Happy 70 Birthday, Mother Road

Well, actually Route 66 is 83 years old, but its name "Mother Road" dates officially to this date in 1939, with the publishing of John Steinbeck's "grapes of Wrath" following the valiant Joad family from Oklahoma during the depths of the Dust Bowl and Depression.

John Steinbeck was the first to call Route 66 the Mother Road: "They came into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66is the mother road, the road of flight."

From the April 13th Inland Daily Bulletin article by Joe Blackstock.

Along with Main Street USA, the Mother Road is used often to name Route 66. Route 66 is making a comeback, although Mr. Blackstock paints a bleak picture: "While his classic book has endured the passage of time, the highway has not fared so well, mostly disappearing below the smooth surfaces of a half dozen interstates." Personally, I thing Route 66 is in a lot better shape than that.

Mr. Blackstone does a short description of the book in the rest of the article saying that the Joad family and others were short on money and put everything they owned into overloaded trucks and cars for the perilous trek to the promised land, California, for a better life. They were complete with patched tires that were constantly going flat, leaky and overflowing radiators and a precarious list.

They drove at night through sweltering Arizona, came down a hill past the mining camp of Oatman and finally saw the Colorado River and California at needles.

There, they weren't greeted nicely. A sheriff told them, "If you're here tomorra this time, I'll run you in." The Joads and all the migrants were derisively called "Okies" by Californians, "You ain't in your country now. You're in California, an' we don't want you goddamn Okies settlin' down." Late that afternoon, they struggled up the steep mountain pass and then got hassled at a fruit inspection station in Daggett and got gas in Barstow.

The story ends with them crammed into farming camps in Central Valley, still being victimized, but most importantly, surviving.

So, A Big Old Happy Birthday to "The Mother Road." --RoadDog