Heartwrenching

Yesterday morning, our beautiful, big ginger furball, Chester, had to be put to sleep. He was a lovely cat: in his younger days he was described as "too pretty to be a tomcat" and he was huge. The vet tutted over his weight and we vowed to try and do something about it, but, in the end, Chester always ate extra, whether it was muscling in on the other cats' food or snaffling anything that we were careless enough to leave on the side in the kitchen. He was a master thief and he could unwrap a packet of butter enough to help himself to a few licks before we knew anything about it! Whereas some cats might let you stroke their tummies, that was not an area to be approched on Chester: one or two kicks from his hind legs quickly let you know that that area was off-limits. Chester knew exactly what he liked and didn't like. He was a big solid unit of a cat.

About two years ago, he started vomiting at ramdom times during the day. It might be after food, but it could equally be hours after eating. A trip to the vets and a couple of blood tests later revealed that everything was apparnemtly 'normal' and they just put it down to his having developed a problem with some foods. We then embarked on trying every type of 'sensitive stomach' food, fresh poached chicken, raw foods - anything and everything was tried. We just wanted him to be able to keep his food down. His weight dropped from a rather portly 6.5kg to 4.5kg, but it held there and, much more importantly, he remained the happiest of chaps, purring loudly at the merest touch and showing no signs of reduced energy. And so things went on this way, he still had a big appetite, he still vomited and his weight remained constant. It wasn't ideal, but he was definitely happy and still the Chester of old (apart from being a slimmer version). All chairs and sofas in the living room were 'his' places and we were soft enough to work round him if he had already occupied a spot we wanted to sit on. One of his best tricks was his ability to jump into a seat one of us had briefly vacated to get something from another room and, in the 20 seconds we were absent, he would curl up and feign being fast asleep as if he had been there for hours. Again, we often let him get away with that! In summer, he would join me in sitting out on the bench in the front garden, either on the bench itself beside me or to lay in a warm spot and soak up the sun, the pupils of his bright yellow eyes mere slits in the sunlight and a most contented look on his face. His absolute favourites though were cardboard boxes: any box, once cleared of its contents, became a place for Chester to inhabit, sometimes just to sit proudly as the master of his new castle or sometimes, to curl up and go to sleep. The expensive cat beds were never graced by Chester's furry bum.

Then, over the course of the last fortnight, he seemed to start to lose energy. He'd still jump up onto his favourite stool in the kitchen, but he'd stay there for extended periods. He was still eating and still purred when we stroked and cuddled him, but his weight had definitely dropped. We didn't discuss it, but we thought that things might be moving towards the moment that Elaine and I dreaded. Last weekend, we went away for a couple of nights to the Lake District and the cat sitter sent photos to us of feeding time each morning and evening. Chester was still first the bowl and looked bright-eyed. We came back on the Sunday afternoon and that evening, while he seemed OK, he wasn't interested in food. The next morning, he was listless on his stool and, after investigating the food we had put down for him and his fellow mogs, he ate nothing and lay in the middle of the kitchen floow. We had put tinned tuna down for him, the thing he always begged for whenever we opened a tin for our own meal. Licking the tin was alway Chester's treat and yet now, he had no interest. When he similarly refused to drink any milk, another thing he begged each morning as we made tea, we knew things were bad. We stroked hime there on the kitchen floor and he purred. That turned out to be the last time he would do so.

Around 12 years ago, we took in an older cat, Hobbes, a big ball of fur with only three legs. We had no idea how old he was - the vet guessed he was between 9 and 12 years old. His owner had taken him to be put to sleep because he was supposedly vomited everywhere. The nurse in that vet practice saved him with a view to finding him a new home. We couldn't resist taking him in and he had 4-and-a-half happy years with us during which time he vomited in the house on only one occasion. The end for Hobbes was similar to Chester's - weight loss and a loss of energy - but happened a lot quicker. The last day we were with Hobbes, he laid down in the litter tray and had no energy. His eyes, once bright, were now unfocussed. We took him to the vets and were told that he could still pull through and were given some tablets for him to take. We then took him to the cattery because we were flying to Canada. On our first night there, we had a phone call at about two o'clock in the morning from the cattery to say that they had had to take Hobbes to the vet because he was so poorly and he had had to be put to sleep. I tell this story because I - we - still feel a sense of guilt over what happened with Hobbes: we both knew it was his time, but we allowed the optimism of one vet to avoid doing the right thing and be there with Hobbes when he was put to sleep.

