ROUTE - June / July 2021

ROUTE THE MAGAZINE THAT CELEBRATES ROAD TRAVEL, VINTAGE AMERICANA AND ROUTE 66

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THE SUMMER ISSUE June/July 2021 $5.99

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JACKSON BROWNE TALKS TAKE IT EASY AND ROUTE 66 THE STORY OF THE BLUE SWALLOW | COZY AT THE COZY DOG

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Chicago

Willowbrook

Romeoville

Joilet

Joilet

Wilmington

Braidwood

Dwight

Pontiac

Pontiac

www.TheFirstHundredMiles.com

ROUTE Magazine 1

Discover more drool-worthy destinations at Travel

.com.

Order a free Oklahoma Route 66 Guide & Passport at TravelOK.com!

Lucille’s Roadhouse

Known for its chicken fried steak and 1950s décor, this Weatherford diner is a popular Route 66 landmark for a reason.

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Sid’s Diner

Grab a seat at the counter, feast on all-American fare and learn why this El Reno joint made the The Daily Meal’s “101 Best Burgers in America” list!

Mother Road Market Part food hall & part retail hub, this eclectic Tulsa hangout houses 20+ innovative retail and restaurant concepts.

Hunny Bunny Biscuit Co.

Got a craving for biscuits? Indulge it at this hip Oklahoma City brunch spot.

It slings them numerous ways: sweet, savory, traditional and unconventional.

Hammett House Restaurant

Opened in 1969, this beloved Claremore restaurant is known for its comfort food. Stop by and try a Bill’s Bloomin’ Onion!

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True Visit the gorgeous place where real Native culture, true Western heritage, and Route 66 converge at 6,467 feet.

Culture on Route 66 Explore the arts and cultures of the Navajo/Diné and Zuni Pueblo, neighbors of Gallup, in the shops and events all along Route 66.

Shopping and Experiences on Route 66 Get behind the scenes and explore trading posts, artist demos, moccasin manufacturing, tour a historic theatre and more.

Stay on Route 66 40 hotels with over 2,300 rooms, including the historic El Rancho Hotel, conveniently along Route 66 and Interstate 40.

Plan your Route 66 adventures in Gallup, New Mexico, today. .COM ROUTE Magazine 7

CONTENTS

A romantic reminder of the historical journey of Route 66 near Cayuga, Illinois.

Photograph by David J. Schwartz – Pics On Route 66.

22 The Legend

By Jimmy Pack Jr. Perhaps the most famous motel along the route, the Blue Swallow has been welcoming visitors since 1938. Many people know of the iconic property, but few know the true story behind its fabled journey and the many personalities who have guided it through the decades.

30 Cozy in Springfield

By Heide Brandes In the Land of Lincoln, there are a great many reasons to visit the Illinois jewel of Springfield, but one spot calls to more Route 66ers than any other: Cozy Dog Drive In. True royalty along the road, the Waldmire family have been feeding hungry road travelers since the 1940s. Discover the turns and twists that this “cozy” establishment took to get to 2021.

42 A Conversation with Jackson Browne

By Brennen Matthews The Mother Road is famous for inspiring many a road trip, and what is the most important part of a successful trip?

The playlist, of course. In this issue, we feature an artist that is perhaps more connected to Route 66 than any other alive today. Jackson Browne’s music and story are not only special, they are fascinating and a testament to the American dream and the classic Americana spirit.

56 Carthage Nostalgia

By Cheryl Eichar Jett Few drive-in theatres remain now along America’s Main Street, but the ones that do are cherished and very frequented. And down in picturesque Carthage, audiences are still enjoying one of the best. Join us as we share the tale of this slice of Americana that has fought its way through the years; a spot that is impossibly intertwined with Route 66 itself.

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64 Rockin’ On

By Phoebe Billups This is a story of serendipity, of good fortune. Dawn Welch did not plan to own and operate one of the most famous eateries on the Mother Road. She had other plans that were more global in nature. But after almost 30 years, she is not looking back, she is planning for the future. The story of the Rock Cafe and the lives of the people who built it, ran it, and then built it again when it was destroyed by a devastating fire, are intriguing, as is the café itself.

80 A Good Texan

By Brennen Matthews Born and raised in the Longhorn State, Matthew McConaughey is authentic, down-to-earth, and he loves a good road trip.

In this interview, he takes us on the road and into his travels, sharing the highway and his personal journey with us as only a Texan can.

ON THE COVER An aerial view of Roy’s in Amboy, California.

Photograph by Adam Ruggieri.

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EDITORIAL Word from friends and partners across the country is that they are seeing more and more road travelers. With states lifting restrictions and mandates, businesses and attractions are re-opening, and as more people get vaccinated, the pent-up travel enthusiasm from the past year, has burst forth and people are hitting the road in record numbers in pursuit of adventure and a reprieve from a very tiring season. This is great news for the many businesses that have suffered greatly since early 2020. As we venture out this summer, now more than ever, there is an opportunity to have a greater appreciation for this incredible country, and a chance to help get the country back on its feet. That is exciting.

I too am craving an escape and am anxious to get behind the wheel this year. There are few things that I do not love about a summer road trip. Perhaps my favorite sensation is that wave of excitement and serenity when you step out of your hotel first thing in the morning while on a road trip, right after a hearty breakfast, and feel the first burning rays of a beautiful sun. Other travelers are busy rearranging and packing their vehicles and there is an elation to get going and be back on the road. But I also love stopping at designated rest stops and navigating through the crowds of wide-eyed road travelers.

Everyone shares a common element of being on the move, of being strangers in an unfamiliar place. There is a freedom in the anonymity. I prefer to stop constantly and am hugely curious about the wonderful museums, roadside attractions, historical destinations, and unexpected spots that arrive on my radar. It is truly one of the unique joys of doing a road trip in the summer. I suspect that many of you share my fondness for the above.

Along Route 66, in partnering hotels, the June/July issue is waiting to greet you, in rooms and lobbies. We love being able to journey along with travelers as they dive into America.

In this issue, we shine a spotlight on a number of the most popular, iconic destinations along Route 66. The Legend tells the story of the Blue Swallow Motel, perhaps the most famous motel along the Mother Road and that is saying something.

The venue’s fabulous sign has been lighting up the night in the small town of Tucumcari, New Mexico, for decades, and continues to welcome visitors from across the globe. The legendary motel has a tale to tell.

We also bring you the true story behind the Cozy Dog, a Springfield, Illinois, institution that has always been owned and run by one single passionate family, the Waldmires. This family is Route 66 royalty and their little eatery offers much more than just the corn dogs that feed hungry patrons every day.

Over in Oklahoma, the Rock Cafe and its visionary owner Dawn Welch continue to draw travelers off the highway and into its warm hospitality. Welch’s story reminds us that timing is everything and that sometimes it is the unexpected decisions that lead us to our true destiny.

And who can imagine a summer without a drive-in movie? The Route 66 Drive-In in little Carthage, Missouri, has its own story to tell, and after you’ve read it, we suspect that you will appreciate the magic of the experience all the more.

For me, there are few musical artists whose music speaks to the heart and soul more than Jackson Browne. The depth of his lyrics and the almost spiritual way the music supports them, is simply incredible. And few other songwriters have the same undeniable connection to Route 66 that Browne has—both via Take It Easy, and in his love and passion for the iconic two-lane highway. I was fortunate enough to sit down with the iconic musician for a long conversation about his journey to stardom, his relationship with Glenn Frey, Route 66, his time in Winslow, and so much more.

In this issue, we have a surprise for you; a second celebrity interview with none other than the funny, friendly, and very relatable Matthew McConaughey. Many of you will enjoy learning about Matthew’s time on the road with his dad and of his love for road travel and Airstream trailers. Matthew has a new book out, his memoir, Greenlights, and we get some inside scoop on his writing process and why he decided to share his journey with us at this point in his life.

These and so many great articles fill the summer issue.

I hope that you enjoy your time in the sun and that you find some inspiration in this issue.

Please remember to visit us online and to follow us on social media. We really do like having you around.

Best, Brennen Matthews Editor 10 ROUTE Magazine

ROUTE PUBLISHER Thin Tread Media EDITOR Brennen Matthews DEPUTY EDITOR Kate Wambui EDITOR-AT-LARGE Nick Gerlich LEAD EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHER David J. Schwartz LAYOUT AND DESIGN Tom Heffron EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Taylor Hadfield Theresa Romano Sonja Anderson DIGITAL Matheus Alves ILLUSTRATOR Jennifer Mallon CONTRIBUTORS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS Adam Ruggieri Bill Carter Cheryl Eichar Jett Dylan Coulter Efren Lopez/Route66Images Heide Brandes Jerrye & Roy Klotz MD Jimmy Pack Jr. John Smith Karl Bodmer Levi Alves McConaughey Marine 69-71 Marshall Hawkins Nels Israelson Nikki Roberts Phoebe Billups Ron Reiring Vida Alves McConaughey Editorial submissions should be sent to brennen@routemagazine.us To subscribe visit www.routemagazine.us.

Advertising inquiries should be sent to advertising@routemagazine.us or call 905 399 9912.

ROUTE is published six times per year by Thin Tread Media.

No part of this publication may be copied or reprinted without the written consent of the publisher.

