I'm not intending these subsequent parts to be a day-by-day, sight-by-sight recreation of our trip. Anyone following me on Facebook pretty much got that during the trip as we uploaded photos and a small journal of the day's events as we went along: our routine each evening was 'arrive at motel, sign on to free wifi and start getting the photos uploaded'. Instead, these are more about impressions and observations, those things that have stuck with me as we travelled 66.
The Winners and The Losers
The towns through which Route 66 ran must have been a sight to behold in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Small, backwater communities benefitted from the boom in car ownership freeing people to explore the US in a way not previously available to the masses. Motels, diners and gas stations - the three essentials for taking on a long trip: places to stay, fuel and food - are all over the palce along 66. However, not all are still trading. As mentioned in Part 1, Route 66 has been largely fragmented both by the re-routes that happened during its heyday and by the imposition of its successor(s), the interstates. These changes have led to some towns remaining within the prosperity zone afforded by a tourist attraction such as 66 while others have become economically stranded, communities that are a heartbeat away from becoming like the ghost towns that blossomed from nothing and just as instantly, died in the economic bubble of the Gold Rush. Many people that drive Route 66 will do so by making use of the interstates that 'mimic' the original route to a great extent. This is good for cities and towns such as Springfield, St Louis, Oklahoma City, Flagstaff and Barstow to name a few. These are places where the route of the original Route 66 is 'easy' and fits in with momentarily dropping off the interstate to have a look round and, more importantly, spend some money. Other, smaller towns on the original route but now bypassed, miss out on the tourist dollar and it shows in the way some of these towns look. The contrast between thriving Flagstaff and the sad remains of Depew, one of the 'marooned' communities when Route 66 bypassed the town in 1939. It is still a town, but only in the sense that it can barely remember what it once had, its population now less than half what it was in 1930. To visit these towns, one must endure a bit of map-reading and a more serious detour and I guess many are not prepared to make that effort.
Apart from having Route 66 run right through your town or next to your attraction, the next best thing is to advertise. And when I say advertise, I mean advertise big! Meramec Caverns, a well-known Route 66 attraction (or, I should say, near Route 66 attraction) starts to be advertised when you are still nearly 100 miles from it and the billboards carry on, mile after mile. As you get closer, they are every 100 yards, practically yelling at you that you would be missing out on a wonder of the world if you don't visit. Somehow, we managed to avoid their lure. We did, however, go to Uranus in Missouri. Now, I guess if your town is called Uranus, there are two ways to go: studiously insist there is nothing funny about it and go around pronouncing it as 'Ooranus' or, you embrace it and and advertise it in a way that plays up to every end-of-pier joke - "There's fun to be had in Uranus!" or "The best fudge comes from Uranus!". The Uranus Fudge Factory and General Store is full of merchandise using any number of double entendres you can think of relating to activities involving the back passage. Well, that is the front of the shop. Step through a doorway, however, and the back portion is given over to selling guns and ammo as well as NRA t-shirts designed to rile liberal snowflakes such as myself. I wasn't sure which was worse: celebrating rabid gun ownership or music hall gags about bums. Either way, it was busy. For me, the tourist traps that tried less hard attracted me more, the best being Jack Rabbit Trading Post. A massive yellow and black billboard whith a silhouette rabbit and the announcement "It's here!" lets you know you are somewhere a bit odd. Apart from selling t-shirts and native jewellery, it also has a collection of Route 66 (and more random) memorabilia in a side room, all topped off with a radiogram that was playing an REO Speedwagon vinyl LP when we were there. That's the kind of detail that keeps you ahead of more soulless traps like Clines Corner.
The empty shells of former gas stations, diners and bars litter the length of Route 66, the former in particularly large numbers. Whereas once there were gas-guzzling cars in numbers sufficient to sustain many, many gas stations, the re-routing of the Mother Road, the soaring price of fuel and (relatively) less thirsty engines has meant the majority have closed. A precious few have been preserved - those of a pretty 1930s vintage. The 1970s and 80s versions are now marked only by a forecourt overgrown with weeds and strewn with junk and a canopy over the spot where the pumps once stood.
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