Route 66

My family traveled Route 66 many times, leaving Chicago, back to Chicago, where the (Uncle Bud) cousins lived, then leaving again, driving back and then moving away from Chicago finally, then going back to visit. Every time we visited Uncle Bob in Pomona, California, we finished the entire route.

Road trips were really the only way for a family to travel. Admittedly there were more people who had not learned how to drive back in the 1950s— and I remember buses, no toilets onboard, food at the rest stop. The road, the highway was a wonderful way to eat regionally, great cooks in colorful cotton aprons, pies I still dream of as I wake from late day naps. Diners served homemade food like meatloaf or smothered ground sirloin, meatloaf or a hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes. White bread on the table, just like in Ireland. With very few exceptions (one notable joint whose waitress was older than the barstools, and so was the bread). We looked forward to dinner as our Pontiac careened through the American pioneers waving us on in any direction.Throwing corn or potatoes at the stop lights.  

Mostly, the thing to understand is that there was a great migration out of the midwest to the west. Perhaps the last great push in the birth of the west out of that pioneer charge. It had still been a dangerous journey for the covered wagons 80 years before. But now, in 1960, you could see the USA in your Chevrolet and maybe shake hands with an Indian in a teepee along the way.

All of the USA were postwar families of some shape, and those soldiers who still longed to create a better future for themselves, those men with gold in their eye, they packed their families up and took them west. Phoenix had not yet been built, but something about it caught my father’s eye. While so much of the east coast was about staying out, the midwesterners were caught half way. The midwest had one spin as far as you could go and still be in civilization. But the point is it was a place someone had traveled to at some loss and hardship. Those midwesterners, they were pioneers. It's only fitting that in their name, the coolest highway ever to claim our imagination, Route 66 carried them safely to and fro. The little watering holes and stagecoach stops that had been so dangerous. I mean as long ago as Frank Sinatra is to us now, that’s covered wagons to my childhood. Incredible.  

That was the America I grew up in. Highest life was all about courtesy and tradition. “Why do you flash your lights at the truck, mom?” “He flashed me away asking if he could come over didn’t you see what he did with his lights? I flash my lights so that he knows it’s safe to come over into this lane.”  

The truck would then flash a “thank you” which I never did learn, a kind of brights-normal-I dunno. These intricate headlight phrases…lost today. Mostly because folks stopped being civil.  People didn’t pass on the information anymore.

Civil behavior, like “show him respect, he's our president, it doesn’t matter if your parents voted for him,” my 5th grade teacher told us. I wrote about this in my memoir Last Chance Texaco, the term common sense really was common. Men swore but they were never profane.  Like we were protecting something and we took care of it everywhere we went. Not just our bank account but something we shared together. 

I’m not saying it was perfect, but my memory of riding in the backseat with my big brother is that it was somehow a safer world. I grew up to continue to drive down roads and hitchhike down highways and as much of the world as I possibly could, and as I get older I noticed that I have a great need to be a part of other people's lives like old people. I just start talking to strangers and try to get them engaged. Listen to their story. I guess that’s kind of Route 66. You can keep it going inside of you any way, just keep traveling over the highway to the other person in the room. 

Bring along some fudge maybe.

Uncle Bob, Grandma and my Dad