The views expressed by the contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, editor or staff. ROUTE does not take any responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photography.

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ROUTE Magazine 11

The Lore of the

NILWOOD TURKEY TRACKS

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he prairie state of Illinois boasts many hidden roadside treasures on Route 66. The state is home to giant muffler men, restored vintage filling stations, some of the tastiest mom-and-pop dining options on the highway, and down on Illinois Route 4, in the quaint town of Nilwood, a rafter of turkeys left a sign of their presence on what would become America’s Main Street almost 100 years ago.

Today, Nilwood is home to less than 250 people. The only indication that the main drag that runs through town was once Historic 66 are a couple of roadside markers on IL-4, a peeling mural on the side of a red brick biker club called the Iron Sled, and a hand-painted wooden turkey.

The signage and the mural—which features an eagle flying over a motorcycle, an American-flag-patterned Route 66 sign, and “Old Route 66!” in bright white paint—speak for themselves, but a wooden turkey?

Before IL-4 was designated a part of Route 66 in 1926, an unknown number of birds ran across the wet pavement, leaving 34 turkey tracks to permanently cement themselves in the road. Local resident Eric Donaldson grew up learning the lore of the turkey tracks from his father.

Forty-five years ago, when Donaldson was a boy, his dad, Bob, would take him and his brothers on bike rides past the turkey tracks. At that time, he speculates, few of the town’s residents knew of the tracks’ existence— they were somewhat of a Donaldson family secret. By 2005, however, Bob Donaldson had circulated the story of the tracks enough to garner media attention, which would put the turkey tracks on the map for Route 66 travelers from across the world.

“The turkeys were probably wild turkeys that fell off a truck in the ‘20s,” said Anne Haaker, President of the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway. “The turkey tracks were there [even] before the wild turkey was reintroduced into Illinois.”

Today, the tracks are contained by a thick white border that is painted on the original 1926 pavement and sandwiched between two Route 66 highway markers. The attraction is marked by a hand-painted sign that reads “Turkey Tracks” in elegant script and a smiling wooden turkey on the side of the road.

“The turkey tracks are not really that important in history, but what is important is that somebody took the time to make a sign, maintain the sign, and put that into the Route 66 tourism sphere,” said Haaker.

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Those tracks are imprinted on the narrow street of Donaldson Road—the name changed to honor Bob Donaldson some-time in the mid-‘90s, according to his son—which is mainly traversed by residents who live off of IL-4 and road trip enthusiasts who visit the cracking cement in order to experience an authentic piece of Americana history. While the tracks and pavement remain unchanged, there have been a few adjustments to the attraction and the original stretch of Route 66, including a bus pull-off on Route 4 to better accommodate tourists.

“People from all over the world are coming to Illinois and traveling Route 66 because they see it as evocative of the American experience and the American story. Route 66 is not only just the first paved road in the United States; it is not just Steinbeck’s Mother Road. It really is a way to express all these different stories in American history, an experience of Americans during the whole breadth of the 20th Century,” said Haaker. “One of the reasons we did the bus pull-off in Nilwood is because so many people were getting off and standing in the road. So we thought, let’s get them a place where they can get down and photograph the original concrete pavement, without actually standing in the middle of Route 4.”

Just as Route 66 is more than simply a paved highway, the turkey tracks are more than a 100-yearold road trip relic. This peculiar attraction may be a roadside oddity for the occasional traveler, but for residents of small towns that boast similar minor attractions, the narrative of the place they call home is shaped by the story of Route 66. “[The history of 66] definitely does give these small towns a type of identity. It gives people more reason to take the backroads and go through the small towns and see their side of life,” said Eric Donaldson.

For the Donaldsons, the story of the turkey tracks is one that is intertwined in their own family history. Bob now takes his grandchildren—Eric’s nieces and nephews—on the same bike rides that the family enjoyed when Eric was a boy. Eric hopes that when they get older and begin their own families, the tale will remain a Donaldson tradition.

“They’ll pass it on to their kids and let them know that their great-granddad put that little piece of property on the map,” said Eric.

Image by David J. Schwartz –Pics On Route 66.

By Nikki Roberts

WHERE T HE MO T HER ROAD BEGINS

Route 66 defined a remarkable era in our nation’s history – and it lives on today in Illinois’ Route 66’s many roadside attractions, museums, and restaurants – it’s the shining ribbon of blacktop we call ‘The Mother Road’.

SPE N D SOME T IME ON T HE I L L I N O I S R O U T E 6 6 S C E N I C B Y WA Y A N D DI S C OV E R ROU T E 6 6 Start planning your trip now at www.illinoisroute66.org. Request a visitor’s guide by emailing info@illinoisroute66.org and make sure to check out our mobile app by searching for ‘Explore Illinois Route 66’ in the App Store and Google Play, to help with all of your Route 66 Illinois planning.

Tel: (217)-414-9331 • www.illinoisroute66.org ROUTE Magazine 13

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he building is small but hard to miss, with a pinkand-white ice cream cone-shaped sign and two dancing figures on the roof—life-sized replicas of “Joliet” Jake and Elwood Blues from the 1980 hit comedy The Blues Brothers, which follows a paroled convict and his brother as they romp around Illinois, undertaking a “mission from God.” Underneath the Blues Brothers’ rooftop “stage” resides the Rich and Creamy ice cream stand, a small white frame building with turquoise trim and a touch of Mid-Century Modern sensibility. It’s a can’t-miss sweet stop on Joliet’s old stretch of Route 66 that neither locals nor Mother Road travelers can resist.

The ice cream shop has stood on this spot for almost fifty years, and it has regulars spanning decades, while new generations continue to discover its sweet offerings. Although it’s been known as Rich and Creamy for a couple decades now, in its previous life the little stand was named Kreamy Delight, established by a baseball-playing bakery entrepreneur and his wife.

Lifelong Joliet resident Ned Grabavoy had led a busy life even before he and his wife Irene opened the Kreamy Delight ice cream shop in 1976 on Broadway Street, a busy northsouth artery that carried IL Route 53 and old Route 66.

Grabavoy had tried out at Wrigley Field for the Chicago Cubs and served as a Joliet City Councilman. The owner-operator of Southern Fried Donuts and a small chain of bakeries, he had plenty of experience in the food business to confidently launch another location. But then, when he and Irene moved to a new location elsewhere in Joliet, they took the “Kreamy Delight” name with them. Grabavoy retired in 1995 and died in November 2001.

The City of Joliet acquired the property in 2001 as part of the Broadway Greenway project. With the city’s original plan for a recreational development including a marina and boat launch on the site, the ice cream stand was in danger of being razed. But when the barge operators objected to the water-based development, the city scrapped that plan, built a park instead, and kept the ice cream stand.

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At that point, the City of Joliet became landlords to business partners Bill Gulas and Richard Lodewegen and their Rich and Creamy ice cream business.

“I used to run it for the family that owned it before, and then they moved out of the location. So, I just moved into it on my own,” Gulas explained. “I started working there when I was 15. I’m 58 now. So, 43 years—I know every inch of this place.”

But in 2012, the U.S. Economy slipped into a recession. And then the Ruby Street Bridge closed, effectively shutting off much of the traffic that would normally drive by Rich and Creamy.

Business wasn’t good and rent went unpaid until the city filed a notice the next spring to evict. During the 2013 summer busy season, Gulas and Lodewegen were able to pay the back rent, the city applied for grant money for repairs to the little building, and the ice cream stand escaped disaster again.

The new Broadway Arboretum and Route 66 Park brought both a comfortable neighborhood vibe to the space along busy Broadway Street and an attractive and welcoming visual for Route 66 travelers. “Basically, it’s a walking path that the city put in—a kind of beautification of the area,” Gulas said. “And they have a lot of different trees that they plant. They use it as an experiment to see how they do in this area… There’s also a little kids playground right down the way from us that the city put in. [Customers] can have their ice cream and walk the trail and let the kids play on the playground.”

The surrounding Route 66 Park offers eclectic art works, informational kiosks that highlight other area Route 66 attractions, and an overlook for a good view of the Collins Street Prison.

Combined with the Rich and Creamy stand, the linear space sandwiched between Broadway Street and the Des Plaines River has transformed into a community gathering spot of sorts, where locals and tourists alike can rest, socialize, and enjoy some soft serve. In the evening dusk, with the stand’s roofline ablaze with neon and its patrons lined up for sweet treats, the scene is a nod to the middle decades of the last century.

Image by David J. Schwartz –Pics On Route 66.

JOL I ET ’ S R IC H A N D C R E A M Y

BN AWE

IN BLOOMINGTONNORMAL, IL

800.433.8226 \ VisitBN.org

On Museum Square in Downtown Bloomington, the Cruisin’ with Lincoln on 66 Visitors Center is located on the ground floor of the nationally accredited McLean County Museum of History.

The Visitors Center serves as a Route 66 gateway. Discover Route 66 history through an interpretive exhibit, and shop for unique local gift items, maps, and publications. A travel kiosk allows visitors to explore all the things to see and do in the area as well as plan their next stop on Route 66. You can even get “Busted on 66” with a photo op in the old county jail at the center!