Owning a pet is, of course, about the happiness, joy and love that they bring to our lives, but we also take on the responsibility of looking after them throughout all those good times, but also through the bad. We failed Hobbes at the end of his life because we weren't there to hold his paw, to stroke him and to provide the sounds of those people that he knew from home. We had Chester for nigh on 13-and-a-half years and all the happy memories he gave us throughout that time required us to do the right thing for him at the end. He deserved to go in a dignified way, with those that he loved and who loved him in return. It is a really hard thing to do, even when it is 100% what has to be done. We have been the ginger boy's whole life and he has been a massive part of ours. Losing him is heartbreaking and I am typing this through tears, but I am glad we got it right this time and were there to comfort him as he passed. Run free, Chester boy. You are already greatly missed.

Freedom!

I have just been able to enjoy a pint in a (sort of) pub setting for the first time in what feels like an age. Meeting with friends across a table with a pint to shoot the breeze, talk shite and, generally, put the world to rights. It was *so* good! Okay, in reality, it was slightly less than perfect: we had to sit outside and it was pretty cold; masks had to be worn when going to the loo or moving to or from the table; and - the biggest ballache - we were lucky enough to share the table with a mask denier. Don't get me wrong; there were plenty of low-level breaches of rules goingh on around me that were making me feel a little uncomfortable as people, experiencing the natural joy of spotting people that they have not seen in a while, moved maskless between tables to shake hands and hug. All perfectly normal. What I didn't enjoy was having the mask denier encouraging people to shake hands (and having a go at my obviously lily-livered sensibilities for not doing so), laughing at me for following the pub's rules over wering a mask to the loo and generally decrying the usefulness/efficacy of masks in combatting Covid-19. This was not the nice return to some semblace of 'normality' I was looking forward to. People, can we get something straight here: your definition of 'freedom' may not exactly correspond to my definiotion of the same word. While you may think that not wearing your mask strikes a blow for your personal freedom and strikes a blow against the 'system' (getting one over on the sheeples, right?), I think that you could be jeopardising the pub being able to operate by flouting the rules. In addition, regardless of your personal take on disease transmission, just please wear your mask as requested: while it might not make any difference in your mind, it will make your fellow pub-goers feel a bit more protected. I'm not a fan of wearing masks. My glasses steam up and, in a nicely heated shop. everything gets a bit sweaty. However, if it means we can continue to move towards getting rid of masks completely, I'll put up with the discomfort for a bit. If mask-wearing is such an imposition, I'll gladly sacrifice my personal freedom at this moment in return for the long-term freedom of those who have shielded, isolated or have generally missed out on people in the past year. If it is genuinely about 'freedom'

Reuniting Mike and Mouse

Sometime, you read a story in the paper or online and it just makes you feel good. The sort of story that we desperately need more of in these crazy times. Reading those heartwarming stories is nice, but to actually play a small part in one is even better! Reader, come with me as we travel back in time to a couple of days ago and, if you are curled up on the sofa with a cuppa and biscuits to hand (always the best way to read good news), I'll begin.

Sitting up in bed, eyes still only semi-focused as I wake to the world, I was doing my usual trawl through social media: a run-down of Twitter for national news but risking my blood pressure if I stick with it for too long, followed by some Facebook for the local stuff and news of friends. Scrolling through my FB timeline I noticed a post from Bolton and Bury Lost & Found Cats. Having four cats ourselves and having had two of them go missing within the last two or three years, I have remained a member of sites where I posted appeals for people to look out for them when they were on their adventures (both returned unharmed and pretty much unperturbed: we were the ones suffering), so I still see posts from them. The post that caught my eye was actually a share of a post from the Chester Last & Found Cats FB page. No idea why it caught my eye, but I read through the post. It said a cat had been found hanging round Morrisons in Chester and, when they had sanned it for a chip, they had been able to find that the details were out of date in terms of phone numbers and address, but they could tell that the cat was from Bolton and she was called Mouse. Accompanying the post were a series of four pictures of a white-footed grey tabby cat. Now, I have a former work colleague that we have had two cats from: one of his cats had kittens and we took one of then which is Misty, our grey and white girl who has now been with us for eleven years. The other was an older cat, Hobbes, our three-legged giant who had five good years with us after he was rescued from being put to sleep by an owner who'd obviously grown tired of him. Now, I could recall that one of Mike's cats at the time we picked up Misty was a grey tabby called Mouse. I couldn't recall specific details of her colouring so the photos in the post meant little to me, but the fact the cat was called Mouse and she was from Bolton... I found myself thinking "What are the chances?". How likely was it that Mouse was still alive, and, if she was, had gone missing from Mike's place? How many cats in Bolton that are grey tabbies are missing and called Mouse? I also fretted a bit about how to broach the subject with Mike: suppose she had recently died and he was still grieving? Or Mouse had gone with his ex-partner when they split up and he knew nothing about her life after that? I decided that I had to raise the question with Mike, so I sent a question to him on Messenger: "Hi Mike, an odd question after not seeing you for so long, but do you still have Mouse?". When his reply came, it actually made my heart jump a little because he told me that a couple of months back he had let her out as he usually did and he'd not seen her since and noting it was completely unlike her to not come back. He assumed the worst and that she might have passed away. So, Mouse was missing! The Chester bit still didn't make sense, but firstly, I still needed to confirm the Mouse in the FB post was Mike's. I sent him one of the pictures. Almost at once he came back to me: "OMG. That's her!"

