and the Capitol’s own oil derrick in front, before swinging over to drive up 23rd Avenue a way, checking out the giant milk bottle on Classen, the gold Geodesic Dome of a former bank (recently saved from demolition), and the towering neon sign at the Tower Theatre on 23rd.
Uncertain where to eat, we decided to check out a place we saw called Cheever’s, in an art deco building that obviously had once been a florist. Inside, we found a charming local restaurant. The flower cooler had been converted into a wine cellar; the attached former residence housed several intimate dining rooms; and an art exhibit with complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres was in full swing in the bar area. We sat down, ordered dinner, and then Dad and I checked out the drinks, munchies, and pretty paintings before our meal came. All of us were thrilled with our meals, though we wound up stuffed to overflowing so that dessert was out of the question. Dad partook so freely of the wine at the art exhibit that he wound up a little tipsy, telling our poor, patient waitress the recipe for lemoncello whether she wanted to hear it or not.
While we were there, I received a call from my old friend Mark Bravo, a local celebrity, television personality, and all-around great guy whom I had met during my 2007 visit. I had been tardy in letting him know detailed dates (mostly because I didn’t know them myself) for our visit to his fair city, but had left a voice message earlier inquiring about recommendations (and a possible rendezvous) for dinner. He heartily approved our choice, telling me earnestly, "You did very well!" He knows the owners, Keith & Heather Paul (though they weren’t there this evening), and noted that it’s a place he would have highly recommended. He asked about our accommodations, and I mentioned that I had found us a campground on the way out of town. Bless his heart, he and his new wife, Leslie, invited us to come and spend the night at their place up in Edmond! The "adults" were reluctant to impose, but I was eager to see and catch up with Mark and to meet Leslie; besides, it’s always nicer to spend time with friends than at an impersonal hotel, motel, or campground, and I knew that they all would enjoy meeting one another, so I insisted we head up there for the night, calling to cancel our tentative reservation at a local campground. I’ll stay with friends over an impersonal institution – no matter how classy (I once cancelled a free night at the Amway Grand during an interview trip, choosing to drive an hour each way instead, to spend the time with my parents) – any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Mark and Leslie (who arrived shortly after we did, driving back after watching her son play high school football in Stillwell this evening) were great hosts, welcoming us warmly and settling all five of us in for the night in their beautiful home. This would be the first night since starting this trip that we would sleep in an actual building and on real beds (and couch, for me); how luxurious! I loved meeting Leslie and getting to know her a little; she seems a perfect match for Mark and an absolute sweetheart – one of those new-spouse-of-a-friend who makes you feel more and more happy for your friend the more you get to know them. She is a speech pathologist with 5 kids, and (forgetting the math) I was astonished to learn that she’s older than me. She and Mark attended the same high school but didn’t connect until the last decade; how sweet! They were just married this summer, in a traditional Jewish ceremony – chuppah and everything – right there in the house, and they make a great pair. He seems happier than ever and full of life, pleased with the results of his hip replacement (2 days after I last saw him, in May 2007), continuing to help out with broadcast work, coaching (notwithstanding his athletic expertise, I have no doubt that he’s a huge inspiration just through the exuberant enthusiasm inherent to his personality), and writing a book on momentum (I already can’t wait to read it!). Coincidentally, one of his athletes, out walking his dog with a friend, welcomed us to the neighborhood, admiring Tom’s car, and directed us to Mark’s house when he realized we were having trouble finding it in the dark). I’m so happy for them both, and I sincerely hope they’ll come visit Colorado; I think we’d have a great time hanging out together! I loved a sign in their downstairs bathroom, a translation beside an oriental Kanji script, "One dream can change your life." How true that is!
Mark and I plan to run in the morning at 7 and it’s nearly 2am now, so I’d better sign off. With a full belly and a comfortable setup, I imagine I’ll sleep like a rock tonight!
Executive summary: 8:45am start, 9pm finish, 169 miles. Claremore, Verdigris, Catoosa, Tulsa, Red Fork, Oakhurst, Bowden, Sapulpa, Kellyville, Stroud, Arcadia, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A varied day of vintage sights seen under rainy skies, emotionally powerful reminders of the impact of violence on our world, and the milk of humankindness among far-flung friends. Hearty, delicious meals, pictures of so many bridges that the rest of the group began teasing me about it, heartrending reflections on senseless violence... and a wonderful visit with friends.
[Note: We had no internet access at the luxury (not) digs at Claremore’s Will Rogers Downs & Casino, so apologies for the tardy postings. Love the comments; keep ‘em coming! :)]
14 September. Oklahoma City. Nearly midnight. I had read that in Oklahoma as nowhere else, art and architecture go hand in hand with folk history, down-home hospitality, and the sweetness of the green-on-red land, which today seemed to bear that out tenfold. The birthplace of old Route 66, Oklahoma – and its people – is well worth knowing. One of the guide books advised, "Take some time here. Let the people of Oklahoma get to know you, too." And that we would do, for sure.
We slept last night to the steady sound of rain on the roof of the camper. Not unpleasant – even cozy – but we woke to a cool, gray, drizzly morning, leaving me impatient to get on the road: I much preferred to get going to see things (even if it meant braving wet weather to do so) than to sit around a cold, soggy, gray, un-atmospheric campground.
None too soon, we were on our way. First up were the not-quite-twin bridges in Verdigris, immediately after Route 66 crossed over the McClellan-Kerr Navigation System, a 445-mile waterway linking Tulsa to the Gulf of Mexico (due to the navigation system, the tiny Port of Catoosa is billed as the furthest inland seaport in the United States!), next to an impressive railroad bridge. The "almost" twin bridges cross the former Verdigris River (now Bird Creek); the 1936 and 37 spans are respectively 24 and 28 feet wide, and are nicknamed Felix and Oscar by locals. Nearby, we tried to find a 1913 one-lane bridge along a detour on the old Ozark Trail, without success, though we drove back and forth past the Arrowood Trading post along it, so we decided it must have been updated. We did find the nearby blue whale, the grinning, concrete-cetacean star of a former swimming hole, now renovated as a park with swimming prohibited (although, had it been warmer, I might have been tempted to plunge off of its tail or slide down its chutes into the water).