CRUISIN’ WITH LINCOLN ON 66 VISITORS CENTER Open Monday–Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m.–2 p.m. (May through September) 200 North Main Street, Bloomington, Illinois 61701 • 1.309.827.0428 • CruisinwithLincolnon66.org *10% off gift purchases

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s you drive into sleepy Wilmington, you could be distracted by Route 66’s most famous spaceman, the Gemini Giant, but just a minute’s drive down the road brings you to a lesser- known but long-beloved character of classic Americana.

Dino (pronounced DYE-NO), the Sinclair dinosaur, has been emblematic of the brand since the 1930s, and Wilmington’s Dino stands in all his bright green glory atop a former Sinclair service station.

With the daring of a gambler and a knack for recognizing promising prospects, a young Harry Ford Sinclair had formed Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation in 1916 from a ragtag assortment of oil properties, refineries, and untested leases. But success was on his side and in just a year, Sinclair Oil was bringing in millions of dollars, and production only grew from there.

The Sinclair company began an advertising campaign in 1930 to educate consumers about fossil fuels from the Mesozoic Era, hence, the dinosaur theme. A dozen different dinosaurs “auditioned” in the initial advertising, but the Apatosaurus—then known as a Brontosaurus—rose in popularity above the others. Something about the gentle slope of the neck and the creature’s mild nature captured the American heart.

In 1932, Dino was registered as a trademark, and over the next thirty years, the gregarious dinosaur made multiple appearances in places like the 1933-34 Chicago “Century of Progress” World’s Fair, at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, and even in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. People loved him.

In Wilmington, brothers Harold and Bob Stainbrook opened their Sinclair Service Station in 1963 at the intersection of Main and Baltimore Streets—Route 66. A photo taken on the station’s opening day shows the Dino standing watch at the outside corner of the property. This picture remains the earliest known photo of a Dino statue at an actual Sinclair station.

Ironically, International Fiberglass in California was founded about the same time, when fiberglass boat maker Steve Dashew purchased the Prewitt Fiberglass Animals statue molds. There’s no argument over the company's production of two sizes (and several different colors) of dinosaurs, including green ones for the Sinclair company, beginning sometime in the 1960s. But an online debate exists as to whether or not the Stainbrooks’ green 16 ROUTE Magazine

Dino came from that company.

By the 1960s, the Sinclair company was no stranger to consolidations, restructures, and buyouts when needed to keep the company alive and well. The legal negotiations for a merger with the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) in 1969 spelled out the divestment of Sinclair assets, and the Dino branding was temporarily phased out, although many stations retained the logo. However, the brand rose again in 1976 when the Robert Holding family acquired Sinclair operations between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

By the time that local mechanic Gary Geiss opened G&D Tires in the Sinclair building in 2001, the station’s Dino had long since disappeared. “The Sinclair Oil Dinosaur made a fortunate comeback to Wilmington. The new owners purchased a replacement from Chattanooga and installed it on top of the station in 2001, where it remains today,” said Geoff Ladd, Assistant Director of Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway.

Over the years since Geiss brought the Dino home, the building has changed hands. The current owners, Danielle and Joe Brown, bought the station and reopened it in 2019 under the name BTI Tires and Alignment, after their previous company, Browns Towing Inc. “In 1995, while still in high school, Joe got his first job at the station,” Danielle reminisced. “He was the oil change guy and did tires.”

“It just worked out how this was his first job ever. Then working for Gary [Geiss] at another tire shop and then Gary coming here to buy this shop and then we ended up buying [it],” Danielle explained. “Everybody knows the little shop here in town. We didn’t want someone to come down here and get rid of the dinosaur, because it’s part of this town.”

Dino is definitely a key part of Wilmington, as the locals enjoy his varied attire depending on the occasion. He has been spotted wearing a football helmet, a Christmas wreath, hippie peace signs, and a COVID mask. “This iconic symbol is both important for the city and the Route 66 traveler. Originally patterned after a Brontosaurus, Dino is a harmless vegetarian unless you get under his foot!” Ladd quipped.

Celebrating its centennial in 2016, the Sinclair company commemorated 100 years of “fueling America’s journeys” with its peaceful green dinosaur leading the way. The Sinclair Dino remains one of America’s most enduring—and beloved—brands, and perhaps the most special Dino is right at the beginning of Route 66.

Image by David J. Schwartz –Pics On Route 66.

T he SINCLAIR DINO of WILMINGTON, ILLINOIS

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TAT TOOS Religion, Reality, and ‘Regert’

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Illustration courtesy of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

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popular internet meme from 2013 features a various war honors. But as European settlers began to arrive in character from the TV show We’re the Millers the Americas, the cultural landscape began to shift for Native proudly flashing a chest tattoo which reads “no Americans. With that came a shift in meaning for tattoos. ragrets”—the irony, obviously, being both the “A lot of these [tattoos] are tied to war honors—well, if unfortunate misspelling of “regret” and the fact that the there’s no more war, there’s no more honors,” said Singleton. character doesn’t seem to notice or care. Though fictional, A similar shift happened with religious tattoos. As settlers the meme is an example of a very real phenomenon. A quick arrived and Indigenous communities were ousted from their Google search for “bad tattoos” comes up with thousands of homes, some began to realize they were fighting a losing images of the regretful—and permanent—results of drunken battle. As a consequence, the foundation of their reality, nights out, or the wrong choice of tattoo artist. But for which was deeply intertwined with their religion, was badly hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years, tattooing was a sacred shaken. With that collapse, the significance of the tattoos practice for many Native American tribes for whom tattoos also began to shift—they became less common. Further represented rites of passage, war honors, or connections to contributing to this decline in tattooing were the vastly religion and the natural world. different cultural associations Although many tattoos today are, the settlers had with tattoos. For in a sense, sacred to those who get Europeans, tattoos were mostly them, it’s safe to say the significance reserved for those on the fringes of tattoos has shifted radically since of society, which negatively the practice began in the Americas. colored their views of Indigenous The National Cowboy and Western practices of tattooing. For these Heritage Museum in Oklahoma reasons, tattoos became taboo City seeks to explore this drastic among Native people in the late transition in an upcoming nineteenth-century as Western exhibition called Tattoos: Religion, culture became dominant and the Reality, and ‘Regert’ beginning push to assimilate grew stronger.

August 27th.

Tattooing saw a resurgence in “It’s really going to focus on the mainstream American society in history and cultural implications the 1960s, known as the “tattoo of tattooing and Native American Renaissance.” Nowadays, one art and culture. But I also think in five Americans is tattooed, it’s important to bring the and while, for most, tattoos narrative into today. So, it’s going are thought-through artistic to focus on both revitalization of expressions of individualism, they tattooing in native and Indigenous can also represent unfortunate communities, but also tattooing decisions, some of which the within society as a whole,” said exhibition will showcase.

Eric Singleton, curator of the Traditional Native American exhibit. “It’s hard not to look at practices of tattooing are seeing Hidatsa Chief, Addih-Hiddisch (Road Maker). how we as a culture have taken a resurgence as well—with the

By Karl Bodmer, Lithograph, 1834. on tattooing as expressions of stigma against tattoos now nearly individual identity. Some of those nonexistent, tribes are making an [are] wrapped up in supreme instances of regret.” effort to bring back long-lost traditions and reconnect with Although each Native American tribe had distinct tattooing their roots. The exhibition will explore these various revival traditions, each with its own cultural significance, there are efforts alongside the significance of tattoos in mainstream plenty of commonalities between tribes, which allows the American culture. exhibition to take a broader focus. For example, tattoos were For some brave museumgoers, the exhibit may also feature often given as part of various coming-of-age ceremonies and an interactive component. “I’m really hoping that I can talk religious rites—the Inuit people of Alaska are one prominent a few people into actually doing tattoos in the gallery,” said example of both of these. Women were tattooed to symbolize Singleton. “Let’s see if we can just invite the tattoo artists the transition from girlhood to womanhood, and it was also [and] have them set up shop in the gallery. And, you know, if believed that a woman could not enter the spirit world unless you sign a waiver, you’re in.” she was tattooed. For many tribes, tattoos were also earned Regardless of whether visitors leave the museum with fresh from noble deeds in war. The Osage Nation and some Iroquois knowledge or fresh ink, this exhibition is sure to leave a tribes, in particular, were known for giving tattoos to symbolize lasting—maybe even permanent—impression.

ROUTE Magazine 19

hen Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 in Arizona, many of the Mother Road’s western communities between Seligman and Kingman were hit hard. Stranded from the straighter route far to the south, service stations, motels, and cafés were left famished for business, preceding their eventual closure. Few places are as symbolic of this hardship as Truxton’s Frontier Motel & Cafe, which fought long and hard to stave off the effects of the bypass and, for a time, was even successful. But that was not to last.

Truxton began as a humble fueling station for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in 1883. The railroad siding, also called “Truxtun,” references the name Lieutenant Edward Beale gave a nearby spring during his 1857 expedition, after his son. The railroad tracks were moved following a flood in 1904, but the siding remained, and two men— Donald Dilts and Clyde McCune— carried on the Truxton name when they established a community next to the siding in 1951, having heard of plans to build a dam on the Colorado River at the nearby Bridge Canyon. Though the dam never materialized, the prospect built up Truxton practically overnight as people joined the effort to serve and benefit from the Mother Road’s traffic. “[The Frontier] opened in the very early ‘50s,” said travel writer Roger Naylor. “It was Alice Wright who opened it, but it became most famous when it was purchased in 1957 by the Barkers—[Ray] and Mildred—and they’re the ones who really kind of put it on the map, as it was known as just a great café.”

