Route 66

Teresa Fisher

Are you the type of person who would enjoy exploring the ruins of an old civilization? Would you like to take an auto trip back in time? You can do so by traveling on what’s left of Route 66, once known as the Main Street of America.

The advent of the automobile at the turn of the century caused Americans to want a better system of roads, but it took until 1926 for Route 66 to begin officially. Other national highways generally ran north/south or east/west, but Route 66 started in Chicago as a diagonal road and didn’t really head west until it reached the Texas panhandle. It continued on to the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, California, and also unlike other national highways it didn’t follow an established trade route. It included parts of old trails, but it made its own path for much of the way.

During the Dust Bowl and Depression years of the 1930s, Route 66 was the main road taken by destitute Okies who piled their families into the car and their possessions on top of it and set out for the anticipated milk and honey of California. John Steinbeck graphically presented their plight in The Grapes of Wrath, and referred to 66 as the mother road.

World War II brought an end to migration by homeless farmers, but the military made good use of Route 66, as did people going to jobs at California armament factories. After the war, tourism brought a boom that caused nearly bumper-to-bumper traffic on Route 66. Entrepreneurs built motels, restaurants, gas stations, and attention-grabbing attractions to compete for tourist dollars. Many families made a good living from catering to tourists on Route 66, and the boom didn’t let up until the interstates lured nearly everyone onto the great concrete slabs. In small towns that were bypassed by the interstate system, traffic went from heavy to almost nothing in one day—the day the local segment of the interstate was opened.

The interstates started appearing a piece at a time in the late 50s, but the job wasn’t completed until 1984. Over the years many of the businesses that lined 66 to serve travelers were forced to close, but quite a few are still open. Outside of towns and cities the remains of closed businesses still stand in mute testimony to the fickleness of tourists. Very few of them have “no trespassing” signs, providing an opportunity to explore ghosts of Tourism Past.

In November 1994 my husband, Bill, and I took our first trip out Route 66. Armed with various maps and guidebooks, we entered 66 at St. Louis and went as far as Kingman, Arizona, then came back home along the route. We were amazed at how much easier a trip is when you aren’t hurrying along at 65 miles per hour. We put 5,075 miles on the car in 19 days, and weren’t nearly as tired as we would have been after only a few days of rushing from exit to exit on roads with an I in front of their names.

If you fret if you aren’t “making good time” when you travel, don’t bother going on this trip. You will only make everyone else in the car miserable.

At some points, 66 is difficult to find or is covered up by the interstate, but more than 80 percent of the old road is still driveable. Sometimes it serves as a frontage road beside the interstate, and other times we found ourselves on rough, weed-grown sections that haven’t seen traffic (except 66 cruisers like us) for many years. There was very little money for creating the original road, so it goes over hills and around obstacles, unlike the flat, straight interstate that slices through whatever is in its way. The old road looks like a gentle rollercoaster, hugging the ground as though it is a natural part of the terrain.

Route 66 can be enjoyed at whatever level you choose. The most difficult yet least rewarding treks are through large cities. You won’t miss much if you take the interstates across them. (But don’t avoid Albuquerque, especially at night. Route 66 is called Central Boulevard there, and it’s an easy, straight shot through town. The neon lights are beautiful, and there are many great, old motels still in business.) One can experience the road without covering every foot of it or taking every scary mud road the guide books mention. If you prefer to take the interstate most of the way, it is quite easy to follow 66 through smaller cities simply by taking the exit that says Business Loop.

To get the most from your trip you should prepare by reading books and acquiring maps. There is a historic Route 66 map available for $4.95 in many restaurants, and it’s good enough for those who wish to hit only the main road. Another good guide is a map hand-drawn by an artist who has dedicated his life to the promotion of Route 66. It shows some of the points of interest and describes the types of plants, birds, animals, and topography you will find in the various regions. It is available for $5.55 from Bob Waldmire, Box 46, Hackberry, Arizona 86411. It’s interesting to read, even if you don’t have travel plans. Be sure to visit his Old Route 66 Information Center if you go through Hackberry.

