A Route 66 Reconnoitre

When I was small I wondered whether the colours that I saw were the same as the colours you saw. I wondered if what we both called blue was as blue to me, as it was to you. I asked my mother,” What if the green of your eyes is not the same green I see. What if I call it green but if YOU looked through MY eyes you would call it brown. How can I know that the green is really green?”

“What colour are my eyes?” she said.

“Green with gold flecks.” I said without even looking, as  I crumbled the butter into the flour with my fingers as instructed.

“Well.” she said, raising my palms so only my fingertips were in the mixture  ” Don’t let the butter get warm” She turned back to her own mixing bowl. “There you are then.  Your eyes are blue and sometimes they are grey.  Mine are green. Pass me the flour, celi”.

I still wonder though. Do we see things the same? And words.  I say the word candle -do you think of light, or wax. If I say prairies do you think of neck high grasses or fields of corn. If I say Route 66 do you think of the sign or do you remember road trips anywhere with your Dad or do you think of the Great Depression?

After reading your comments yesterday it became apparent that we all see the legend of Route 66 differently. Which is pretty exciting really. Because in it’s short life it created a lasting impression of anticipation.

So yesterday off we went on a recce to find a few beginning pictures of Route 66 for you. Then you can think about what you want to see before I take you on the longer drive today. ( The concrete mixer in my garden was getting scary anyway.) And Route 66 is only a hop, skip and a ‘jump on’ from here.  After all Route 66 was 2448 miles long (that is about 4000km). There must have been howls of disappointment when the Myopic Federal Board of Roads or whatever they were called decided that it would no longer maintain it and handed it back to each county to look after and the lovely old road motored off into its own sunset.

Anyway, what aspect of The Mother Road takes your fancy. Do you want to see unusual tall plastic things?

Or the movie theaters, every little town had one.

Maybe the empty store fronts that line the main streets of these little towns.

Or the cars that were cruising the road back in the day. Remember back in those days the cars over-heated with monotonous regularity, tires went flat, belts broke, brakes failed and there was no air conditioning. Hot people and Hot cars -Horrors!   So the vehicles needed as much attention as the travellers. And these old cars needed a lot of attention.

I suspect that this is why these little towns had so many gas stations and restaurants built in the fifties and sixties. These were farming towns before they turned into touring stations and stretched their financial rubber bands to breaking point. No working man had the money or time to go off on jaunts, who would milk the cow or attend to the fields and gardens. The notion of travel for travels sake was like a monster awakening in affluent America after the Second World War.  Then touring became accessible to the middle classes. 

Or the service stations. If Route 66 was an artery coursing across America then the service stations were  pumping  hearts strung along the way.  Service stations popped up in droves and were almost always independently operated. There would be gas with a kid to pump it and wash your windscreen and check your oil and water, a mechanic with his head under a car and his wife behind the till. They often lived above or behind the station.  Clean rest rooms were a new and brilliant idea and in high demand, so these new gas stations were built with FREE loos –  open to all. In fact I heard a rumour that there were bathroom inspectors who toured up and down Route 66 making sure they were indeed clean and respectable.  The mind boggles.

The restrooms were of paramount importance to the touring parties. The days of women having to ‘hold on’  for hours on end were over. Travelling women were liberated.  Once the whole family could travel comfortably, longer distances were considered.  I personally believe that this is where the saying America the Land of the Free comes from. Have you ever tried to find a free toilet in Italy, Or Portugal? Not a hope!

Or is it the the abandoned ghost road who attracts you, limping along beside your little modern cooking oil car, her cracked lips smiling – calling: don’t you worry, I’m still here! I may be a gardener of weeds now but these are my weeds! I am the legend.

One day, I am going to get out of the car and onto one of these ghost roads and just walk as far as I can. I guess then you might call me Forrest and bring me Chocolates!

Good morning. I have two periods of interest when I think of Route 66. Mine come from an older and even more original Route 66. Not the 50’s and 60’s of the post war boom and bright neon lights and huge purple cars, but back in the twenties and then on through the Great Depression. It was  realigned a few times during its short life but many of these Original 66 roads still exist, running down the main roads and then through the older neighbourhoods of the towns. I search for the Road in the 20’s when the more affluent of the time toured about in their brand new Model A’s, packed to the gills with gas cans (petrol stations were few and far between in the beginning), staying in those beautiful old railway hotels (it seems to me that often Route 66 ran along close to railway lines ), their hats tied to their heads with scarves, their hip flasks and white shoes.

Then later, into the depression years, the drought, when hundreds of thousands of  families lost their farms and millions their jobs,  the bankers calling in their loans, the farmers walking off their land. So many of them packed everything into their trucks and drove west along Route 66 looking for work. And if you did not have a truck you walked the road looking for work.  Route 66 became a mainline of hope looping with despair as people struggled doggedly across America, their faces covered in cloth, slogging through the flying dust, carrying their children, trying to escape the terrible dustbowl that their lands had become.

So this is how I see Route 66.  These are the images I look for.  America the land of Extremes. Two very different periods, from two totally different social stratas. What happened when they met on the road I wonder, when Boom met Depression just for a moment.  This is my green with gold flecks.

What about you?

your friend with a camera, celi