By David Malcolm Rose
It winds from Chicago to LA, more than 2,000 miles all the way, and this year is the 100th birthday of Route 66. It’s often referred to as the Main Street of America, the Mother Road, and is, without a doubt, the most fabled highway in this country.
From Steinbeck’s Okies to Bobby Troup’s song to the 1960s TV show, no road has captured the American imagination like 66. Dorothea Lange photographed it; Woody Guthrie sang about it.
In 1949, the owner of the Cozy Dog Drive-in on 66 in Springfield, Illinois, dipped a hot dog on a stick into cornmeal batter, dropped it into the hot fat frier, and gave birth to the corn dog. In 1970, it was in Barney’s Beanery, on the section of 66 that is now called Santa Monica Boulevard, that Janis Joplin ate her last meal.
Sadly, by the early 1970s, Route 66 was obsolete, reduced to a secondary road at best. The interstate system had supplanted it. The small independent businesses – hamburger stands, gas stations, tourist courts – that provided goods and services to travelers on that old road lost customers. One by one, they began to fold up shop.
In the mid 1980’s, on a trip from Arkansas to Los Angeles and in no hurry, I got off the interstate to see what was left of the Mother Road. My heart went out to the sad, little structures I saw abandoned along the route. I took photos, and when I returned began to build scale models of what I had seen.
66 is now a major tourist industry. Towns that had all but dried up and blown away now sport fun roadside attractions. We don’t need any more pictures of the Eiffel Tower on Facebook. Go out there and see America. Go out there and get your kicks.
David Rose, of Hot Springs, is an author and artist. {More of David’s musings can be found at thespringsmagazine.com/category/arts/david-rose/.}