The truly adventurous (or directionally impaired, as Bill and I are) may need a little more help. Since the road was rerouted several times, especially in heavily populated areas, there is the old road, the old, old road, and sometimes, even the old, old, old road. The very old roads are not only difficult to find, but may require a four-wheel drive vehicle to traverse. Unfortunately, although there are several books, the definitive Route 66 guidebook has yet to be written. All of the books assume you are going from east to west, making it difficult to find landmarks when you travel east. Instructions are not always well written, and the author’s idea of what is a rough, medium, or smooth section may differ from yours. Don’t worry about getting lost. You probably will, but it’s easy to find your way back.

Arizona and New Mexico offer the most spectacular vistas, the most intriguing ghost towns, and the scariest remains of the very old road. There is something about driving along a bad road that keeps getting worse and is much too narrow to turn around on that gives you a rush of exhilaration when you finally get to good pavement. (You must really hunt to find these sections.)

At the west edge of Amarillo, Texas, we stopped to see the famous Cadillac Ranch, where a wealthy eccentric has planted ten Cadillacs nose-down in his field. Unfortunately, no one had warned us about the cows. We left in a hurry with hundreds of pounds of living hamburger trotting after us. I was envisioning “Murdered by Cows” as my epitaph. It was also in Texas that I got out of the car to photograph an old gas station and encountered cockleburs so vicious and malevolent that they made me wonder why I had ever worried about mere snakes.

Much of Route 66 in Oklahoma and Missouri is still drivable and has many points of interest. With only a little difficulty we found a section of road in Oklahoma that is nine feet wide instead of Route 66’s standard 18 feet. The story is that there was only half enough money to pave from Miami to Afton, so they decided to pave it all the way, but only nine feet wide. It makes a good story.

Kansas has only about thirteen miles of Route 66 cutting across its southeast corner, but the whole area, once a major mining region, is like a place forgotten by time. We were given a guided tour of a wonderful little museum in Galena by the old man who lovingly tends it. He ran a garage on Route 66 from his youth until he retired.

Missouri seems to have the largest number of defunct tourist cabins, one of my favorite attractions to photograph. We had a guidebook specifically for Missouri that contained many old photos of motels and told exactly where they had been located. A lot of them, or parts of them, were still standing. Many times, what once was the office has been turned into a dwelling for a family that now has all of the little stone outbuildings it could ever need.

St. Louis has a couple of “must see” stops on its west side, places mentioned in every guide book we read. One is the Coral Court Motel, a 1941 Art Deco beauty that is no longer in business and may fall under the wrecking ball soon. Built in the Streamline Moderne style with beige exterior tile walls and glass-block windows, it must be seen to be appreciated. Each room has an adjoining garage (a feature we saw in other old motels) to allow guests to inter their rooms in privacy, which gave the motel a naughty reputation.

A little farther east is Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard Stand. Warning! If you eat here, you will be forever ruined for eating any other frozen custard. We stopped for a small dip on the way west, and Bill talked about it the entire time we were gone. We planned our trip so we could stop there on the way home, and that time we got double dips.

The Chain of Rocks Bridge that once connected St. Louis to Illinois is closed, but well worth a side trip. The bridge has a 45° bend in the middle that caused massive traffic jams when tractor trailers met there; one would have to back up to let the other pass. We saw it from the Illinois side and got a great view. One of the scenes in Escape from New York was filmed on it.

We saw Indians; the Petrified Forest; unusual bridges; a round barn; a giant, smiling blue whale; a huge, newly dead owl in an otherwise uninhabited town; the Continental Divide; a Spanish cemetery in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico; the remains of a zoo built of stone, with the fading words “MOUNTAIN LION” still barely visible on one cage; and we talked for two hours to a tiny, 83-year-old woman who has operated a tourist court since 1951.

It’s great to take a trip without ever having to eat or sleep in a “chain.” The motels we stayed in were in the $25 per night range, and all were clean and comfortable. Though most of the old one-story, L-shaped motels looked alike from the outside, we were surprised to discover how different they all were inside. Food in restaurants along the route changes somewhat with the region and is usually good, sometimes so-so, often greasy, and always cheap. If you’re used to the typical Disneyesque American vacation, you will be pleasantly surprised at how inexpensive it is to have fun on Route 66.