In its heyday, the Frontier Motel & Cafe, which was known in particular for its homemade pies, was an exemplary example of a ‘50s motor court. The motel consisted of nine rooms, all of which are vacant today. A neon marquee sign—made of light blue panels reading “Frontier Motel Restaurant”—still stands in front of the café, whose wall depicts a long-armed chef pointing in the direction of the entrance.

In September of 1978, I-40 bypassed Truxton’s stretch of the Mother Road, and the impact on the community 20 ROUTE Magazine

was devastating. Even as businesses closed, however, the Barkers continued to run the motel and café, even taking up ownership of other businesses such as a nearby gas station.

In 1987, they helped establish the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona, which did its part to maintain the Frontier’s neon sign when it began showing its age in the early 2000s. Ray passed away in 1990, but Mildred kept the café going until her death in 2012.

Still, interested parties labored to keep the establishment afloat. In November of the following year, Sam Murray, owner of Gilligans Route 66 Tours, purchased the Frontier from relatives of the Barkers, and two months later he hired two Route 66 enthusiasts, Allen and Stacy Greer, to manage it for him.

“I met [the Greers],” said Naylor. “Basically, they just cleaned up one room, kind of an office; they were going to set up a little visitor’s center, and the plan was to reopen the [motel and] the café, and it didn’t seem to really pan out—they were very enthusiastic, really nice people, and I’m not sure exactly what happened—they kind of left without a word [in 2015]. They had a little souvenir shop and sold some snacks, and that was pretty much as far as it got.”

Murray exited his interest in the Frontier in 2016, and no recorded owner has taken his place since. The neon sign has been worn down once again, and the motel, whose upkeep went downhill after Ray’s passing in 1990, is no longer suitable for a stay. The café, unused since 2012, has not fared much better.

“As much as I would like to see it come back, I don’t know, because it is in an isolated spot, which is not [necessarily] a problem for Route 66 icons,” said Naylor. “[Travelers] like these out-of-the-way places, so I think if somebody’s got the energy and money [and is] willing to open it up, it would thrive again. But whether somebody’s going to step up and do that, I don’t know,” said Naylor.

“So, I’m afraid it’s just going to sit abandoned, until that right person comes along. That’s part of the charm of Route 66: so often, the right person does come along.”

Image by John Smith.

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ROUTE Magazine 21

THE LEGEN

By Jimmy Pack Jr. Photographs by Efren Lopez/Route66Images 22 ROUTE Magazine

ND ROUTE Magazine 23

T

he city of Tucumcari, New Mexico, is a nexus of ideas; it is where the land of the Comanche, mythology, and American pop culture all come together to invite travelers on Route 66 to bed down in “Tucumcari Tonite!” It is the largest city on Route 66 between Amarillo, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, once home to 2,000 motels, then 1,200, and now fewer than 100. But that nexus is still alive with blazing neon and loyal stewards, housed in one of the most fabled lodgings of Route 66, the Blue Swallow Motel, a place of hope, legends, and a haven for many.

lights beckoned to travelers in what would have looked like a miniature Las Vegas. Postcards touted “Tucumcari has the Finest Motels in the World.”

Then in the 1950s, President Eisenhower championed the new Interstate Highway System. And with that, Tucumcari’s boom days were numbered.

Today, Tucumcari is a sleepy town.

Modern day businesses line the exits of the Interstate. But drive down the town’s main street and you will find a time capsule of remnants of the Mother Road’s prosperity. The town’s population has dwindled and many of the famous motels that proclaimed the slogan “Tucumcari Tonite!” no longer exist. But there is one motel, heralded as the crown jewel of America’s most famous highway, that still stands, as it did, over 80 years ago.

The Legend of Tucumcari

The Beginnings of an Icon

How Tucumcari got its name is not concretely known.

Pronounced “Too-come-carry,” the name was first bestowed on Tucumcari Mesa, now Tucumcari Mountain, a uniquely shaped mesa located on the outskirts of the town. The most popular myth, supposedly fabricated by a 1907 Methodist minister, is that elderly Apache Chief Wautonomah was worried about who would take his place as leader of the tribe.

Two rival braves, Tonopah and Tocom, vied for the position, while also fighting for the love of Chief Wautonomah’s daughter, Kari. Chief Wautonomah declared to Tonopah and Tocom that the two men must fight to the death with knives, with the survivor becoming Chief and husband to Kari. But for Kari, there was only one true love—Tocom. Kari watched in secret as both men battled, and when Tonopah stabbed Tocom to death, Kari, in despair, took her own life. Chief Wautonomah, overcome with grief, stuck Kari’s knife into his own heart—his dying words, “Tocom-Kari!” However, there is no proof to this Shakespearean star-crossed lover’s story. But it sure is romantic.

Elliott Canonge, an Oklahoma linguist, argues that the name is Comanche, “tukamukaru,” which means “to lie in wait for someone or something to approach.” It is believed that Mesa Tucumcari was used as a lookout by Comanche war parties.

There is no evidence that the Apache ever settled there.

Up until the early 20th Century, Tucumcari had been home to the Comanche, but after European explorers surveyed it, and the United States fulfilled her “manifest destiny,” the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad extended its line through to the area in 1901. The town suffered a couple of informal names: Ragtown, Six-Shooter Siding, and then was formally known as Douglas (for reasons that are not known), until finally, after being turned into a division point by the railroad, the name Tucumcari was officially adopted in 1908, and the town designated the Quay County seat.

By the 1920s, Tucumcari was firmly established, and when Route 66 was born, Tucumcari became a major stopover with a bustling main street. Motels, diners, service stations, and curio shops sprung up to cater to the influx of cross-country travelers, on their journey west on Route 66. Bright neon

One of the earliest motels in town was the venerable Blue Swallow, which began life as the Blue Swallow Court. Local builder W. A. Huggins, known as Archy by his wife Maude, purchased a group of building lots on March 29, 1939, and began construction of the Blue Swallow Court for Theodore “Ted” Jones and his wife Majorie. Huggins went on to also build the Rainbow’s End Court, next to the Blue Swallow, and the Traveler’s Paradise Motel—later changed to Paradise Motel—on the west end of town.

The Blue Swallow Court opened with ten rooms in full operation by 1940.

The motel is an L-shaped building with 12 units, with two additional units added around 1948, with an office and manager’s residence. One of the most unique comforts for those staying at the Blue Swallow was that not only did travelers have a safe place to rest, but so did their cars—each room had its own garage.

Mr. Huggins and his wife took ownership of the motor court along with a small café until Ted and Majorie Jones took over in 1942 and ran it for the rest of the 1940s into the ‘50s. It had long been believed that Mr. Jones and his wife died in a plane crash in 1958; however, according to the June 28, 1954 Tucumcari Daily News, Jones had been “stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage” and then died two days later at Tucumcari Hospital.

The Blue Swallow Court was then purchased by Floyd B. Redman, a native Kansan whose family had moved to Tucumcari. His father, Jerome, and brother, Clark, were builders. Floyd became a local businessman who first operated the Travelers Court and Sinclair Oil Services at the corner of First and High Streets. He then purchased the Vorenberg Hotel on Main and Second Streets, which was described in 1910 as “The finest most modern hotel in New Mexico with steam heat, hot and cold water, telephones in every room….

Catering to the wants and needs of traveling people.”

24 ROUTE Magazine

Dawn and Robert Federico at the front desk.

When Route 66 came through Tucumcari and businesses were popping up all over, Redman purchased the Bonanza Court, Pawn Shop, Morning Glory Grocery, and then the Blue Swallow Court in October of 1963, where a woman named Lillian Legion happened to be managing the operation.

Lillian Redman’s Blue Swallow Motel If there ever was a canonization of those who made Route 66 an international symbol of the United States, Lillian Redman, would undoubtedly be the first, and who better to explain that than the man who wrote the seminal book on Route 66, Michael Wallis, author of Route 66: The Mother Road, who was also a close friend of Lillian’s.

“I stayed at the Blue Swallow countless times going back to the 1960s, and we always called her ‘Miss Lillian.’ She was born in Clifton, Texas, and headed west in a covered wagon, with her father, in 1915. She first moved to Tucumcari in 1923, and when she finished high school she worked as a legal secretary for a bit, and then she became a Harvey Girl. She worked at two significant Harvey Houses: the big Harvey House in Kingman, Arizona, and the one in

Winslow, Arizona (La Posada), which was the crown jewel of them all,” said Wallis.

Lillian (Legion) Redman worked as a Harvey Girl until the early 1940s. “Through the war she owned and operated a restaurant in Gallup, New Mexico, another excellent Route 66 town, and then she finally came back to Tucumcari to work as a chef,” said Wallis. With all that hospitality expertise, Lillian was a natural to become the manager of the Blue Swallow Court in 1958. It was five years later when Floyd Redman offered the court to Ms. Legion as an engagement present in 1963. They then married on December 22, 1964.

