Howdy and who's ready for a change of pace from gripping times and then slip back to something more halcyon? Thus here goes another time travel piece, but this time we'll be going back to a little over fifty years worth. What prompts this latest special diary comes from the inspiration of some of our engaging Daily Kos community's comments over the past two or so months. Most of what I write or yammer on about covers the beat of the Colorado Plateau, whose turf is penetrated by Route 66, the aptly named Mother Road of America. I don't know if any of you out there are interested to know this, but one of my favorite eras given my lifetime tends to run the gambit from the mid-1940s and well in the 1960s. That being said, if there is any narrative, as stories told by others, I am eager to listen to, it's anyone who has ever lived or visited the American Southwest during this funky and casual period of modernity. Of course, so many of us, as baby boomers, remember traveling Route 66; at least passing through some of North America's desert terrain here and there punctuated by impressive chasms and rising laccolith landforms (mountain-like, though nonetheless volcanic in origin. (But not me, because I didn't come out West to live in this part of the country until late 1969. . .bummer!)
Anyway, for today I thought a diary on this celebrated road might interest some of you and that's what we're going to experience (vicariously) given this historical narrative: a trip through time on a very memorable road. Feel free to dress accordingly for this tour. I mean, colorful apparel, cat-eye sunglasses, straw hats, Bermuda shorts and penny loafers and maybe a dab of Brylcreem for the lads and a dab of Evening in Paris behind the ears for the lasses. I think you'll fit right in.
Prologue: A stretch of Route 66 cuts through the I-40 corridor where some of the Southwest’s most scenic country spreads out on either side. It’s a celebrated road in America boasting a necklace of famous towns and places along the way, starting from Chicago. Commonly called the Mother Road, Route 66 totals 2,451 miles (3,945 km), ending in Santa Monica, California (at U. S. Route 101). The dates of its heyday ran from 1926 to 1964. Also known as the Will Rogers Highway, and named after the famous humorist, Route 66 was literally the Main Street of America. Road signs posted in 1927 listed the following state addresses – Chicago, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The route even had its own song, written by Bobby Troup and originally recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio in 1946. The song was even featured on the equally famous “Route 66” television show in the 1960s. It’s one of those lyrical and jazzy songs that, once it gets into your head, keeps playing.
Over the decades Route 66 was subject to many improvements. These improvements not only included resurfacing portions of the roadbed, but also changing the routing and overall length. The improvements were intended to detour travelers around major congestion areas. For example, moving the western endpoint farther west from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica.
The other famous historical note about this highway was how ’66’ served as a major route for migrants headed east from, especially, Oklahoma during the dust bowl saga of the 1930s. The famed movie Grapes Of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, features this road and the restive people who plied it, all looking for work and headed to the proverbial and of milk and honey, California.