Traveling Route 66 is like turning back the calendar forty years to take a leisurely trip that you will always treasure. And I’m not going to say a word about getting your kicks.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation - 1987

Teresa MarQuand

During the 4th of July weekend it was my pleasure to attend the 16th annual Rainbow Gathering, an outdoor convention of hippies, nudists, bikers, punkers, hobos, homos, Hare Krishnas, Rastafarians, gypsies, a few types that were indefinable, and the sort of people who just enjoy this kind of gathering. I fall into the latter category. It was my first Rainbow, and was one of the most interesting events this jaded thrillseeker has ever experienced.

A note of dramatic tension was added by the fact that it was also my first attempt at real camping. There were no electrical outlets, toilets, showers, telephones, or stores within miles of the campsite, and all personal gear had to be carried in on our backs.

The 1987 Rainbow Gathering was held in the Nantahala National Forest near Robbinsville, North Carolina. Hardcore Rainbow people, many in graffiti-covered vans and converted schoolbuses, began showing up as early as mid-June, and the local citizens were not happy about the prospect of having 10,000 freaks in “their” forest. A news report on a local radio station I listened to on the way in said, “They plan to engage in rites of the 60s, such as drumming, smoking pot, and parading around naked.” The state of North Carolina tried to get various injunctions against us, but a federal judge overruled them all.

If the locals were concerned about damage to the forest, they certainly shouldn’t have been. The Rainbow people are scrupulously respectful of the environment. In the main meadow were signs with arrows warning of bees and a hornet’s nest. (My inclination would have been to get some insecticide and do away with them. I guess I have a long way to go before I’m in tune with nature.) There was even a sign that said, “Here lies a very mellow rattlesnake. Please walk softly.” I did. After July 15th, when the last hangers-on are to be gone, a final crew cleans up the area, plants grass seed, and generally erases any reminder of our presence there.

Peace, love, brotherhood, and goodwill were in abundance. “Welcome Home” signs were everywhere, and there was a lot of hugging and affection. I saw very little drug use. Most everyone seemed to be there for the enjoyment of being among their own kind, much like at a Mensa gathering.

When the weather was nice, about one person in twenty was stark nekkid. This was a little difficult for me to get used to. Call me prudish if you will, but I don’t think I can effectively interface with people who are nude in public. I did enjoy having them hang around, though. (In case you’re wondering, at no time did my clothes leave my body.)

There were at least two dozen kitchens set up in various locations, and except for snacks we were asked not to bring our own food. (Individual campfires would be hazardous, and would use up all of the deadfall wood.) No money changed hands, but a hat was passed around for donations. Names of some of the kitchens were Earth Mother, Hippie Hollow, Pasta Farian (pasta served by Rastafarians -- get it?), Hobo Hilton, and Jamba. As far as I know, Jamba was the only kitchen that served meat. My favorite kitchen was operated by the Hare Krishnas, who served such an abundance of deliciously seasoned (mostly unidentifiable) food that I didn’t even mind not having meat. I learned the words to their one and only song, and chanted it with them after supper one evening. They’re a lot more fun when you get them away from an airport.

It’s funny how the rules change when you leave regular civilization. The first to go were my standards of personal hygiene. I walked more than a mile and a half down a road three inches deep in mud to visit the bathing/swimming hole. When I got there, I realized I wasn’t about to strip down and jump into that running icewater. I figured I could just burn my clothes when I got home.

I was heartened by the number of hippies in their 50s and 60s. They all seemed to be in exceptionally good physical condition and in a happy frame of mind.

One large meadow was dedicated to families who had brought their children, and many had. A lot of people brought dogs, and the Hare Krishnas even had a baby elephant there.

Many people brought drums and guitars, so there was always music of some type being played. One of the most unexpected sights I saw was a group of squaredancers. There were no big petticoats or matching costumes, but the dancing was pretty good.

Rainbow Gatherings are always held during the 4th of July holiday. If any of this sounds at all interesting to you, I highly recommend attending. It was a fascinating parade of humanity.