After becoming the owner, Lillian modernized the name from “Court” to “Motel” and added a larger neon sign in 1960, letting travelers know that the Blue Swallow Motel has “100% refrigerated air, TV,” and “Budget Pricing.” To this day that sign is a well-photographed neon icon for road trippers looking for safe, welcoming, historic accommodations.

She also added a new front office with living quarters attached. “She lived in that building, and one of her favorite things to do when people were coming through was to talk.

She was not afraid to have a conversation—she was a good conversationalist. One time she talked about how she had ROUTE Magazine 25

Even in 1992, when Route 66 was starting a new surge in popularity, Lillian was offering more than reasonable motel rates at “$10 and up regardless of the season.” To date, Lillian Redman has the longest tenure as owner of the Blue Swallow Motel, 35 years, and she was lucky enough to see the motel placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

Five years later, she retired and then sold the motel to Gene Shelton, who kept it briefly before selling it to Hilda and Dale Bakke. Lillian Redman died February 21, 1999.

“I saw her many times,” said Wallis, “and she always talked about how the Blue Swallow was her home. This was the best place she’d ever lived. She really, really loved Tucumcari and she really loved being at the Blue Swallow. She realized that it was an important property, that it was a piece of history and it needed to be saved. If she were alive today, and somehow maybe she’s watching on the big Mother Road in the sky, I’m sure she’s quite happy with the succession of owners who have followed her. They’ve all been good,” added Wallis.

Into the 21st Century

Kevin and Nancy Mueller.

problems with an eye and, whether this is true or not, she told me that she had her eye taken out and someone’s eye put in, and it was a ‘Texas eye,’” said Wallis.

Wallis confirmed the legend that when guests didn’t have money to stay the night, the Redmans accepted personal items, or sometimes provided rooms for free. Their reputation on the road grew, not only because of their kindness and genuine interest in travelers, but because their rooms were clean and comfortable.

After Floyd passed away on April 6, 1973, Lillian continued the tradition of being a welcoming ambassador to her motel, and to Tucumcari and Route 66, despite having to weather the darkest period of Route 66 by herself.

“The population back in the 1970s was like 15,000 people, now we’re down to 4,500-5,000,” said Paula J. Neese, Director of Tucumcari Historical Museum. “The town was booming for a very long time up until the ‘70s, until I-40 came in. And then our trucking industry went down. Eight or nine major trucking industries were moved out because of the double-trailer, triple-trailer law; New Mexico wouldn’t allow it. And the railroad left; it was redirected to Vaughn, instead of Tucumcari. But it’s still a nice farming and ranching area; it still is a nice place to move to.”

“When Route 66 was closed to the majority of traffic and the other highway came in, I felt just like I had lost an old friend,” Lillian once said. “But some of us stuck it out and are still here on Route 66.” Lillian, despite being an old-timer and matriarch of Route 66, always looked to the future for the Blue Swallow, saying, “If people are interested enough to ask about what happened years ago, they are still thinking about their future, too.”

26 ROUTE Magazine

In another life, Dale Bakke was a licensed electrician who was employed by the Colorado prison system. He worked there for nine years, with the latter two years souring him on the job.

He began to consider making a change. “The Bakkes read an advertisement in a paper in Colorado, and the advertisement said, ‘The Deal Of The Century.’ They didn’t know Tucumcari, or motel management, from a ham sandwich, and they barely knew anything about Route 66, but I knew they were what I would call quick studies. They recognized the historic and cultural value—the intrinsic value—of the place and they knew it had great potential because the bones were so good,” said Wallis. And so they threw their lot in with the iconic motel and the quirky little town.

The Bakkes, and their teenage daughter, were up to the task and immediately went to work restoring and modernizing the motel, preserving its Southwest Vernacular style, repainting the pink stuccoed walls and repairing the shell designs and stepped parapets. They updated the electrical systems, repaired neon, and installed 1939 Bell-manufactured Bakelite rotarydial phones, and 1950s light fixtures and showerheads in each room. However, their tenure would also be short-lived.

The Bakkes sold the Blue Swallow Motel to Bill Kinder and Terri Johnson in 2006, who applied for a cost-share grant from the National Park Service’s Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, using the money to fully restore the Redman’s neon sign. Then in 2011, Bill and Terri sold the motel again to another couple who continued to hold sacred the stewardship that Lillian Redman started for the Blue Swallow 60 years prior.

“A Motel? Yeah, right!”

Kevin and Nancy Mueller were Michiganites in 2011 when life, as it always does, brought change to Kevin Mueller. “For whatever reason I’ve just always had an interest in the past history nostalgia for Americana,” says Kevin. “I was interested in old cars, liked to travel. My dad grew up in St. Louis near Route 66, made some trips with his family to California on Route 66, and we had photos of those trips. Then I lost my 20-year job with a company that I never thought I would leave. My wife kind of kicked me out and said, ‘Go find out what it is you want to do.’”

Kevin took a solo road trip to visit family and friends. “It of months’ time, we hit it off with them over the phone. was an odd thing because just out of the blue I woke up one Then we met with them in person at the motel, spent time morning thinking about Route 66 and wondered what was for with them, and we thought, my gosh, we couldn’t have sale on the road, and with the miracle of modern technology I picked a better replacement for us,” says Kevin. Particularly found Ron Warnick’s Route 66 website, which had a listing of since Dawn and Robert Federico found the Blue Swallow in places for sale on the route. Some of those things I recognized the same way as Kevin. from trips that we’d been on and there was the Blue Swallow.

We hadn’t stayed there before, but I had seen it once, and I The Leap of Faith was fascinated by the look of it. I called my wife and said, Dawn and Robert Federico, originally of Crystal Lake, ‘You got to see this place. It’s so absolutely cool and it’s for Illinois, purchased the Blue Swallow on June 22, 2020. sale. We’ve got to do this. You won’t believe it,’ and she was “We visited my in-laws in Tucson for Christmas 2019,” like, ‘A motel. Yeah, right!’ It turned out to be a really good fit says Robert, “and we were driving home and we stayed in for us. It was a very exciting adventure in our lives.”

Tucumcari. The town intrigued the heck out of us. The whole When Kevin and Nancy first arrived at the motel they knew route intrigued the heck out of us. And by the time we were that it would be a 24/7 job, and they had plenty of time on their home we were getting books from the library and ordering hands to address issues with the motel that hadn’t been dealt books from Amazon, starting to learn a little bit more about with since it had been built: digging up galvanized plumbing this phenomenon called Route 66.” and replacing the roof, but always mindful of the preservation Like many who travel the Mother Road, Route 66 stayed mindset. “We didn’t want it to look different. We didn’t want it with Dawn and Robert long after they were on it; the road to look new. We just wanted everything to work so that when continued to beckon them. “We thought about the towns we you turned on the hot water, there was hot water, and when had visited and stayed in overnight,” Dawn said. “The Boots you flushed the toilet, they would work,” says Kevin, who spent Court was one of those places we stayed at on the way back. his time at the Blue Swallow maintaining and restoring the And in our research, we found that the Blue Swallow was for motel by updating the structure of the buildings, reinforcing the sale. And so, we would walk the dog in the morning and talk floors, updating the plumbing (including vintage 1939 toilets), about how interesting it would be, and what a unique new and creating the Lillian Redman Suite. chapter that would be, to be caretakers.”

If it sounds like owning the Blue Swallow Motel was Both spent the next few weeks soul searching. “We went all work and no play, Kevin and Nancy would heartily back into our, you know, 60-70-hour weeks and we went disagree. “It’s a unique atmosphere, but there’s something back into our world,” said Robert. “We had just taken a about that place that has a way of bringing people together. three-day trip, we saw the in-laws, and now we’re back.

People relax and let their guard down. They talk about their Well, in the beginning of March, Covid-19 hit, and it hit my experiences, they share—they become friends. The Blue industry really hard. I was a U.S. trade show coordinator and Swallow is unlike anything else we’ve ever been a part of. It’s international trade show coordinator. So obviously there are amazing the number of friendships that we saw start between not a lot of events happening around the world right now. total strangers at the Blue Swallow. Although we made We had shut down the office and Dawn and I were [both] lots of friends from all over the world, our guests became working at home. We were sharing our 12 by 12 office and friends with each other and, you know, from the miracle of social media you see those relationships continue, and it was just an all the way around amazing experience.”

Though the Muellers enjoyed every minute of their ownership of the Blue Swallow, by 2019 they heard a different calling.

Their two adult sons, both of whom had worked at the motel, had gone off to college and built lives elsewhere. Nancy and Kevin wanted to head to Tennessee to retire and enjoy family life, particularly their grandchildren. “We had a contract with a family from California that [were] going to move to Tucumcari, and we thought they were a pretty good fit for the place. But then the virus hit, and they backed out. Only a couple of weeks later, we made contact for the first time with the Federicos, The Federicos Outside the Blue Swallow. and amazingly within a couple ROUTE Magazine 27

Dawn said, ‘You know, you need a carrot. We need something to get through these tough months. And the carrot is the happy place. The Blue Swallow is for sale.’”

Dawn, who owned her own company as a project manager for other companies, took a leap of faith with Robert, who tendered his resignation after 21 years, “but the opportunity made it easy to walk away and look forward to our next chapter,” said Robert, despite the fact that they were both trading their 60-70-hour work weeks for a 24/7-work week.