Entering Tulsa, we stopped at an Oklahoma welcome center ostensibly to scoop up some Route 66 information, but wound up staying more than 30 minutes, after a tour busload of senior citizens arrived and inundated the single woman on duty manning the information desk. However, we did pick up some maps and brochures – as well as the unwelcome news that today’s planned breakfast destination was now closed. However, she recommended Talley’s Café at Yale; we followed her advice, and it turned out to be terrific: an authentic diner straight out of the 50s, in the heart of old Tulsa, where we had our biggest, best breakfast yet en route to paying a visit to The Golden Driller at the fairgrounds, a 76-foot tribute to Tulsa’s oil heritage (it was formerly the "Oil Capital of the World"). Driving through Tulsa, we admired its abundant art deco architecture, including the streamline-style Tulsa Monument Building east of Utica, the colorful terra cotta tiles of the Boston Avenue Church downtown, and the Blue Dome gas station on a pre-1932 segment at 2nd and Elgin that was worth a little extra trouble to find. Apparently it is such a Tulsa institution that the neighborhood around it is known as the "Blue Dome District."
Many remnants of gas stations, burger joints, Mom-and-Pop motels, and other now-defunct businesses littered our path today through Red Fork (where we saw Ollie’s Station Restaurant, decorated in a train motif), Oakhurst, Bowden (its Frankhoma Pottery shop not nearly as picturesque without the row of vintage cars featured in a photo book we had bought yesterday at Gay Parita), Sapulpa (giant Coke bottle and Happy Burger, the oldest hamburger stand in Sapulpa – since 1937 – a restored trolley car and caboose at the offices of the Tulsa-Sapulpa Union Railway Company on Dewey, and repainted "ghost signs" (old advertisements) on downtown walls), Kellyville (where Tom and I followed the Tank Farm Loop option which, though bumpy in places, was worth the drive, crossing a 1925 iron bridge with its red brick deck over Rock Creek, passing a defunct drive-in, and curving under a narrow railroad trestle), and Bellvue (featuring a building with two boats jutting from its front). We couldn’t find the giant penguin in Bristow, missed the turnoff for the DePew Loop, and decided to skip the "shoe tree loop" (figuring we didn’t need to see the tree into which lots of people have thrown shoes) and the rocky, gravelly, muddy Ozark Trail Option from Stroud – though we did see the famous Rock Café (an historic 1939 café built with original rock dug up for Route 66 construction) and Davenport’s Gar Wooly’s Food-n-Fun, decorated with old gas pumps and signs and the Old 1933 Texas Co. Station. The 1937 stone Armory in Chandler looked like an amazing building; it apparently is being renovated to become a Route 66 Interpretive Center. We wanted to see the bird-topped totem pole supposedly at Pioneer Camp near Wellston, but, finding the place long closed, with no sign of a totem, we nonetheless took the detour through little Wellston, deciding that our idea of "nice little downtown" differs slightly from that of our guidebook’s author.
The group started getting petulant today about the many photo-op stops, complaining that we’ve seen enough bridges, and starting to tease me when we drove over some nondescript bridge that maybe we should stop and take a picture. It does seem that at every turn we find another 19-teens or 1920's structure spanning some waterway or other, which probably back in the day was how it was determined where the roadbed would go. Many of them are incredibly picturesque and/or have some interesting story associated with them; however, at risk of sounding like Ronald Reagan, I do have to admit that they are all starting to look somewhat alike.
We finally reached Arcadia, after passing the ruins of the old Little Brothers Station, an historic marker about the Land Run of 1889, the Route 66 Rock of Ages Hay Farm, and the remains of an old stone service station that once was home to counterfeiters, then taking a mile-long detour that is on the National Register of Historic Places; the east portion is 1928 Portland Concrete; the west section (paved in 1929) is blacktop over concrete, with pristinely-preserved curbs. In Arcadia we easily found its centerpiece, a completely-restored 1898 round barn with a loft that can be rented for dances and events. I was impatient with Dad and Tom’s insistence on parking in the designated lot rather than just pulling off to the side of the road long enough for us to snap pictures and be on our way; however, we wound up lingering a good while longer than that, taking the time to talk to one of the volunteers who man the barn’s Route 66 tourist exhibit downstairs, and it was great. Today’s docent, who introduced himself as Mr. Sam, had a tiny waist, a huge smile, and dancing eyes; with his blue jeans, plaid shirt, and cowboy hat, he looked like a caricature from some old western, and at first we thought he must be a figurine – until he began moving and rapidly talking to us. He had endless lively tales to tell about his 82 years (to tell us how old he was, he gave us a riddle, explaining that he was born the year they stopped making the Model T and started making the Model A – Tom knew right away that that meant 1927). His ancestors participated in the Oklahoma Land Rush to stake the beautiful family farmland (he described it as the most beautiful farm in Oklahoma), his restoration of an old surrey, restoration of the round barn itself, and the surrounding local area and entire state of Oklahoma. Workers were busily replacing the cedar shake roof, an interesting process in itself. We passed on Pop’s, featuring countless flavors of soda (though I wondered whether they might have Coke with lime!), heading on into Oklahoma City.
Like Chicago and Los Angeles, Oklahoma City was not heavily influenced by Route 66, so there is comparatively little to experience in the way of strictly-Route-66-era businesses or attractions – but there was plenty for us to see, do, and experience here.
We diverted onto the interstate to whiz downtown; I was a little concerned about the group feeling rushed at the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum, which I felt should not be rushed but was worth any effort to see. Our timing wound up fine; we all were through the museum, unhurried and at our own pace, with time to spare before it closed. I had visited here in April 2007, finding it to be a powerful, epiphonic reminder that life is too short and too precious to spend it just marking time. (I could go on and on about that but won’t do so here – I’m being plenty long-winded enough.) Despite having been through the museum already, I found it just as profound this second time, struck all over again by many of the same personal stories, as well as new ones, from the young woman who happened to be in the building to get a Social Security card for her new baby, with her mother, baby, and other small child, all of whom were killed in the blast, while she was pinned under a beam and freed only by a through-the-knee amputation performed by a surgeon who used a makeshift pocketknife to perform the difficult surgery after twice being evacuated while trying to do so, due to safety concerns; or Julie Marie Welch, a young woman roughly my age who had traveled, had foreign-language skills, tried to help others, and was excited about her new job as a Social Security claims representative; or the 37-year-old nurse who came running from elsewhere, saved the lives of 3 bombing victims... but was struck in the head by falling debris and died four days later because of her heroic efforts. These and countless other stories struck just as deeply as they had during my first visit here – perhaps partly because of the awareness that there but for the grace of God go I (or any of us – many of the victims were present purely by chance, in the process of running mundane errands just after 9am that Wednesday morning): I worked in the federal building in Houston at the time, and it was pure chance that this one and not mine was selected by a nutcase for destruction. Looking at the exhibit of photos and personal items or symbols selected by family members of the 168 victims, I wondered (yes, somewhat morbidly) what photo and what items my family would have chosen to represent me had I been one of these lost. Most profoundly, though, I was again struck by the overwhelming outpouring of generosity and acts of kindness by everyone around: those who lost loved ones but returned to console other families still awaiting news in agony; those who anonymously washed and folded rescuers’ clothes while they were out working the site, or donated clothing, toiletries, or food for them and displaced victims; those who risked their very lives to try to save others; the rescue animals whose paws were cut and bloodied by their tireless efforts; the bottomless compassion exhibited by the people of Oklahoma City, themselves in deep morning, that came to be referred to as the "Oklahoma Standard." Literally from the ashes of inconceivable evil, kindness and compassion rose to win the day.