Rainbow ’88

Teresa MarQuand

From July 2 through 5, 1988, I attended my second Rainbow Gathering, an annual hippie, hobo, nudist, and general weirdo convention held that year in east Texas. For three days I became a brotherly loving, vegetarian, nature-respecting, peaceful hippie. (This type of thing was quite popular in my youth, but I was definitely not a participant at that time. Unlike most people who get more staid and conservative as they age, I seem to be going in the opposite direction.)

The first day I met a kindred soul named Jim. (We three-day-a-year hippies can usually pick each other out; we’re well-nourished and have all of our teeth.) Neither of us had ever had the nerve to go nude at previous gatherings, so we decided it was time. Under cover only of darkness, we strolled to the lake for a late-night dip. We were so impressed with ourselves for being nude, it never occurred to us to wonder why the usually crowded lake was deserted. We waded in up to our thighs, but never got out of the weeds. Jim noticed someone on shore who seemed to want to talk to us, so he told me to wait there while he investigated. It was a member of Shanti Sena, the non-violent Rainbow Security crew. Rainbow literature describes them as vibe watchers who “are everywhere helping energy flow past stuck situations.” I heard him telling Jim it was our choice if we wanted to wade there, but there were alligator gar fish in the water at night. Jim called to me and said I should come on out slowly, and I began slogging through the weeds toward shore. I heard more unintelligible conversation, then Jim yelled for me to come on out quickly. I asked if I should be hearing the scary “dun dun dun dun” music from Jaws, but Jim didn’t laugh. He shouted that at night copperheads come from the depths of the lake to the weedy edges, and they are attracted by sloshing. It was the only time in my life I ever wished I could walk on water. I found out later the lake actually had water moccasins; the copperheads were in the forest.

There were a few people there from a group that lives in the park across the street from The White House. One was a traditional bag-lady type, and I heard her ask a young man, in the middle of nowhere in a forest, if he had seen any drinking fountains around there. I wish he would have said, “Yes, it’s right over there by the electrical outlet.”

After the previous year’s gathering there was much intestinal dysentery, which I escaped. I found out one of the culprits was a kitchen that had temporarily run out of food as I was waiting to be fed. Fortunately, I had decided not to wait around for a new batch of diseased food to be cooked. In 1988 the coffee and tea all had an overriding flavor of bleach.

Being dependent upon others for your food puts a whole new perspective on eating. I was perfectly satisfied with small meals of grains, legumes, and vegetables, and most of it was quite tasty. I just knew that the combination of my Spartan diet and the constant walking was going to result in a substantial weight loss.

The simplest things became enjoyable luxuries, such as having a log to sit on instead of the ground. One day my logmate was a young man who had just made a water run into town and was taking ice water back to his camp. He offered me a cup and a handful of sunflower seeds, the tiny meat of which had to be extracted from each shell. As I sat there on a log in the shade, drinking fresh icewater, shelling sunflower seeds, I marvelled at my comfort and good fortune. I was happy.

That morning I had eaten a cup of some oatmeal-grain combination, and had walked to a much cleaner section of the lake where I could really immerse myself. (Only while bathing was I nude in the daytime. I could have worn my clothes into the lake, but it would have been kind of silly.) I reflected that ordinarily, a morning that started with a mug of thick gruel and a bath in a lake would seem like a bad day. But this day, those very things brought on a feeling of satisfied well-being.

There were always a few people wallowing in mud, caked with it from head to toe. I could never understand why, until I heard someone’s explanation. She said that when you don’t care that you are covered in mud and have mud all in your hair, you don’t care about anything. I suppose there’s something to be said for taking yourself down to such a basic level, but I think I’ll pass.

When the locals found out the Rainbow Gathering was coming to east Texas, they bought out all of the shotgun shells in the area, and the shelves were bare of them for a month. That attitude may account for the low turnout at the 1988 gathering. There were quite a few wide-eyed sightseers walking through, but the only major incident was when the son of the man who owned the grazing rights to the land insisted on driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle onto the site. He had weapons, alcohol, and drunken friends in the vehicle, and was driving much too fast through our populated area. When one of the Rainbow women tried to get him to slow down he ran over her, crushing her ribs and puncturing her lung. He then zig-zagged through the campsites with about fifty people chasing and yelling. The police finally caught him and charged him with failing to give aid after an accident.

