by Michael Wallis
I AM A TRUE SON OF ROUTE 66. That will always be true. And many of you are sons and daughters of the Mother Road. Some of you are converts — tried and true — and some are like me and were born and bred on the old road.
In this centennial year of our beloved highway, I ask all of you to come with me. I will go back to another time. Allow me to take you there.
Go back to long ago. Go back to the early years before the Mother Road had earned that familiar name. Go back to when it was a new road — parts of it unscarred, unproven, unknown, and unpaved. Back to when Cyrus Avery was the newly crowned Father of Route 66 and when Andrew Hartley Payne pulled on his racing singlet and prepared to run with the best of them.
Go back to that time before all that we now know. Back to bedrock. Back to bold days when crews of men and mules and machines carved new roadbeds. When dreamers connected stretches of existing highways. When the road became one.
Go back before the coming of the networks of interstate highways — those superslabs of monotony that now crisscross the land. Back when folks did not try to make time pass
quickly but instead took time to enjoy life. Go back to the hot sad days and agonizing nights of the Great Depression and the devastating Dust Bowl. Back to when an entire nation’s life was interrupted first by acts of God and then a few years later by acts of madmen when the world went to war.
Go back, and then imagine. Route 66 has always been a place where people have been free to imagine. Imagine what the road was like. Imagine what we were like. Dare to imagine.
Imagine when boundaries and borders did not seem as important as they do today. Imagine when there were no strip centers and shopping malls. When there were no Golden Arches, no Starbucks, no Wal-Marts.
Imagine when gasoline was dirt cheap, and a ten-dollar bill — maybe even five bucks — got you through a Friday night date just fine. And that included a movie with all the trimmings. Imagine no bottled water, no credit cards, no cappuccino, no cholesterol.
This vintage postcard above shows the S. S. Admiral afloat near Saint Louis, Missouri. The interstate highway system bypassed Glenrio, now a deserted community on the border of Texas and New Mexico (Photo Above).