We strolled through the memorial park with its Gates of Time (one end reads 9:01; the other 9:03, reflecting the minutes before and after the bombing), the Field of Empty Chairs, the children’s gardens, the deceptively shallow and still reflecting pool, the fiercely-defiant, inspirational Survivor Tree, and the statue of Jesus, face in hands, mourning, labeled simply, "And Jesus Wept." We remembered and mourned the victims, the survivors, and the frustrated rescue workers, leaving feeling sobered but inspired.
I was keen for them all to see the monument at night, which we did a couple of hours later, appreciating the memorial anew with the different perspective that the darkness brought, bringing alive the floating empty chairs, the etched names appearing even more clearly in the dark, and the reflecting pool shining calmly through the night. The evening air had become a perfect temperature: mildly cool and absolutely comfortable, a light breeze moving in the deepening dark, not unlike that emotional night that I came here with old and new friends two and a half years ago, full of reflection after a weekend packed with intensity, action, and emotion.
To kill time before dark, we decided to do a little sightseeing and then have a nice dinner. We drove over to the Capitol with its new dome, approaching up Lincoln with its grand view, stopping to admire the sculptures and the Capitol’s own oil derrick in front, before swinging over to drive up 23rd Avenue a way, checking out the giant milk bottle on Classen, the gold Geodesic Dome of a former bank (recently saved from demolition), and the towering neon sign at the Tower Theatre on 23rd.
Uncertain where to eat, we decided to check out a place we saw called Cheever’s, in an art deco building that obviously had once been a florist. Inside, we found a charming local restaurant. The flower cooler had been converted into a wine cellar; the attached former residence housed several intimate dining rooms; and an art exhibit with complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres was in full swing in the bar area. We sat down, ordered dinner, and then Dad and I checked out the drinks, munchies, and pretty paintings before our meal came. All of us were thrilled with our meals, though we wound up stuffed to overflowing so that dessert was out of the question. Dad partook so freely of the wine at the art exhibit that he wound up a little tipsy, telling our poor, patient waitress the recipe for lemoncello whether she wanted to hear it or not.
While we were there, I received a call from my old friend Mark Bravo, a local celebrity, television personality, and all-around great guy whom I had met during my 2007 visit. I had been tardy in letting him know detailed dates (mostly because I didn’t know them myself) for our visit to his fair city, but had left a voice message earlier inquiring about recommendations (and a possible rendezvous) for dinner. He heartily approved our choice, telling me earnestly, "You did very well!" He knows the owners, Keith & Heather Paul (though they weren’t there this evening), and noted that it’s a place he would have highly recommended. He asked about our accommodations, and I mentioned that I had found us a campground on the way out of town. Bless his heart, he and his new wife, Leslie, invited us to come and spend the night at their place up in Edmond! The "adults" were reluctant to impose, but I was eager to see and catch up with Mark and to meet Leslie; besides, it’s always nicer to spend time with friends than at an impersonal hotel, motel, or campground, and I knew that they all would enjoy meeting one another, so I insisted we head up there for the night, calling to cancel our tentative reservation at a local campground. I’ll stay with friends over an impersonal institution – no matter how classy (I once cancelled a free night at the Amway Grand during an interview trip, choosing to drive an hour each way instead, to spend the time with my parents) – any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Mark and Leslie (who arrived shortly after we did, driving back after watching her son play high school football in Stillwell this evening) were great hosts, welcoming us warmly and settling all five of us in for the night in their beautiful home. This would be the first night since starting this trip that we would sleep in an actual building and on real beds (and couch, for me); how luxurious! I loved meeting Leslie and getting to know her a little; she seems a perfect match for Mark and an absolute sweetheart – one of those new-spouse-of-a-friend who makes you feel more and more happy for your friend the more you get to know them. She is a speech pathologist with 5 kids, and (forgetting the math) I was astonished to learn that she’s older than me. She and Mark attended the same high school but didn’t connect until the last decade; how sweet! They were just married this summer, in a traditional Jewish ceremony – chuppah and everything – right there in the house, and they make a great pair. He seems happier than ever and full of life, pleased with the results of his hip replacement (2 days after I last saw him, in May 2007), continuing to help out with broadcast work, coaching (notwithstanding his athletic expertise, I have no doubt that he’s a huge inspiration just through the exuberant enthusiasm inherent to his personality), and writing a book on momentum (I already can’t wait to read it!). Coincidentally, one of his athletes, out walking his dog with a friend, welcomed us to the neighborhood, admiring Tom’s car, and directed us to Mark’s house when he realized we were having trouble finding it in the dark). I’m so happy for them both, and I sincerely hope they’ll come visit Colorado; I think we’d have a great time hanging out together! I loved a sign in their downstairs bathroom, a translation beside an oriental Kanji script, "One dream can change your life." How true that is!
Mark and I plan to run in the morning at 7 and it’s nearly 2am now, so I’d better sign off. With a full belly and a comfortable setup, I imagine I’ll sleep like a rock tonight!
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.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Day 3: Eureka to Springfield, Missouri
Springfield, Missouri. 11pm, and we’re all snuggled into the camper at a KOA Kampground just west of Springfield, Missouri after another long and busy, but interesting day. Today’s stats: 8am start, 8pm finish, 234 miles (pretty good, considering our 2-hour stop at Meramac Caverns, an hour for church in Marshfield, and other assorted adventures and detours along the way). Apologies if these daily summaries are too long-winded; if they’re boring, you can just stop here for now – but most of you already know I’m not much one for brevity.