I met a Deadhead in his 40’s named Snakemeat. I had heard there were people who did nothing with their lives except travel around to concerts by the old rock group, The Grateful Dead, but this was the first time I ever saw one. He was interesting, intelligent, and a very nice person. I wanted to ask him why he had chosen this path for his life, but I felt it would have been a rude question and didn’t ask.

I saw lots of happy, friendly, loving, strange people, and had a wonderful time. It’s fun to do something that bears no resemblance to my everyday life, and I was on a natural high for days after I got home. Unfortunately, I did manage to suspend the laws of physics. When I weighed myself I discovered I had gained four pounds.

New York City, October 2001

Teresa Fisher

I just returned from five days in New York City, and I want to assure everyone that it is still there and is still “New York.”

I traveled with my neighbor who found us a great deal at the New Yorker Hotel. A weeknight there now costs $109, an incredibly low price for a great old hotel in an excellent location.

Broadway play tickets are still expensive, and if there is a decline in tourism, it’s difficult to tell. We did get last-minute tickets for the Halloween taping of the David Letterman show, probably because people who sent off for tickets months ago have now decided not to visit the Big Apple. Dave’s guests that night were Kevin Spacey and some woman I’d never heard of. I’m glad we went to the studio that morning on the chance we might get tickets.

The crowd that arrived for the marathon on the weekend ruined our, “we’re-the-only-tourists-in-New-York” advantage, so we were unable to get tickets for Saturday Night Live.

On Broadway we saw the very enjoyable The Full Monty (if you liked the movie you’ll love the Americanized play where you can understand what they’re saying), and Cabaret. The male lead in Cabaret played the part with the exaggerated excitement of Jimmy Olsen in the old Superman TV shows, and the female lead reminded me of Azrael Abyss, the Goth boy on Saturday Night Live. The music was good though, and I’m glad I got to see the one-time celebrity and cocaine laden Studio 54 where the play is staged.

I visited the very interesting Tenement Museum on the lower east side and the Museum of Radio and Television. Mostly I just walked around enjoying the sights and sounds of the city.

Famous people I saw in New York City:

Keith Morrison, a Dateline reporter, smoking a cigarette outside the NBC studio in Rockefeller Center

Paul Shaffer going into the side entrance of the Ed Sullivan Theater on his way to work

The Edge and Bono of U2, sitting nearby in the audience at Cabaret

The Enigma, the guy from the Jim Rose Circus Theater whose entire face and head are tattooed with jigsaw puzzle pieces, in my hotel’s lobby. There was some kind of tattoo, leather, and face stud convention going on.

Of course I visited Ground Zero, several times and from several vantage points. Police barricades keep sightseers from getting very close, so the images you’ve seen on television give a much better view. From where I stood it looked like the site of a burned building, with no sense of the scope or scale of the area that had been destroyed. I think the great shock to New Yorkers is that they were accustomed to seeing those huge buildings dominating the entire area. The punch is delivered by the newly visible expanses of blue sky.

There is still an acrid smell in the area, kind of like the odor of cement dust and burned electronics. There is very little gray sludge left, and the missing person posters are all gone, probably having become souvenirs for tourists.

Speaking of souvenirs… Red, white, and blue trinkets were everywhere, as were items with NYPD and NYFD logos on them. I was struck by the images of the World Trade Towers on postcards, photos, and every form of souvenir, not because I was surprised that entrepreneurs would have rushed to create them, but because so many of them seemed to have been left over from before the attacks. Those towers were almost as much a part of the image of New York as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. It will be a long time, if ever, before they cease to be depicted on tourist tchotchkes.

At the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village the only reference I saw to the tragedy was a couple dressed as the towers, wearing haloes and wings.

For the most part, especially once you get away from the area where the towers were, New York seems to be getting on with life. Some people hate the bustle and energy of a big city, but I love it and I plan to go back to New York some day.