But they describe owning their own hotel and working for themselves as a “completely different animal” than the grind of working for someone else. For Dawn and Robert, the Blue Swallow is not work, but stewardship and community.

It struck Dawn that their experience in Tucumcari had been unique. Robert sat in a chair outside his room, left his luggage by the door, and started talking to the other guests staying at the motel. They discussed where they were from and why they were traveling as they enjoyed the dusk sky easing into black, allowing the soft, gentle glow of the Blue Swallow’s neon to bathe them in serenity.

Dawn and Robert were not merely spellbound. They knew that the upkeep and operation of an 80+ year-old motel required a lot of dedication and elbow grease. “Our previous home was built in the late ‘40s,” says Dawn, “so we’re pretty used to a running punch list. And there’s always the goal of leaving it better for the next person, or just updating it for the next few years while keeping it vintage.”

Restoring, Not Replacing Dawn’s and Robert’s goals are to continue the efforts of the previous owners in restoring and maintaining the motel to its most historically accurate incarnation. They give much credit

Sundown in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

28 ROUTE Magazine

to the most previous owners, Kevin and Nancy, for setting them on the right track in terms of historical accuracy for the venue. Right now, they are looking to repaint the entire motel back to its original color, the color discovered during pipe restoration.

“Kevin took the time and the effort to peel back all the layers of paint to confirm the original color, and the color you see today, that we will be repainting, is the first color W. A. Huggins put on this building. I’m proud to tell people that this is the original color. And when I paint, I’ll be proud to paint it that original color. It’s that transition that keeps going on between owners, and it’s humbling,” says Robert, who beams with pride as he explains how he and Dawn have gone over every item in the hotel to understand its history.

Both Dawn and Robert maintain that the heart of the Blue Swallow Motel is the neon. “It’s fun to see the guests come out of their rooms and just hang out underneath the warm glow,” says Dawn.

To many guests, the neon is a relic they seldom see in a world illuminated by the computer glow of LED lights. When Dawn and Robert explain to guests that the light thrown off isn’t from a computer or a wire, but a gas electrically charged, those lights become something more than decoration or a retro design look. The light comes alive, complete with a heartbeat that sounds like an electric hum.

The Blue Swallow Motel, which is lined in neon all around, is a familiar sight to those traveling Route 66 (or even I-40!), and to those armchair travelers who have seen her in countless travel books. The Blue Swallow, a symbol of hope, was and always has been the perfect moniker for a place of lodging in the middle of the high plains of New Mexico, and since it is still in good hands, it will continue to welcome travelers well into the 21st Century and beyond.

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VISITTUCUMCARINM.COM #tucumcariproud

ROUTE Magazine 29

COZY IN SPR

30 ROUTE Magazine

PRINGFIELD

By Heide Brandes Photographs by David J. Schwartz – Pics On Route 66

ROUTE Magazine 31

W

hile it looks like a corn dog, with its golden hue, the cozy dog is entirely its own thing. Yes, it is a wiener on a stick covered in batter and fried, but the cozy dog’s story reveals it to be much more than a simple corn dog.

Beginning its culinary life as a “crusty cur,” this American fast food treat is unique to the Cozy Dog Drive In, an unassuming little building on the south side of Springfield, Illinois. For decades, travelers along Route 66 have found themselves on this block of South Sixth Street to try a cozy dog, a treat perfected in a military kitchen and approved by hundreds of soldiers.

Today, the little diner, with its iconic spinning sign of two cozy dogs locked in an embrace, still attracts travelers and locals alike whose mouths water for a taste of old-fashioned American fare along one of the most storied roadways in America.

A step inside, and you are time-warped back decades.

The walls, covered in vintage posters and signs, license plates, black-and-white historic photographs, and Route 66 memorabilia, emanate the well-worn air of a historic institution. A checkered floor with round diner tables and booths topped with red and yellow plastic squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard, harkens back to the 1960s style. It’s not fancy, but it is a cozy reminder of the mom-and-pop diners that contributed enormously to Route 66’s halcyon period.

On any given day, fans of the Cozy Dog line up at the Formica counter, watching as third-generation owner Josh Waldmire and his crew load up a custom-made vertical mounted rack with Oscar Meyer hot dogs three at a time.

The hot dogs are dipped into batter and then placed vertically into the oil to fry up in two to three minutes.

Nearby, cooks flip burgers on the flat grill, fry up baskets of fries, or ladle out bowls of chili.

On average, 300 to 400 cozy dogs are cooked each day; in the popular summer months, the diner can serve up to 900 a day at busy times.

Times may change, challenges may arise, and buildings may go up and come down, but the Cozy Dog Drive In remains the same… and so does the wiener on a stick that made it so famous.

Crusty Cur and a Good Idea The Cozy Dog has been serving the public for over 70 years now, using the same technique that Ed Waldmire Jr. developed back in 1946. Though Ed passed away in 1993, his son Buz Waldmire, Buz’s ex-wife Sue, and their son Josh, have kept the legend of the Cozy Dog going, using the same recipes that made the Route 66 eatery so famous from the start.

Ed Waldmire Jr. was born May 16, 1916, in Petersburg, Illinois, where he grew up with his two younger brothers on a farm. Hard work was no stranger to Ed, and that work ethic created a monster of an entrepreneurial spirit.

“My dad was the oldest and he worked his way up while attending Springfield High School. He went to school, but the 32 ROUTE Magazine

family had this farm with cows,” said Edwin “Buz” Waldmire III, Ed Jr.’s son. “He would be out delivering cream and milk in the neighborhood, and he just always worked.”

After high school Ed enrolled in Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and got a job through friends at Howard’s Coffee Corner Café. His work ethic impressed the owner so much that he was quickly offered a management position. That first foray into the restaurant business led to another venture for the young college student.

Ed and a few friends from Knox College bought an old building and opened up a place called the Goal Post. It was his first restaurant, and the college buddies took turns operating it while attending classes.

“My dad liked to brag that when he graduated college in 1941, he had a couple thousand dollars. I guess in the 1940s, that was a pretty cool thing,” said Buz. In 1941, while visiting Muskogee, Oklahoma, Ed tried an unusual sandwich called a “corn-dog.” It was a wiener baked in cornbread, but at the time, making such a simple dish took longer than usual, and he wondered if there was a faster way to cook a hot dog covered in batter.

“In the fall of 1941, I told this story to a fellow student at Knox College whose father was in the bakery business, and

Order up at Cozy Dog.

then gave it no further thought,” said Ed in a family interview conducted by his late son Bob, who was in eighth grade at the time.

After graduating from Knox College with majors in economics and psychology, Ed attended the University of Illinois to study agricultural economics, mainly because of his childhood on the farm. His father was a farm investment manager for an investment company, so the agricultural business simply made sense for the young entrepreneur.

But, after graduating from U. of I., Ed was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1945.

“He spent about one year in service, but never served overseas,” said Buz. “He spent his time in Amarillo, Texas, working in the finance office, mustering returning soldiers and discharging them. Of course, that’s when the Cozy Dog happened.”

While stationed at the Amarillo Airfield, Ed received a letter from fellow Knox College student, Don Strand, who hadn’t forgotten Ed’s questions about cooking a batter-dipped hot dog. Strand’s father owned the Strand Bakery in Springfield, and Don and his father were curious enough to experiment with a batter that would hold up to deep-frying.

“To my surprise, he had developed a mix that would stick on a wiener while being french-fried. He wondered if he could send some down that I could try in Amarillo. Having plenty of spare time, I said ‘yes,’” added Ed. He used the U.S.O. kitchen at the Amarillo Airfield as his test kitchen. Using cocktail forks for sticks, he tried the batter and served up what he called the “crusty cur” to the soldiers stationed there.

“They became very popular both at the U.S.O. in town and at the P.X. on the airfield. My friend continued to send mix and we continued to sell thousands of crusty curs until I was discharged–honorably–in the spring of 1946.”

After being honorably discharged, he decided to sell them that spring, but his wife Virginia–thankfully–wasn’t a big fan of the name.

“My mother didn’t like the name crusty cur, which really doesn’t sound bad when you think about the terms at that time. But they came up with the name cozy dogs and they developed the logo,” said Buz. “The name cozy dog came about through a session of brainstorming with my mom, dad, my grandpa and grandma, my dad’s younger brother John Robert Waldmire, who later worked for my dad as ROUTE Magazine 33

a sales rep selling mom-and-pop businesses the idea to include cozy dogs on their menu. The ‘cozy dog’ morphed into ‘Cozy Dogs’ and we had the slogan, ‘one calls for another’ and the slogan, ‘eat ‘em on the run, it’s a lot of fun’ alluding to the baked-on bun and the popsicle stick handle. After choosing the name cozy dogs, they set about designing a logo to go along with the name. I still have an old scrapbook that shows the development of the images.

It’s pretty neat.”