Our day again began with some suspense and some disappointment. First, leaving the campground, the Skyliner balked, refusing to shift into gear (just like the "Green Hornet" back in the Springs!) The problem turned out to be low transmission fluid – but Tom was prepared with a reserve jug, and we were on our way in no time. Next came our breakfast debaucle: we had been excited to have breakfast at the Red Cedar Inn praised by the guidebooks as a longstanding Route 66 institution "with flavorful cookin’ and Ozark-friendly service, all under the original family’s careful management"; however, sadly, its web site informed us that its owners have put it up for sale. Plan B was to seek out the Diamond Café in Gray Summit, so named for the shape of the original building. Although the business has moved and changed names, we decided to track it down, and entered its current name, the Tri County Restaurant, into the GPS, which guided us straight and sure to... somebody’s house. Wah wah wah... Going with Plan C, we headed in to St. Clair and found the Lewis Café on South Main Street, which turned out to serve up hearty breakfasts quickly (for the first time yet on this trip). Not having planned to stop there, we asked the friendly waitstaff to tell us about their town, and they seemed a little stumped beyond its hot and cold water towers. We were all hilariously amused when one came back to report that she had been asking around, and nobody could think of anything special about their town. That got us to musing that many people probably would be in the same boat: when asked about the most unique or special characteristic of one’s hometown, or the one thing for which it is known, what would we respond? I imagine there are plenty of us who would be hard-pressed to put our finger on that one magical thing; for most of us, home is special because it’s home; because of the people, the shared experiences and memories; or because it’s just a great place to live or raise a family.
Anyway, we checked out (and of course snapped pictures of!) the hot & cold water towers on our way out of town en route to Stanton, home of the famous Meramac Caverns that have been aggressively advertised all along Route 66 since its inception. Apparently locals like to joke that if champion roadside entrepreneur Lester Dill hadn’t discovered the caverns, he would have dug them himself. The place was kitschy and the tour script probably hasn’t changed since the 1930s – Dad filled us in later on the correct explanation of a Foucault pendulum, of which there are only 16 in the world including the original in Paris – but it was worth the stop, from the story of how Jesse James and his brother hid out in, and escaped from, the caverns by using its underground waterways to their advantage, to the one about scenes from Lassie and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and an episode of People are Funny (the Honeymoon Suite) having been filmed there, to the "theater," containing the caverns’ oldest (75 million years) and largest (73 feet tall and I-don’t-remember-how thick and wide) formation, where Kate Smith once stood and sang her signature song, God Bless America, a recording of which the guide played to a light show as the finale of the hour-and-20-minute tour. The formations were numerous and spectacular in all 7 levels, with amazingly clear water, safely scored walkways, and plenty of fun lighting effects. I was impressed to see that they offer free kenneling for pets, mindful of the heat suffered in cars baking in the sun outside the cool caverns.
Today we traversed Bourbon (the water tower of which has delighted tourists for years), Cuba (where we stopped to photograph the vintage Wagon Wheel Motel), Rolla (where we found the giant fiberglass A&W Hamburger Family, all handling giant fiberglass burgers, though only the father still hoists his frosty mug – and the entire family had been relocated from a downtown building to a container car along the I-44 frontage road).
This day’s drive took us along smooth blacktop, most of which closely paralleled Interstate 44. The foliage and topography reminded me most of the midwest, or on toward New England, with rolling hills, forests, and fields; plenty of green and interesting scenery, by contrast with yesterday’s unbroken flat farmland. Route 66 through the Ozarks (which, we learned, is a contraction of the French name Aux Arc) wound over and around gently-rolling hills, through forests and fields, across rivers and through rocky cuts, never far from the straight-shooting interstate. Some of it was 4-lane still with original curbing intact, and we crossed several still-majestic bridges built in the early 1920s, like the one at Devils Elbow, just beyond the 90-foot Hooker Cut that once was the deepest road cut in Missouri. In the afternoon, hankering for an ice cream treat and figuring we would just roll up at a random local ice cream parlor in the next town, we were out of luck, passing through lonely town after deserted former town, one after another, sporting boarded-up businesses, the dilapidated despair of abandoned homes, or the lonely emptiness of grassy patches growing up through concrete that once had been the foundation of one home or business or another along the once-thriving Route 66. All of this really hit home the essence of what has happened to so many of the families, businesses, and entire communities along what was once a major thoroughfare, where many family fortunes just dried up and blew away like so much refuse along the interstate roaring past less than a mile away.
I was especially touched by the story of ill-fated Arlington, on the banks of the Little Piney River at the end of an access road north of I-44 and west of Exit 176. There, stranded on a dead end are the abandoned remnants of John’s Modern Cabins and lonely Vernell’s Motel. According to the guidebooks, this gem of a resort site was cut off by earlier relocations of US 66, then by I-44, and then further isolated by the realignment of I-44 – from which we could still see the little berg, standing forlornly on a hilltop overlooking a sweeping panoramic view of a beautiful valley spreading out below rolling green hills along a gently winding river. It was easy – and heartbreaking – to imagine the hopes and dreams that must have ridden exuberantly in the minds of those who originally built up the area, with good reason: it’s an idyllic setting in fairytale-like surroundings – and how could they have known then the multiple cruel blows that fate would strike in re-routing their access roads and their livelihood not once, not twice, but several times over?
You had to sympathize with such folks, and it was hard not to feel mildly resentful toward the trappings of civilization that we all embrace as progress – like straight, safe, fast roads, for instance. When our minds and appetites turned toward ice cream right around the time we passed a Dairy Queen, I disdainfully swore it off as a chain place, to be avoided... but we were about to be reminded of exactly why such chains succeed: supply, demand, and the ability to have those match. We had just left the Devil’s Elbow area farther along the Piney River, and I felt certain that we would find a charming spot for our afternoon snack in one of the approaching bergs. I was picturing a soda fountain, a granite counter and silver-spoked stools, and maybe even a jukebox. Not so. Hopefully we approached – and left – Waynesville (with its big boulder sticking out of a hillside painted like a giant green frog or turtle, and gas-station-cum-nursery cleverly named "Every Blooming Thing"), Buckhorn with its giant bowling pin, Laquey (whose general store – or even its remnants – we couldn’t locate), Hazelgreen (featuring a few houses on stilts and a little church perched on the edge of a steep drop, shortly before one of the 1923 bridges, this one carrying Route 66 across the Gasconade River), and on to Lebanon. Touted as one of the guidebook author’s "homes away from home," boasting the famous 1946 Munger Moss Motel, Wrinks Mart, Bell Restaurant, and a new Route 66 Museum, we just knew we would find a delicious diner serving frozen desserts there... but no! When we stopped at two of those institutions to ask where we might find ice cream locally, we were directed by both to a strip off the interstate business loop, where we could find DQ, Arby’s, etc. – when I asked whether there were any local places that served ice cream, I was flatly told no. So we eventually wound up at a Dairy Queen, lamenting the astonishing lack of local flavor... But at the same time forced to acknowledge that it must be difficult, if not impossible, for mom-and-pop businesses to compete with giant fast-food chains. We, as if symbolic of what has happened to the communities along the Mother Road in the heartland bypassed by fast-paced, mainstream America, were forced into the conformity of fast-food chains in order to enjoy the simple pleasure of ice cream on a hot afternoon.