In order to be able to get some more information from the people who were now looking after Mouse, Mike said he was joining the Chester Lost & Found Cats FB page. First, he had to wait to be approved, then he had to wait until he could post and ask his questions. Finally, he was able to start having a bit of a conversation with the people who had Mouse. I didn't hear anything for a while and then Mike came back to me with the best bit of the story: how Mouse ended up in Chester. Someone else had seen the posts about Mouse and had seen that Mike was, potentially, her owner. He sent Mike a message saying this: "Hi, I work for Morrisons in Harwood, Bolton and your cat Mouse has been living in the yard. We've fed and watered her three times a day for around three weeks until she disappeared last Saturday. We think she might have snuck onto the back of the waggon that delivered to us that day as the next drop was Chester". Mouse had obviously climbed out at Chester, recognised a Morrisons yard as somewhere that she got well looked after and decided to hang around there!

With a little more discussion between Mike and the people looking after Mouse, the timeline was now established and Mike was certified as the person to whom Mouse should be returned. She had actually moved on from Chester, as the people taking care of her were in Flint, so Mike got a grand trip out to North Wales when he went to pick her up that afternoon. Mike and Mouse were reunited! Instead of just reading a feelgood story that day, I got to be part of it. I know how bad we felt when ours went on their walkabouts: not knowing what happened, no way of knowing if they are alive or dead, is absolutely awful. Equally, I know just how good it feels when they come back into your life: you are absolutely ecstatic (although the cat is completely oblivious to your relief and delight). To help someone have that wonderful feeling on a nondescript Tuesday in the midst of these blighted times gave me a nice feeling too. Welcome back Mouse!

Older

Today, I realised I am getting old.

Of course I am aware that time is moving on, that when I say how old I am it is a scarily large number now. I know in a 'years lived' kind of way that I am heading towards old age. What I meant by that word "realised" though, is something deeper, something more spiritual than the incontrovertible, clinical ticking of the clock we all hear. It is not the fact that my body is starting to refuse to work in the smooth, efficient manner that it always did, the aches and pains that used to last a day now lingering on, debilitating and griping. No, it is not a physical reminder that prompted this. Nor is it technology that has defeated me signalling my imminent demise. I am still able to buy tech gadgets and operate them to pretty good effect. Granted, I tend to refer to the manual rather more than I used to: gone are the days when the instructions for a device would lay in a drawer, unread throughout its lifetime. It is possible that I am not the early adopter that I once was, preferring now for others to grapple with the foibles of the latest must-have device so that I, the latecomer to the party, can make use of all the online forum discussions to get answers when even the manual can't help. And talking of online, it is not that cesspit/paradise that makes me feel old. I can still recognise and even use memes appropriately, most of the language is still relatable (well, on the sites I use it is) and I am still genuinely thrilled when I alight upon a site that has content that is thought-provoking or beautiful or funny in some way. It is definitely not the internet that makes me feel old.

I have not yet felt the need to go on a cruise. Staying in a single hotel, whether floating or securely attached to the land, for a couple of weeks just does not excite me in any way. In my mind, I associate them, rightly or wrongly, with old people and, until very recently as I am explaining, I didn't feel old. Full disclosure here: we have twice been on a holiday where we travelled around countries by coach. In both cases - India and Namibia - we just felt that putting together our own holiday online by renting a car and booking flights and hotels might prove difficult: in Namibia, we were unsure where the hotels were and what we wanted to see and in the case of India, having looked at videos of Indian city driving, Elaine said no way would we be driving ourselves! No, in the main, we still like to 'do our own thing', putting together itineraries ourselves and sharing the adventure between the two of us. So I am not feeling old enough to delegate picking where we go to others just yet. My wardrobe is still largely beige free. Someone noted in a Facebook post recently how the uniform of the older gentleman tends towards the non-colour that is beige: shirt, windcheater (look it up kids!) and 'slacks' all in beige with, maybe, a beige cap to top it off. My wardrobe still contains colour, pretty eye-scorching colour in some cases, and I hope it will continue always to so so. Similarly, I have no shoes with velcro fastenings and my slippers are not made of a fuzzy man-made fabric in tartan but bright red, sanzzy German things, so it is not my wardrobe that made me feel old.