“When people asked him how he got the idea for a corn dog, Ed told them about ordering one at a roadside diner that took 20 minutes to bake. He developed and invented the equipment that we still use today to cook the cozy dogs vertically in the grease, and he was able to cook them very fast. Instead of cooking one at a time and letting them float around, he could cook a dozen in this new way,” added Buz. Cozy dogs were officially launched at the Lake Springfield Beach House, a community bathhouse along the shores of Lake Springfield, on June 16, 1946, and Ed capitalized on the crowds that gathered at the community center to introduce his new fare. After the launch, Ed brought his new food idea to the Illinois State Fair that same year, making it one of the first infamous “food on a stick” creations that people enjoy at fairs.

Cozy Dog used to be next to a Dairy Queen.

34 ROUTE Magazine

Building a Cozy Business Based on the popularity, Ed opened the first Cozy Dogs House, a takeout counter on South Grand Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Streets in Springfield, followed by a second one at Ash and MacArthur, which closed after three years due to the property owners not renewing the lease. In 1949, the landmark Cozy Dog Drive In opened on Route 66, also known as South Sixth Street.

When Ed built the Cozy Dog Drive In, he partnered with his friend Gilbert Stein, one of the founding members of the Dairy Queen franchise. The two of them chose that piece of property on Route 66, though at the time, they just thought of Route 66 as a busy road, the main highway between Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri. They didn’t realize how big that highway would become.

“They bought the property together and they put it in a 50/50 Land Trust so that Gilbert Stein technically owned 50% of the property and Dad owned 50%,” said Buz. “They sealed the deal with a handshake and a gentlemen’s agreement. Gilbert built the Dairy Queen and Daddy built the drive in next to him.

They shared the expense to connect the two buildings.”

At the time, the Dairy Queen closed during the winter months and only sold ice cream treats. The Drive In stayed

open all year long, serving up cozy dogs, hamburgers, fries, chili, and hot coffee 24/7.

Ed still worked with the Strand Bakery to develop the batter mix, until Don Strand’s father passed away in the 1960s.

“The father passed away and Don didn’t want to continue the business. He went into real estate in the 1960s, which is why Roland Industries of St. Louis started making our flour,” said Buz. However, the flour recipe has not changed since 1962, when it was tweaked a bit by Ed and his wife.

“Mr. Roland began mixing the flour for us, as Strand Bakery was closing. The secret, if you call it that, is that it is a well-crafted formula which does not depend on sugar to give it popularity.

It actually has very little sugar, compared with all the other brands/ flours on the market. The success of the cozy dog is in large part due to the fact that it is a food that is cooked fresh when ordered. It is never frozen, never cold to be Josh Waldmire preparing to fry the corn dogs. reheated. Most corn dogs served in restaurants are manufactured in bulk, frozen, and then, well, you know.” cash register. We all took turns working there. I think my personality was most like my dad’s.”

After graduating from high school, Buz continued to help at A Family Affair the drive in throughout college. He also graduated from Knox Ed and Virginia had five boys. Bill was born in 1942, Bob was College in 1970 before getting drafted into the Vietnam War. born in 1945, and Buz followed in 1947. Two other boys, Jeff “I was gone for three years. As soon as I graduated, I lost and Tommy, were born in 1952 and 1955. An entrepreneurial my student deferment. And even though I was married and visionary, Ed ensured that his children were part of the family had a child, that didn’t make a difference,” said Buz. “But business and he had them working at the Cozy Dog from an it was toward the end of the Vietnam conflict, and I got out early age. early because they had a program where you could join the Bob Waldmire became a Route 66 legend bringing attention National Guard for the time you had left. So, I got out of the and notoriety to the Mother Road and to the Cozy Dog Drive service early and joined the Air National Guard and I stayed In. A nomadic wanderer and Route 66 ambassador at heart, there for another 20 years.”

Bob and his old VW Van, that he used to ply the historic highway, served as inspiration for Fillmore in the Disney Pixar Dogging Into the Future hit movie Cars. On December 16, 2009, Bob Waldmire sadly When Buz returned from serving his country, he met his passed away from colon cancer, a disease that took many of second wife Sue, who was working at the drive in for his his relatives. father. The two married in 1975 and bought the restaurant.

“My dad passed from colon cancer, as did his dad in 1959.

The couple had four boys of their own - twins Joshua and As did Bob in 2009. Jeff, my younger brother, passed away Eddie, Tony and Nick - and continued to run the little drive from liver cancer three years ago, but my dad’s mom lived in on the corner. into her 90s,” Buz said.

“We tore the original building down in 1996 because “When dad opened the restaurant, he thought everyone it was falling apart, and we put in a new building in should capitalize on it. So, he put together sales kits for the partnership with Walgreens on the same corner. The old cozy dog cooker that he designed. They were electric cookers, building was collapsing around us and Walgreens offered to and he would travel to mom-and-pop restaurants throughout give us a new building if they could have the corner spot. the Midwest selling [them] and the flour mix,” said Buz. I’m in their debt. I don’t know if we could afford to be here As a high school student, Buz remembers hauling today without that partnership.”

50-pound bags of cozy dog flour to the bus station to Sue and Buz divorced in 2000, and Buz sold his interest in send to restaurants in places like Galena, Illinois, or South the restaurant to his ex-wife. “Then, two of the boys–Joshua Bend, Indiana. “I remember my brother standing on milk and Tony–bought it from her about eight years ago. I think crates cooking fries and hamburgers while I worked the ROUTE Magazine 35

The Cozy Dog vintage sign.

she took the restaurant over because she wanted to keep it for them.”

Like his father before him, Josh grew up inside the Cozy Dog. “It was very interesting to grow with Cozy Dog. We pretty much had the run of the place, and it was our own little playground,” said Josh. “We spent [almost] all our Christmas breaks and all our summer breaks there hanging out in the back. We would help out and work cleaning trays, wiping down tables, little things like that. But we really didn’t get too much into working at Cozy Dog until we moved over to our new building.”

When Josh turned 18, he wanted to try something different than frying cozy dogs. He worked as a receiving manager at one store and a customer service manager at another. He ran an online auction site but couldn’t get on full time.

“So, after that, I decided to come back to help Mom,” Josh said. “I was working at a small printing company when I started working for my mom part-time after she took over when my parents split up. I worked there, part-time for probably six—seven months, and then I decided to quit the other job at the printing company and started working for my mom full time.”

“My brother Tony and I purchased it from my mom in 2013. In 2016, Tony passed away,” Josh said. As expected, it was a time of sorrow for the family, but the Waldmires always seem to keep going and maintain their focus.

A Lasting Legacy “The Cozy Dog was one of the first establishments that stood out as I explored the city. I remember walking in 36 ROUTE Magazine

for the first time thinking that I had stepped back in time and was experiencing a way of life that was much different than what I was used to,” said Ms. Casey Wichmann, Executive Director of the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, on the impact that the little historical venue had on her when she first moved to Springfield in 1999. “I felt the warmth of the family atmosphere, and I enjoyed taking in all of the memorabilia.”

Aside from being the birthplace of the first hot dog on a stick, the Cozy Dog offers travelers an experience that is no longer easy to find, while sharing the nostalgic side of Route 66. The Cozy Dog is not only a Route 66 attraction, it’s a Springfield, Illinois, attraction.

“Visitors from all over the nation come to see Abe Lincoln’s history, and the Cozy Dog is an attraction that also lends itself to Springfield’s rich history,” Wichmann said. “I think the legacy of the Waldmire family, and the fact that the establishment is still being run by Waldmire descendants, gives people a sense of cultural heritage, something they want to protect because it’s something that is slowly diminishing.”

Today, Josh keeps looking to the future. That future, however, will look very much like the past. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said. “I don’t have any major plans for changes.”

Although Josh is the new owner of the Cozy Dog, Buz can’t keep away. It’s a part of his life that remains strong inside him. “There’s not a whole lot of change. I’m in there a couple of times a week, gabbing with the customers,” Buz said. “I help out, and I sometimes repair things, like trim the trees. I drink free coffee as much as I want.”

“We have a loyal customer base, and we’ve always been supported by the community. I can’t tell you how many cozy dogs we sell today—I would say anywhere from 200 to 500 a day based on the day,” said Buz. “Our food quality and food consistency is just spot on. You know if you’re gonna go there, you don’t have to worry about who’s cooking it or anything like that. It always comes out the same and it’s always fixed fresh.”

Today, the Cozy Dog is more popular than ever, thanks to the focused determination of a family who has seen their share of tragedy and failure over the years, but has weathered through, passionate about their contribution to Route 66, and committed to the vision that Ed Waldmire developed decades ago. In 2021, franchise brands dot city landscapes everywhere. Ordering a tasty meal has become prescriptive, boring even. Lost is the warmth, the familiar touch. Cozy Dog represents a time when familyrun restaurants welcomed patrons personally and provided more than fast food, they offered an experience. And in today’s America, more and more folks are beginning to hanker for just that; a pleasant meal and a memorable encounter with a past that is still found in places like the Cozy Dog.

The Road is Alive

SPRINGFIELD, IL Josh Waldmire – Cozy Dog Drive In

Sam Quais – Maid-Rite

Ron Metzger – Route 66 Motorheads Bar, Grill & Museum

Doug Knight – Knights Action Park & Route 66 Drive-In

John Fulgenzi – Fulgenzi’s Pizza & Pasta

Stacy Grundy – Route History Museum

Don Thompson – Weebles Bar & Grill & The Curve Inn

Michael Higgins – Maldaner’s Restaurant

Meet the local Living Legends of Route 66 making history every day Springfield’s new Living Legends program introduces you to our iconic Route 66 local business owners. Pick up your Explorer Passport, meet the legends face-to-face, snap a pic, get an autograph, and create your own Route 66 story.