In the meantime, we wound our way through Phillipsburg, past the now-defunct Niangua Junction Store, over a small green-girder bridge over the Niangua River just after a former cottage-style gas station, and on to Marshfield, in which we were keen to see the quarter-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope. We found it prominently displayed in the town square adjacent to the courthouse in Dr. Edwin Hubble’s hometown. After admiring and photographing it, we decided to check on whether there might be a Saturday evening service at a local Catholic church, and we were in luck: God (and Garmin) led us to Holy Trinity Catholic Church, just a few blocks off the town square, where mass would begin at 5:30. (It was then 5:15). Perfect! We were all a bit bedragged from the road, but figured God wouldn’t mind, and the people at the little parish seemed friendly and welcoming (including the new priest, who was saying what may have been his first mass there, announcing a parish picnic and his own installation scheduled for tomorrow afternoon)... although we were surprised and amused reflecting over the announcement that "during this flu season, we are recognizing a reverent bow" during the Kiss of Peace (and, of course, no wine at communion). Interesting – and surprisingly progressive – that the church is paying heed to biology; I can recall being taught that we didn’t have to worry about germs at church (in the context of us as children wondering and worrying about the spread of germs through the communal chalice). Apparently the swine flu is cause for further reflection; probably a wise thing.
From Marshfield we made our way to Strafford, in which a Route 66 festival was in full swing this weekend – it appeared slightly more busy than Atlanta’s fall festival yesterday – but we decided to press on to Springfield, calling ahead for reservations at a KOA Kampground.
Uncle Tom specifically muttered something when it happened about not wanting this next part all over the internet, so this part might get cut during our group editing in the morning – but it definitely bears mention at least for my private journal. Less than a mile from the campground, we received a walkie-talkie call that the Skyliner had run out of gas. Tom urged us to go ahead and check in at the campground before coming back for him and Don, so we obliged (although this was when our last shouting incident of the day occurred – see below). Leaving an irate Dad to set up the camper with Mom, I gunned the pickup back to meet the uncles, who had already engaged in great self-help: Don had set out on foot, and as it turned out, he spotted an open garage, walking over to which he found a guy willing to help us out. The kindly guy filled a big gas jug for us and would have sent us on our way with it full of gas; he wasn’t asking for anything in return, but Tom gladly handed him a $20, and we came back to return his gas jug and so that he could admire the Skyliner, which he had said he’d love to do. He seemed genuinely in awe (and in the know, a self-proclaimed "Ford fanatic"), picking up his 5-year-old son to show him its engine, about which he seemed amazingly knowledgeable. He introduced himself as Kevin Barrett, having just started his shoestring business (Barrett’s Garage) 8 months ago.
Whatever circumstances prompted him to start a business in this time of economic crisis – and whatever determination enabled him to make it a success so far – must be some of the "lingering endurance" used by the guidebooks to describe the Missourian people; something handed down from Pony Express riders and the redoubtable Lindbergh. Our book contained an interesting description of the Missourians’ sense of humor, allowing a state with heavy interests in manufacturing, shipping, and the aerospace industry to declare with a straight face that it is also a world leader in the production of corncob pipes.
We perhaps saw a little of that dry sense of humor (or was it resigned stoicism?) in some side entertainment while Kevin Barrett was generously helping us. A couple of teenagers were busily lighting off fireworks, nearly right under, and certainly pointing at, the cars. Don said that when he first had walked up, they were doing it inside the garage where Kevin was transferring gasoline from one tank to another, which made Don a little nervous when he was asked to participate in that process. When they were shooed outside, the teenagers continued lighting off their fireworks just outside the building next to, pointed at, and almost right underneath our vehicles at times. We were alarmed as we nervously observed the sparks and shooting fireworks in such close proximity to the cars and open gasoline – and these kids barely paused between the succession of fireworks – but Kevin merely shrugged, "Ah, teenagers." And while the fuel transfer was going on (he nearly filled a 5-gallon jug for us), a little boy came running up and told him excitedly, "The stove’s on fire!" I thought at first he must be playing a game, as Kevin nodded as if in explanation, "My 5-year-old" – but he didn’t seem amused, quickly handing the gas siphon over to Tom and Don, hurriedly asking if they could take over and taking off sprinting over to the adjacent house. I followed him a little way out into the yard, half-watching for flames in the windows. A few moments later he returned, explaining casually, "Ah, just a grease fire." He apparently is accustomed to putting out fires – literally – and our little emergency seemed not to phase him in the least. We all wished him well and thanked him profusely before returning to the campground. He has the right attitude: although Tom wound up paying him, he clearly hadn’t helped us out with any expectation of payment, instead doing so simply because helping out passing travelers in trouble was the right thing to do, and that’s how he rolls. What a nice guy!!
For the most part we have so far been pleasantly surprised by the signage helping us find our way along the sometimes disjointed segments of the old Route 66. We did encounter some difficulty in following the guidebook directions to one of today’s attractions, which at one point led us off on a series of wild-goose-chase tangents that could easily have been avoided by the use of a correct preposition, or the simple addition of some indication – any indication – of distance (for instance, some hint as to whether "along here" meant "20 feet from" the just-listed sight, or another 5 miles). So we went on a merry chase seeking out an ornate rock arch gateway honoring the Trail of Tears (the forced migration of the Cherokees). We very nearly created our own trail of tears of a different sort, with all the consternation and frustration attendant on trying to follow the poorly-written directions (I had to take serious issue with the grammar used by the guidebook author). We wound up exploring quite a bit of (incidentally beautiful) countryside between Jerome and the Little Piney Creek River between it and Arlington, much to no one’s amusement: after several of these fruitless expeditions over gravel roads, Mom, Dad, and I rejoined the Skyliner to find Tom and Don standing beside it. Don had his hand on his hip in an expression of impatience, and Tom’s (probably only half-joking) comment was, "Lori, the next time you decide to turn off like that, just let me know and I’ll find a biker bar to sit down and have a beer while you go." Things were far more heated inside the truck, where Dad swore at me and I yelled back; good times. Miraculously, we did eventually find it, hidden away in some trees almost adjacent to (though buried in foliage behind) a few falling-down cabins that are all that remain of the Stony Dell Resort a couple of miles west of Jerome, barely half a mile along the frontage road east from Exit 172 (past which we had driven almost immediately after exiting the highway from a short stretch on which Route 66 shares the interstate pavement).