The reason I thought I am getting old is that I have found myself dipping back into my past more than I ever used to. When I say "the past", I mean the properly distant past, back when I was a child. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself imagining in great detail, the house where my great aunt and uncle lived. They were the only living relatives of my mum (well, the only ones she kept in contact with), so we used to visit them on a fairly regular basis. We lived in London at the time and they lived near Witchurch in Shropshire so it used to be a bit of a trek via coach to go and see them. I recall the pantry off the kitchen with the cold shelf and the meat safe with its mesh metal sides and I remember them getting their first fridge. They never used the front door: that was for visitors they didn't know, the 'official' entrance so to speak. Everyone else used the side entrance, just beyond which was the WC, a sort of semi-outdoor loo. It was inside so far as it was inside the building and using it did not involve putting on boots to traipse to the bottom of the garden. But it was 'outside' in temperature terms. The house had no central heating and relied on the heat from the range in the kitchen and an open fire in the living room (also kept for 'special' use such as a particular TV program they might want to watch) so that the loo was freezing cold in winter. I can still recall the smell of the little paraffin heater that my uncle kept lit in winter to make 'using the facilities' a bearable action. I remember those occasions when I was lucky enough to get to sleep in the room with the iron bedstead. As a child, it was practically a mountaineering feat to climb up, the mattress was so far off the ground. Once up and between the sheets, the weight of the multiple blankets and the eiderdown quilt seems almost to crush me - in a comforting, cuddly manner - into the deepest of sleeps. In the small room next door was where I discovered that Santa didn't exist. I was opening my presents that Christmas Day and I saw the 'St Michael' label in my Xmas jumper. I just somehow knew that Santa didn't shop at M&S...

That house and those memories are just one example: there have been quite a few more recently, recollections that have popped up before my mind's eye with amazing clarity. Rightly or wrongly, I always associated this dwelling on the past, the rummaging through memories as being something that 'old' people did. Younger people are too busy with actual life to spend a great deal of time looking backwards but at a certain point, we have the time to reflect and remember. Perhaps it is natural as we get towards the 'wrong' end of our lives that we rake over the past to sift out the good (and the bad) memories. I don't believe this to be a bad thing, to spend some time in the past. Yes, there are regrets that surface along the way and, perhaps, at some remove from the events, we can see now why we did what we did or didn't do what we should have. Whatever, this critical reflection is something I have not really indulged in before and, whether it is due to the actual passage of time or just late-onset adulthood, I don't know. I am sure, however, that it is the first time I have felt like I'm getting old.

Driving the Mother Road: Route 66 at Age 60 - Part 4

Communities
One of my reasons for wanting to drive Route 66 was to experience something of what the US looks like away from big cities or well-developed towns. Although we have driven a lot in holidays in the past, it was usually with a purpose in mind - moving from one attraction/sight to another. The brief in those cases is usually to get there as soon as possible, so the interstates or major highways are the best bet to achieve that and, as I've said, also effectively blocks out properly small 'small town USA'. This is something I need to explain a little. Town size in the States is very different to how it is viewed in the UK. Consider where I live, in Ramsbottom, Lancashire. It is a town of around 18,000 people with several places to eat, quite a few pubs and bars, one petrol station, one main CofE charch and one Catholic church as well as three supermarkets. It is pretty solidly the definition of a 'town' this side of the Pond. In the US, we have driven through places that call themselves a 'city' that have a population of less than 6,000 and only one or two bars yet have a proper police station, a multi-screen movie theatre, a couple of car dealerships and a choice of several gas stations. 'Small', population-wise does not mean lacking in amenities. The major highways (our A-road equivalents, if you will) connect this size of towns and we have seen many of them. This time I wanted to go smaller still...

