Published: October 13, 2008 09:57 am            

John Watson: Getting his kicks on Route 66

‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” Many of us remember this tune and the 1960s TV show “Route 66” staring Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and George Maharis as Buz Murdock. They traveled Route 66 in a red Corvette convertible looking for trouble. Or did trouble just find them? Anyway, the Corvette became an emblem of Route 66.

I recently spent some time in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma checking out Route 66. The section I followed went through Carthage and Joplin, Mo., and over into Kansas and then turned south to Miami, Okla., and from there followed closely Interstate 44 into Oklahoma City.

There are sections where you can drive on the original concrete roadway and other sections where it has been paved over and widened.

Other sections have a new two-lane asphalt roadway built next to the original concrete roadbed, and you can see it beside the road you are driving on. The concrete has cracked and has grass growing in the cracks. Sometimes you will be traveling north of I-44 and other times you will be south of I-44; the old highway crisscrosses I-44 several times.

Some sections of the old roadway have the Route 66 highway emblem painted on the roadway itself.

I started my tour in Carthage, Mo., where I found the following information about Route 66 at the Powers Museum.

“What is it about Route 66 that appeals so much to our culture? It was just a stretch of concrete, like any other road upon which we drive. So why does this highway burn so vividly in our minds and spark our imaginations?

“Maybe Route 66 forms the basis of all our dreams. It represents the possibility of leaving your troubles behind. Taking off down the highway with the wind in your hair, you know that just beyond the horizon is a new place with new possibilities. It gives us all hope, should we ever need it, that there is a better place just around the next bend in the road.”

During the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s many people in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle left their farms and headed to California in search of a better life. Route 66 was the road they took.

In his book “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck wrote: “…and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads; 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”

“Route 66 is a symbol of American ingenuity, spirit and determination. For millions, it represents a treasure chest of memories, a direct link to the days of two-lane highways, family vacations, and picnic lunches at roadside souvenir shops and cozy motor courts.”

America’s Mother Road, also called America’s Main Street, “is today the world’s most famous highway, even though officially it no longer exists.”

It all began with the ordinary needs of a growing nation and the vision of one man: Oklahoma Highway Commissioner Cyrus Avery. From 1924 to late 1926, Avery and the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads developed a new system of interstate highways connecting hundreds of existing roads into a nationwide network of numbered highways. The No. 66 designation for the Chicago to Los Angeles highway came in Nov. 1926.

Route 66 consisted of about 2,448 miles crossing 8 states and three time zones. Starting at Chicago, the road runs through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and ends in Santa Monica, California. Kansas has the least amount of road, with only 13.2 miles cutting across the southeast corner of the state.

The 66 Drive-In Theatre in Carthage, Mo., is one of a few remaining drive-in theaters on the original Route 66. One unique feature of this drive-in is the ticket booth, which is constructed of cubes of solid glass. They still show movies on the weekends during the warm months.

At the time Route 66 came into being, the traveling public was still using “tourist camps” consisting of individual cabins. The motel as we know it today had not yet come into existence.

Some of the old tourist cabins have been updated and are still in use, such as at the Lincoln Motel in Chandler, Okla. Others have fallen into disrepair, such as the Rest Haven Motel in Afton, Okla. The sign is faded out, and the grounds are grown up in brush and weeds till you can hardly see the cabins at the back.

While traveling down Route 66 you get to see many interesting things — from the world’s largest totem pole to the world’s second largest electric shovel.

You do not get to see these things while running down the interstate. As one traveler so aptly put it, “Take the off ramp into a bygone era. Discover the 2,400 miles of Route 66 and see how America traveled from the 1920s to the 1960s.”

I will be telling about these sights in the weeks to come. Stay tuned.



John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.