Route 66

Last week was truly a busman’s holiday ~ fitting in a trip between other trips. Frequent flyer miles waiting to be redeemed and that most precious of all commodities ~ time, the last of the summer-time, as it were. And a few days out west.

The West.

Those two small words conjure up high romance for a boy brought up in New England. I can vaguely remember my parents talking about my oldest cousin Margie who married a New York salesman in 1955 and then moved “out west”. Such an unimaginable place back then. Beyond my small mind ~ even beyond the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, both of which I had seen as a boy. Margie and Ralph settled in California.

So there we were last week in Northern Arizona ~ the West (for us eastern Floridians). A few drinks at the Zane Grey Bar on Saturday night at the old Weatherford Hotel in Flagstaff. The rodeo is in town so the restaurants are full. Go west young man ~ now quickly on I-40 ~ across the high hills around the San Francisco Mountains. Driving west you cannot miss ~ every 20 minutes ~ the long trains of the Santa Fe railway running next to the ribbon of a small track ~ the Mother Road ~ old Route 66.

This road was a major path of the migrants who went west during the first half of the 20th century. John Steinbeck and his Tom Joad would have gone this way. People doing business along the route did well due to the increasing popularity of the highway and the affordability of the automobile. Not so much anymore.

We stopped in Seligman, a place which nicely reflects the glory days of the old road, parked by the tacky ‘Road Kill Grill’ ~ still doing business, thank you, and by several cheap motels. Now there’s Angel Delgadillo’s memorabilia store with the classic ‘Texaco T’ gas sign.

Angelo is there to greet you with a big grin and handshake. He helped found the Historic Route 66 Association and half saved these small, lovely towns. He was born in 1926. Angel and his brothers and sisters grew up watching the traffic flow by on America's Main Street. It was a dirt road then.

A poster in his window, of an antique cars show, philosophically pronounces: the road is it – the road is America.