Our nerves frazzled and frayed thin after that episode, we had more to come later, with plenty of family frustration expressed loudly and angrily between Dad and me. We laughed about it later when we repeated the tale to Tom and Don, with all of them insisting that I need to remember that I’m traveling with senior citizens: apparently they don’t appreciate, nor respond well to, someone sitting next to them urgently gesturing and shouting commands like, "Stop now!" and then becoming exasperated while whizzing past Rosati’s remaining roadside grape stands (I pouted over missing them as if they were the top and only attraction along the entire length of Route 66... Marilyn, does that bring back memories of "the good old days" of our roadtrip through Germany and Scandinavia – particularly Skagen?!), or "Turn left here!" (this caused us to come to a complete stop in the campground) or "Just pull over and stop right here!" (which, when Dad thought better than to pull up next to a barful of bikers, led to his stopping the whole rig right in the middle of the road at the end of the bridge at the Devils Elbow, probably causing some anxiety in an oncoming driver who may have worried about a head-on collision as he exited the bridge) and expecting an immediate reaction. After hearing all that, Tom and Don tactfully invited me to drive with them tomorrow. In the meantime, we all had a good laugh about it over wine and Route 66 root beer (we finally found some, in the KOA Kamp store; yay!).
Once the wine was flowing and tongues loosened, it was fun to listen to Dad, Tom, and Don reminisce about long-ago days back home in Stephen, remembering with some amusement Grandpa’s antics going out with Fr. Beaver from the church in town (the two of them apparently had a good time together, including one two-week stint visiting all of Fr. Beaver’s priest friends in the Dakotas), and his annual homemade holiday Everclear marachino cherry punch mix (the goal was to get the cherries that had marinated in the Everclear for a week beforehand – which required drinking a lot of Everclear first). They tossed out the idea of an annual Stich brothers’ outing, though that idea might not sound appealing right now to their wives. Poor Dianne had a long day today; she’s in the process of moving her Dad to a home, and not overly amused or enthused about Don skipping out of town while that’s happening. She seemed to blame Tom for luring Don away, and Dad and I thought it was fine that Tom was in trouble and not us. :)
Another evening of cheese, crackers, wine, and other assorted munchies before bedtime, and showers all around (the campground restrooms were gorgeous, putting some residential ones to shame, with immaculate tiling and even a beauty-salon-style hair dryer with a comfortable-looking chair!), so we’ll all feel fresh in the morning for what’s sure to be another great day on the Mother Road.
Our day again began with some suspense and some disappointment. First, leaving the campground, the Skyliner balked, refusing to shift into gear (just like the "Green Hornet" back in the Springs!) The problem turned out to be low transmission fluid – but Tom was prepared with a reserve jug, and we were on our way in no time. Next came our breakfast debaucle: we had been excited to have breakfast at the Red Cedar Inn praised by the guidebooks as a longstanding Route 66 institution "with flavorful cookin’ and Ozark-friendly service, all under the original family’s careful management"; however, sadly, its web site informed us that its owners have put it up for sale. Plan B was to seek out the Diamond Café in Gray Summit, so named for the shape of the original building. Although the business has moved and changed names, we decided to track it down, and entered its current name, the Tri County Restaurant, into the GPS, which guided us straight and sure to... somebody’s house. Wah wah wah... Going with Plan C, we headed in to St. Clair and found the Lewis Café on South Main Street, which turned out to serve up hearty breakfasts quickly (for the first time yet on this trip). Not having planned to stop there, we asked the friendly waitstaff to tell us about their town, and they seemed a little stumped beyond its hot and cold water towers. We were all hilariously amused when one came back to report that she had been asking around, and nobody could think of anything special about their town. That got us to musing that many people probably would be in the same boat: when asked about the most unique or special characteristic of one’s hometown, or the one thing for which it is known, what would we respond? I imagine there are plenty of us who would be hard-pressed to put our finger on that one magical thing; for most of us, home is special because it’s home; because of the people, the shared experiences and memories; or because it’s just a great place to live or raise a family.
Anyway, we checked out (and of course snapped pictures of!) the hot & cold water towers on our way out of town en route to Stanton, home of the famous Meramac Caverns that have been aggressively advertised all along Route 66 since its inception. Apparently locals like to joke that if champion roadside entrepreneur Lester Dill hadn’t discovered the caverns, he would have dug them himself. The place was kitschy and the tour script probably hasn’t changed since the 1930s – Dad filled us in later on the correct explanation of a Foucault pendulum, of which there are only 16 in the world including the original in Paris – but it was worth the stop, from the story of how Jesse James and his brother hid out in, and escaped from, the caverns by using its underground waterways to their advantage, to the one about scenes from Lassie and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and an episode of People are Funny (the Honeymoon Suite) having been filmed there, to the "theater," containing the caverns’ oldest (75 million years) and largest (73 feet tall and I-don’t-remember-how thick and wide) formation, where Kate Smith once stood and sang her signature song, God Bless America, a recording of which the guide played to a light show as the finale of the hour-and-20-minute tour. The formations were numerous and spectacular in all 7 levels, with amazingly clear water, safely scored walkways, and plenty of fun lighting effects. I was impressed to see that they offer free kenneling for pets, mindful of the heat suffered in cars baking in the sun outside the cool caverns.
Today we traversed Bourbon (the water tower of which has delighted tourists for years), Cuba (where we stopped to photograph the vintage Wagon Wheel Motel), Rolla (where we found the giant fiberglass A&W Hamburger Family, all handling giant fiberglass burgers, though only the father still hoists his frosty mug – and the entire family had been relocated from a downtown building to a container car along the I-44 frontage road).