Driving the old 66, in Oklahoma and Missouri especially, is often about driving the backroads, the routes now little travelled, save for the folk who live in the communities that dot the path of the old highway. Here, communities often consist of collections of very large static caravans. To call them that is to do them an injustice because a) they are about 50% bigger than the biggest static vans in the UK and b) it gives the impression of a trailer park which these groupings certainly are not. I think of then as modern-day log cabins, a way to get into the property market when bricks and mortar might prove too expensive, but just like houses despite the lack of foundations: gardens are laid out, the BBQ is on the patio and roads run between the homes. Over and over again we passed through communities where 75% or more of the homes were of this kind with, every so often, a newer, stone-chimneyed residence. Often though, the only 'solid' construction in these towns would be the church or chapel, always immaculate, single storey and, invariably, Baptist of some sort. The impression left was always of a proper, tight-knit community centred around a meeting place (in this case, the church), the archetype of settlements for millennia. It was, somehow, a comforting sight.

We're still here!
Route 66 also provides an inventory of the strange and the downright bizarre roadside attractions that range from relatively straightforward such as the beautifully preserved 1930s gas stations and the Route 66 museums that dot the road at fairly regular intervals to the absolutely bat-shit crazy, "What ia that all about?" items that, in some ways, are more fun to not find out the story behind it and just accept it for what it is. The latter type of attractions are, of course, some of the most memorable. Some of the best included a giant, green tiki head ('headicus giganticus') apropos of nothing - the next door diner is not remotely South Sea island in theme, the "World's Second Biggest Rocking Chair" - it was the biggest, until fairly recently when some other town built one bigger. Fanning, Missouri still reckons there's mileage in being No 2, so their rocker still sits proudly by the side of the road. The general store next to it had an amazing selection of sodas - no Pepsi or Coke. The ones we tried - a cola for me and a limeade for Elaine were...interesting, I'd say. Then, there were the giants - these were all over the place. Apparently starting life as statues of Paul Bunyon, they have been converted from being bearded and carrying an axe to being clean-shaven and carrying, a rocket, a massive hot dog and...er, nothing in the case of the one done up to look like a cowboy and standing tall over a used car lot. One town had a water tower built so that it looked as if it was collapsing. The comparison with the slightly more famous leaning tower in another city, although attempted, was probably a little out of reach of this modern homage. The Cadillac Ranch (over-painted and a dumping ground for hundreds of empty aerosols but still interesting), the Bug Ranch (a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Caddy Ranch and, given that there is an abandoned diner, garage and gas station on site, rather more atmospheric) and the Blue Whale model (don't ask) were all srange and good, but the crowning glory of the weird was Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch. Fun, amazing, an enigma, just stunning. I appreciate your work, Elmer and dfinitely worth a picture to give you a flavour of its strangeness.

Two more places are worthy of a mention, one quirky in an almost disturbing manner and the other an unexpected gem. The first is the town of Seligman in Arizona. It has the standard things you find on Old Rooute 66 towns: old gas station (check), old cars parked at the gas station (check), various shops selling Route 66 memorabilia (check), loads of mannequins sitting outside and on the roof of said shops (che....er, what the heck?). I have no idea what this is about: one shop having them might be seen as a bit quirky, but several shops sporting them looks a bit like a scene from a B-movie where the tourists go missing in the middle of nowhere when the mannequins come to life! The second attraction is the Round Barn at Arcadia, Oklahoma. This is a true curiosity: downstairs, it is an eclectic mix of standard tourist tat and hand-written/hand-drawn histories of the barn, the town and the surrounding area, folder after folder of this labour of love. Upstairs, however, the domed roof of interlaced wooden laths is like standing under a giant woven whicker basket. The wooden floor, installed in return for dances and social gathering being hosted in the space, has been polished by the thousands of steps of those who have gathered here over its lifetime. The barn is, in a way, a reflection of the history of Route 66 itself. In the 1920's, with the newly commissioned Route 66 running through Arcadia, the barn became the most photographed attraction on the Mother Road. With the development of the interstates, the traffic along 66 declined and the barn fell into disrepair, the roof eventually collapsing. The roof was restored in 1992 and, with the Old Route 66 becoming a tourist 'must-do', the barn is once again a destination spot on 66. If ever you do "plan to motor west" as the song goes, the beauty of the upper floor of the Round Barn is definitely worth stopping for.

