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CRUISIN’ ROUTE 66

Preface

    Writing a biography on a person is a difficult task; what they did, where they lived, their accomplishments and friends, their family, where they came from and who they actually were is woven in a tapestry of words to bring them closer to you. When the subject that you are writing about is a key part of Americana and stretches over 2,400 miles from Chicago, to the Pacific Ocean, and is the origin of a million fond and tragic memories, and has been around, in the most part, since 1926 where do you start? What do you write about? After all, it’s not an eulogy you are writing, even though the ‘Grand Dame’ of highways is showing her age nowadays and, for the most part, is only a shadow of her former celebrity.
     Built in varying stages beginning in 1926 to transport people and families, merchandise and equipment from Chicago to the new growth communities in California and everyplace in-between, Route 66 was well suited to bear the name “Main Street U.S.A.,” because in many cases, that’s exactly what the road was. In the 1940’s she was a place to “get your kicks on” per the lyrics of Nat ‘King’ Cole’s popular song. In the 1960’s she was a popular TV show and the filming location for many movies.  Back then, Route 66 was really the only way to travel to Flagstaff, Arizona and to the Grand Canyon and most points west. Most recently, the Disney movie “Cars” brought the spotlight back to the stark emptiness associated with the closing of Route 66. Towns like ‘Radiator Springs’ that in reality could be Oatman, Arizona, or Seligman,  Kingman,  Williams, Ashfork or Peach Springs, Arizona, or a hundred others.
     Personally speaking, Route 66 is simply a long ribbon of concrete and asphalt. It was the people who used it, then and now, that brought living memories from the days of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. People like John Steinbeck who wrote about it in the award winning “Grapes of Wrath.” People going west to a new future, or leaving an untenable past behind.  The road is people and memories. It was the call of freedom that “Easy Rider” stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper found, that lies in all of us. “Cruisin’  Route 66” is a place and a time, both present and past, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
 Let me be your guide dear reader, and show you some of my favorite places, stories and people along the way.
Joseph Caro