This day’s drive took us along smooth blacktop, most of which closely paralleled Interstate 44. The foliage and topography reminded me most of the midwest, or on toward New England, with rolling hills, forests, and fields; plenty of green and interesting scenery, by contrast with yesterday’s unbroken flat farmland. Route 66 through the Ozarks (which, we learned, is a contraction of the French name Aux Arc) wound over and around gently-rolling hills, through forests and fields, across rivers and through rocky cuts, never far from the straight-shooting interstate. Some of it was 4-lane still with original curbing intact, and we crossed several still-majestic bridges built in the early 1920s, like the one at Devils Elbow, just beyond the 90-foot Hooker Cut that once was the deepest road cut in Missouri. In the afternoon, hankering for an ice cream treat and figuring we would just roll up at a random local ice cream parlor in the next town, we were out of luck, passing through lonely town after deserted former town, one after another, sporting boarded-up businesses, the dilapidated despair of abandoned homes, or the lonely emptiness of grassy patches growing up through concrete that once had been the foundation of one home or business or another along the once-thriving Route 66. All of this really hit home the essence of what has happened to so many of the families, businesses, and entire communities along what was once a major thoroughfare, where many family fortunes just dried up and blew away like so much refuse along the interstate roaring past less than a mile away.
I was especially touched by the story of ill-fated Arlington, on the banks of the Little Piney River at the end of an access road north of I-44 and west of Exit 176. There, stranded on a dead end are the abandoned remnants of John’s Modern Cabins and lonely Vernell’s Motel. According to the guidebooks, this gem of a resort site was cut off by earlier relocations of US 66, then by I-44, and then further isolated by the realignment of I-44 – from which we could still see the little berg, standing forlornly on a hilltop overlooking a sweeping panoramic view of a beautiful valley spreading out below rolling green hills along a gently winding river. It was easy – and heartbreaking – to imagine the hopes and dreams that must have ridden exuberantly in the minds of those who originally built up the area, with good reason: it’s an idyllic setting in fairytale-like surroundings – and how could they have known then the multiple cruel blows that fate would strike in re-routing their access roads and their livelihood not once, not twice, but several times over?
You had to sympathize with such folks, and it was hard not to feel mildly resentful toward the trappings of civilization that we all embrace as progress – like straight, safe, fast roads, for instance. When our minds and appetites turned toward ice cream right around the time we passed a Dairy Queen, I disdainfully swore it off as a chain place, to be avoided... but we were about to be reminded of exactly why such chains succeed: supply, demand, and the ability to have those match. We had just left the Devil’s Elbow area farther along the Piney River, and I felt certain that we would find a charming spot for our afternoon snack in one of the approaching bergs. I was picturing a soda fountain, a granite counter and silver-spoked stools, and maybe even a jukebox. Not so. Hopefully we approached – and left – Waynesville (with its big boulder sticking out of a hillside painted like a giant green frog or turtle, and gas-station-cum-nursery cleverly named "Every Blooming Thing"), Buckhorn with its giant bowling pin, Laquey (whose general store – or even its remnants – we couldn’t locate), Hazelgreen (featuring a few houses on stilts and a little church perched on the edge of a steep drop, shortly before one of the 1923 bridges, this one carrying Route 66 across the Gasconade River), and on to Lebanon. Touted as one of the guidebook author’s "homes away from home," boasting the famous 1946 Munger Moss Motel, Wrinks Mart, Bell Restaurant, and a new Route 66 Museum, we just knew we would find a delicious diner serving frozen desserts there... but no! When we stopped at two of those institutions to ask where we might find ice cream locally, we were directed by both to a strip off the interstate business loop, where we could find DQ, Arby’s, etc. – when I asked whether there were any local places that served ice cream, I was flatly told no. So we eventually wound up at a Dairy Queen, lamenting the astonishing lack of local flavor... But at the same time forced to acknowledge that it must be difficult, if not impossible, for mom-and-pop businesses to compete with giant fast-food chains. We, as if symbolic of what has happened to the communities along the Mother Road in the heartland bypassed by fast-paced, mainstream America, were forced into the conformity of fast-food chains in order to enjoy the simple pleasure of ice cream on a hot afternoon.
In the meantime, we wound our way through Phillipsburg, past the now-defunct Niangua Junction Store, over a small green-girder bridge over the Niangua River just after a former cottage-style gas station, and on to Marshfield, in which we were keen to see the quarter-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope. We found it prominently displayed in the town square adjacent to the courthouse in Dr. Edwin Hubble’s hometown. After admiring and photographing it, we decided to check on whether there might be a Saturday evening service at a local Catholic church, and we were in luck: God (and Garmin) led us to Holy Trinity Catholic Church, just a few blocks off the town square, where mass would begin at 5:30. (It was then 5:15). Perfect! We were all a bit bedragged from the road, but figured God wouldn’t mind, and the people at the little parish seemed friendly and welcoming (including the new priest, who was saying what may have been his first mass there, announcing a parish picnic and his own installation scheduled for tomorrow afternoon)... although we were surprised and amused reflecting over the announcement that "during this flu season, we are recognizing a reverent bow" during the Kiss of Peace (and, of course, no wine at communion). Interesting – and surprisingly progressive – that the church is paying heed to biology; I can recall being taught that we didn’t have to worry about germs at church (in the context of us as children wondering and worrying about the spread of germs through the communal chalice). Apparently the swine flu is cause for further reflection; probably a wise thing.
From Marshfield we made our way to Strafford, in which a Route 66 festival was in full swing this weekend – it appeared slightly more busy than Atlanta’s fall festival yesterday – but we decided to press on to Springfield, calling ahead for reservations at a KOA Kampground.
Uncle Tom specifically muttered something when it happened about not wanting this next part all over the internet, so this part might get cut during our group editing in the morning – but it definitely bears mention at least for my private journal. Less than a mile from the campground, we received a walkie-talkie call that the Skyliner had run out of gas. Tom urged us to go ahead and check in at the campground before coming back for him and Don, so we obliged (although this was when our last shouting incident of the day occurred – see below). Leaving an irate Dad to set up the camper with Mom, I gunned the pickup back to meet the uncles, who had already engaged in great self-help: Don had set out on foot, and as it turned out, he spotted an open garage, walking over to which he found a guy willing to help us out. The kindly guy filled a big gas jug for us and would have sent us on our way with it full of gas; he wasn’t asking for anything in return, but Tom gladly handed him a $20, and we came back to return his gas jug and so that he could admire the Skyliner, which he had said he’d love to do. He seemed genuinely in awe (and in the know, a self-proclaimed "Ford fanatic"), picking up his 5-year-old son to show him its engine, about which he seemed amazingly knowledgeable. He introduced himself as Kevin Barrett, having just started his shoestring business (Barrett’s Garage) 8 months ago.