Done!
So, it's over. Two-and-a-half thousand miles (plus a few extra for side trips) clocked up, most of it in fantastic sunshine and ridiculous temperatures. I've seen the sublime (the Grand Canyon) and the ridiculous (take your pick - there's a lot to choose from) and I've had a great time. There were times - probably once a day, in fact - when I felt great pleasure in just driving. Being off the interstates and on backroads, doing 55 mph instead of 80 and not having to worry about other cars (there were't that many) allowed me to feel just like those using Route 66 must have felt back in the 1920s: liberation, the freedom of the open road and a car to experience it. Those moments literally sent a shiver down my spine and I fell in love with driving again. We travelled on Route 66 as an interstate, where the modern, soulless six lane highway has overlaid the original; as a dual carriageway, the first in the US; as a single track road, no longer the first choice to move between cities but still linking rural communities; and also as a dirt track, the tarmac long since gone and 66 now a memory scored into the network of fields under a huge, open sky. Two-and-a-half thousand miles of history, of joy, of America.

There is one final thing to mention. I have to be so, so grateful to Elaine for being with me throughout this adventure. She is the world's best sat nav and juggled between our Route 66 guidebook and a phone app to a) keep us on route throughout and b) guide us to the sights and attractions along the way. I know she enjoyed it and I want to say a big thank you to her for facilitating my huge enjoyment over two-and-a-half weeks. Thanks chick!

Driving the Mother Road: Route 66 at age 60 - Part 3

Looking for signs
Advertising - the lifeblood of American economy and a constant companion on Route 66. When I say "looking for", I don't really mean to portray it as a difficult chore to be undertaken only by those with the keenest of eyes. No, Route 66 is crammed full of signage. In fact, it is almost overwhelming at times, especially in the roadside developments that signal one's arrival in each town of any size that actually sits on 66. If the road runs through the town, each side of the road will become cluttered with car dealerships, gas stations, muffler and brake shops, fast food joints and motels. Alongside these will be strip malls and larger malls featuring well-known chains such as Walmart, Target, Walgreens and CVS. If 66 passes close by the town, these strip developments will run the length of the town's limits before fading out and returning the views to lush fields or dusty scrublands. If each sign represents a shout for one's attention, these strips in turn represent advertising as a cacophonous blizzard of sound, colourful trademarks all crammed together, some perched on tall towers in order to escape the crowd and catch the consumers' eye. It is a dizzying array and never ceases to amaze me. However, this is not a new thing: the eye-catching signs may be thicker on thee ground now, the advertising hoardings more high tech and driven by digital displays, but Route 66 has always featured businesses vying for custom from consumers passing by in their cars.

Motel and diner signs are some of my favourites on 66. Many feature neon lighting, something that was widely used in advertising businesses from the 1920s to the 50s - the heyday of Route 66. As such, they look entirely at home alongside the Mother Road: they are both of its time and an integral part of it. Many signs feature arrows that swoop down to point to the establishmeent they want you to be. "This is the motel for you!" they seem to shout, although arrow after arrow all make the same claim. Many of the signs that once looked modern or even futuristic, now look hopelessly dated, albeit in a fitting kind of way since driving Route 66 by trying to stick to its original course is an exercise in living in the past. In this way, the signs are entirely appropriate.

An arrow swoops up, filled with golden lightbulbs while neon is also present: quintessential Route 66

Once out of town, the noise of advertising drops but never to silence. An attraction on or near Route 66 is coming up soon (well, about a hundred miles or so 'soon') and so must be advertised by billboards. Fast food and gas (they belong together!) coming up in 30 miles. And so on...and on. Never mind that palce you just stopped at, the next place is amazing says the advertising all along Route 66. It is a busy commercial enterprise but, you know, I don't mind it. Whereas somewhere like Las Vegas is constucted entirely from neon and lights, it already has your money, guaranteed. If you are in Vegas, you are going to spend and probably spend a fair amount. That city is already rich yet, brazenly, it wants more and more from you. The attractions along the old 66, by contrast, are all fighting to get people passing through to stop: these are businesses that have, literally, been bypassed and now have to work to get their income to survive.

My favourite signs of the trip? The 'Burma-Shave' signs that consist of five small roadside signs, the first four of which each contain the line of a poem related to driving (usually telling you to concentrate on the road, ironically) and the fifth simply stating 'Burma-Shave'. They started in the 30s and have kept going ever since. Again, entirely appropriate for a time-travelling trip down 66. I'm also a sucker for advertising painted on the sides of buildings and there were quite a few good examples along the way. I love how they can vary from those that have been kept pristine by continued repainting over the years to those (my favourites) that have been allowed to fade to near-invisibility, their message like a ghostly echo from Route 66's past.

Driving the Mother Road: Route 66 at age 60 - Part 2

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.