How Bleak is Route 66's Future?-- Part 2

Back to the March-April 2008 Preservation magazine article.

Two articles accompanied the pictures. The first one, "Scenes from an Open Road" by Ann Beattie, did a great job summing the old road in my opinion.

"Route 66 was the Romantics' toad, an optimistic road, the 'Mother Road,' as John Steinbeck called it in The Grapes of Wrath. It was going to stretch thousands of miles and provide travelers with unique places to eat and to spend the night as they made their journeys, their individual journeys that nevertheless took them to many of the same places accomplishing something, or perhaps searching for the holy grail of relaxation.

It was a road that had pride of place, and also a sense of humor: The neon signs you found there were illustrative, but many were created to amuse. If the Saturday morning cartoons appealed to the kids, the cowboys on bucking broncos and 10-foot-high hamburgers dripping neon-red ketchup, pointing to diners along Route 66, were there to make the grownups smile.

The signs were either so understated they were plaintive ('vacancy'), or they were happily hyper; the leaping lizards and sky-high ladies whirling lassos described something that wasn't exactly true, but wasn't entirely false, either. The wonderlands they blinked at and pointed to were outdoor graphic novels: The talk and visuals were interrelated; the world was telling its story and you-- assuming you weren't too cool to converse-- were telling yours."

Man, I sure wish I could write like this, but that will never happen.

Great summation Ann Beattie.

Still Gettin' My Kicks. --RoadDog