Whatever circumstances prompted him to start a business in this time of economic crisis – and whatever determination enabled him to make it a success so far – must be some of the "lingering endurance" used by the guidebooks to describe the Missourian people; something handed down from Pony Express riders and the redoubtable Lindbergh. Our book contained an interesting description of the Missourians’ sense of humor, allowing a state with heavy interests in manufacturing, shipping, and the aerospace industry to declare with a straight face that it is also a world leader in the production of corncob pipes.
We perhaps saw a little of that dry sense of humor (or was it resigned stoicism?) in some side entertainment while Kevin Barrett was generously helping us. A couple of teenagers were busily lighting off fireworks, nearly right under, and certainly pointing at, the cars. Don said that when he first had walked up, they were doing it inside the garage where Kevin was transferring gasoline from one tank to another, which made Don a little nervous when he was asked to participate in that process. When they were shooed outside, the teenagers continued lighting off their fireworks just outside the building next to, pointed at, and almost right underneath our vehicles at times. We were alarmed as we nervously observed the sparks and shooting fireworks in such close proximity to the cars and open gasoline – and these kids barely paused between the succession of fireworks – but Kevin merely shrugged, "Ah, teenagers." And while the fuel transfer was going on (he nearly filled a 5-gallon jug for us), a little boy came running up and told him excitedly, "The stove’s on fire!" I thought at first he must be playing a game, as Kevin nodded as if in explanation, "My 5-year-old" – but he didn’t seem amused, quickly handing the gas siphon over to Tom and Don, hurriedly asking if they could take over and taking off sprinting over to the adjacent house. I followed him a little way out into the yard, half-watching for flames in the windows. A few moments later he returned, explaining casually, "Ah, just a grease fire." He apparently is accustomed to putting out fires – literally – and our little emergency seemed not to phase him in the least. We all wished him well and thanked him profusely before returning to the campground. He has the right attitude: although Tom wound up paying him, he clearly hadn’t helped us out with any expectation of payment, instead doing so simply because helping out passing travelers in trouble was the right thing to do, and that’s how he rolls. What a nice guy!!
For the most part we have so far been pleasantly surprised by the signage helping us find our way along the sometimes disjointed segments of the old Route 66. We did encounter some difficulty in following the guidebook directions to one of today’s attractions, which at one point led us off on a series of wild-goose-chase tangents that could easily have been avoided by the use of a correct preposition, or the simple addition of some indication – any indication – of distance (for instance, some hint as to whether "along here" meant "20 feet from" the just-listed sight, or another 5 miles). So we went on a merry chase seeking out an ornate rock arch gateway honoring the Trail of Tears (the forced migration of the Cherokees). We very nearly created our own trail of tears of a different sort, with all the consternation and frustration attendant on trying to follow the poorly-written directions (I had to take serious issue with the grammar used by the guidebook author). We wound up exploring quite a bit of (incidentally beautiful) countryside between Jerome and the Little Piney Creek River between it and Arlington, much to no one’s amusement: after several of these fruitless expeditions over gravel roads, Mom, Dad, and I rejoined the Skyliner to find Tom and Don standing beside it. Don had his hand on his hip in an expression of impatience, and Tom’s (probably only half-joking) comment was, "Lori, the next time you decide to turn off like that, just let me know and I’ll find a biker bar to sit down and have a beer while you go." Things were far more heated inside the truck, where Dad swore at me and I yelled back; good times. Miraculously, we did eventually find it, hidden away in some trees almost adjacent to (though buried in foliage behind) a few falling-down cabins that are all that remain of the Stony Dell Resort a couple of miles west of Jerome, barely half a mile along the frontage road east from Exit 172 (past which we had driven almost immediately after exiting the highway from a short stretch on which Route 66 shares the interstate pavement).
Our nerves frazzled and frayed thin after that episode, we had more to come later, with plenty of family frustration expressed loudly and angrily between Dad and me. We laughed about it later when we repeated the tale to Tom and Don, with all of them insisting that I need to remember that I’m traveling with senior citizens: apparently they don’t appreciate, nor respond well to, someone sitting next to them urgently gesturing and shouting commands like, "Stop now!" and then becoming exasperated while whizzing past Rosati’s remaining roadside grape stands (I pouted over missing them as if they were the top and only attraction along the entire length of Route 66... Marilyn, does that bring back memories of "the good old days" of our roadtrip through Germany and Scandinavia – particularly Skagen?!), or "Turn left here!" (this caused us to come to a complete stop in the campground) or "Just pull over and stop right here!" (which, when Dad thought better than to pull up next to a barful of bikers, led to his stopping the whole rig right in the middle of the road at the end of the bridge at the Devils Elbow, probably causing some anxiety in an oncoming driver who may have worried about a head-on collision as he exited the bridge) and expecting an immediate reaction. After hearing all that, Tom and Don tactfully invited me to drive with them tomorrow. In the meantime, we all had a good laugh about it over wine and Route 66 root beer (we finally found some, in the KOA Kamp store; yay!).
Once the wine was flowing and tongues loosened, it was fun to listen to Dad, Tom, and Don reminisce about long-ago days back home in Stephen, remembering with some amusement Grandpa’s antics going out with Fr. Beaver from the church in town (the two of them apparently had a good time together, including one two-week stint visiting all of Fr. Beaver’s priest friends in the Dakotas), and his annual homemade holiday Everclear marachino cherry punch mix (the goal was to get the cherries that had marinated in the Everclear for a week beforehand – which required drinking a lot of Everclear first). They tossed out the idea of an annual Stich brothers’ outing, though that idea might not sound appealing right now to their wives. Poor Dianne had a long day today; she’s in the process of moving her Dad to a home, and not overly amused or enthused about Don skipping out of town while that’s happening. She seemed to blame Tom for luring Don away, and Dad and I thought it was fine that Tom was in trouble and not us. :)
Another evening of cheese, crackers, wine, and other assorted munchies before bedtime, and showers all around (the campground restrooms were gorgeous, putting some residential ones to shame, with immaculate tiling and even a beauty-salon-style hair dryer with a comfortable-looking chair!), so we’ll all feel fresh in the morning for what’s sure to be another great day on the Mother Road.
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