#VisitSpringfield

WE’RE

THAN ONE DAY

Get the full picture at visitspringfieldillinois.com/ ExplorerPassports ROUTE Magazine 37

n the 1970s, Oklahoma farmer Jiggs Botchlett opened up a roadside outlet that sold two things only: fresh eggs and his locally famous smoked turkey. It was a little shop along Route 66, between the tiny towns of Clinton and Foss, quaint but unremarkable. Within a decade, this little shop would become a nationally renowned restaurant, with celebrity regulars and TV appearances. The transformation began when, in what must have been a stroke of fate, Botchlett’s entrepreneurial nephew-in-law George Klaassen purchased the business and brought his own vision to the roadside stand. He decided to turn the place into a smokehouse, with twenty-four seats and only two sandwiches on the menu: ham and turkey, with butter as the only condiment.

Klaassen had absolutely no restaurant experience when he purchased the place. He was in his forties and had made his living up to that point as an electrician, climbing up tall Oklahoma telephone poles to make repairs. He did some farming on the side and had a tough work ethic, and a do-ityourself attitude. Most importantly, he knew how to cook.

“He’d always had a knack for [it] his whole life,” said Lynn Klaassen, George’s son and current owner of the smokehouse.

“He was a boy scout leader, so he could cook anything on a campfire; he could cook anything outside… It was kind of his hobby—his passion.”

But it takes more than just passion to build a successful business, as Klaassen soon learned. Jigg’s is truly “in the middle of nowhere,” as Lynn puts it. For the first couple years, George and Lynn would pass the time counting the number of cars that drove by on Route 66. Their only business came from local oil and gas workers, who would stop by on breaks or after shifts for one of Jigg’s simple sandwiches.

Then, in 1980, the oil boom reached new heights. The Klaassen’s car counting days were over. Suddenly, everyone in Oklahoma found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with, and they were in the mood to spend extravagantly. By the early ‘80s, Jigg’s had expanded its menu and made a name for itself—their beef jerky had been on Good Morning America twice (although George himself refused to make any TV appearances). As word got out, the smokehouse became the spot of choice for those who’d struck black gold.

“It was like Hollywood moved to Oklahoma, there was so much money going around,” Lynn recalled. “People wanted to

38 ROUTE Magazine

do more and more extravagant things. We even built a smoker one time where we could roast six hogs at one time. And these were huge hogs—full-grown, 300-pound hogs.”

In a sense, Hollywood really did move to Oklahoma. Jigg’s gained a few celebrity regulars at this point—Lynn remembers Pearl Bailey, an actress and singer, coming in a couple times a year, as well as Lisa Marie Presley, George Lindsay, and countless professional athletes.

The real celebrity, though, was the smokehouse itself. People would order Jigg’s jerky from all around the country. Lynn recalled one particularly insistent customer: “There was a bar owner from New York that would call [George] and be like, ‘Sir, can I order 50 pounds of jerky?’ and [George would say] ‘I’ll send you five.’ The guy would call him begging for jerky. This went on for years.” Needless to say, the little rural smokehouse had become a big name.

By the time the oil bust came around in the late ‘80s, Jigg’s was so established that business barely took a hit. Between local regulars, a steady stream of Route 66 travelers, and various catering gigs, George and Lynn— who ran the kitchen themselves, day in and day out—still had their hands full, even without the new-money oil millionaires.

Not much has changed since. Lynn has been running the show himself since his father’s passing eight years ago, and the smokehouse is as busy as ever.

The restaurant business is tough, and it can be even tougher when you’re in the middle of small-town America. Jigg’s is so remote that internet providers don’t even service the area.

So how have they been able to stay so busy all these years?

Lynn thinks the secret to their longtime success is simple.

“I don’t want to try to be modest, but [the restaurant is] good,” said Lynn. “It’s been consistent because there’s only been two of us in the kitchen all these years. That’s the best quality control when you have the same person doing the same job over and over again… you put your heart and soul into it for so long. I tell people that there’s probably something that I would enjoy more, but there’s not anything I’m better at.”

Western Oklahoma is a magical place, packed with Route 66 stops, and a diverse and colorful history, and little Clinton continues to hold its own. Few businesses have been able to outlast time and the changes that it brings, but it is likely that Jigg’s will be welcoming visitors for a long time to come.

Image by Marshall Hawkins.

I

J I G G’S SMOK EHOUSE

DISCOVER CLINTON, OKLAHOMA

WHERE ROUTE 66 TRULY COMES ALIVE!

• HIS TORI C HOTE L S• D IV E RS E D INING• •M OHAW K LOD G E IND IAN S TORE• •THE WATE R ZOO•

www.clintonokla.org ROUTE Magazine 39

T

he town of Atlanta lies in the center of Illinois, halfway between Chicago and St. Louis. So, when the city council was faced with the task of repainting the local water tower, there was a choice to make: Cubs or Cardinals.

Fans of each team campaigned for their emblem to grace the tower. It became a local conundrum. Bill Thomas, chairman of the board of the National Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership, recalls the remedy to the dispute.

“There wasn’t going to be an easy resolution,” Thomas said.

“So, at one of the council meetings, a councilwoman named Billie Cheek, offhandedly, to throw out something completely different, said, ‘Well I think it should just be a smiley face.

That would make everybody happy.’”

The idea caught on, and in 2003, the water tower was painted canary yellow, with two dotted eyes and a wide, cartoonish smile in black. Drivers can see it from both Interstate 55 and historic Route 66. It was unexpectedly the ideal solution.

In 1926, America’s newest highway, Route 66, aligned directly through Downtown Atlanta. The town grew with the ever-increasing traffic and tourism, but during the ‘60s, the faster I-55 became the popular highway, and Atlanta’s stretch of Route 66 was sadly decommissioned in 1977. Atlanta, like other Route 66 towns in Illinois slowed down. But the small town was not over.

Just over two decades ago, Thomas led an effort to leverage the Mother Road to attract visitors. A 19-foot Paul Bunyan statue was moved in from Cicero, hotdog in arm, murals were commissioned, and the historic Palms Grille Cafe was restored. It worked. In the years after the projects, from 2008

40 ROUTE Magazine

on, sales tax revenue in Atlanta increased by 43% during primary tourism months.

Like the Route projects, the water tower is a representation of classic, hopeful idealism and industry. When Harvey Ball designed the original yellow graphic in 1963 Massachusetts, its purpose was to boost morale among employees. It’s no surprise, then, that the townspeople’s response to the water tower was overwhelmingly positive. Though it was not one of the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program projects, Thomas recognized its potential for attracting visitors.

“There was even a slogan developed and a little bit of marketing done,” Thomas said. “We used the water tower image, and the slogan was, ‘Atlanta, Illinois, welcoming the world with a smile.’”

The smiling tower is a reflection of Atlanta’s welcoming nature as a community, and today, their position on the map brings endless streams of Route travelers once again.

“It’s interesting; it’s enjoyable; and townsfolk find it amusing at times to think that people would actually want to come here,” added Thomas.

Over the years, he’s encountered international visitors with great interest in this country.

“And what do they want?” Thomas said. “They want to come here and experience ‘real America.’ And this town exemplifies that for them.”

As such travelers drive the Old Road, they encounter hundreds of quaint, small towns, each with their own local water tower. While some may have slogans or loyalties, Atlanta’s is readable in any language. When tourists pass, they see a symbol—a Technicolor icon of American optimism.

Image by David J. Schwartz – Pics On Route 66.

THE TOWN THAT SMILES

Very small.

Very friendly.

Very Route 66.

Atlanta | Lincoln | Elkhart Logan County Tourism Bureau DestinationLoganCountyIL.com 217-732-8687

ROUTE Magazine 41

42 ROUTE Magazine

A CONVERSATION WITH

Jackson Browne

By Brennen Matthews

Opening Image by Nels Israelson

ROUTE Magazine 43

I

am often asked who is on my celebrity bucket list to interview. I generally answer in the same way each time; I don’t have a wish list of people to interview, but I do have a select shortlist of folks that I would love to have a real conversation with. I have a deep passion for fascinating conversations with diverse, creative people. I love discovering more about film, TV, and music talent whose work has influenced me and the chapters of my life. I am drawn to artists who have a long and remarkable backstory. My list is short, but at the very top is a singer-songwriter / musician with era-shaping music that has left an indelible imprint on many lives. His lyrics and sound speak soulfully to the emotional ups and downs of life. He has inspired countless artists and won the admiration of many of his peers; people who define classic rock and lyrical prowess. In 2002, he received the coveted John Steinbeck Award, in 2004 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by none other than Bruce Springsteen, in 2007 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2014, he won the Spirit of Americana Award. He has thrown his energy behind important causes that help to make our planet a better place. When I am asked who I would be fascinated to sit down with, I always answer the same way: Jackson Browne.

In the early days of your musical journey, you found your way over to the iconic Troubadour. How did you end up playing there? Were you invited to perform?

No, you wouldn’t be invited, you would just go and sign up.

The Troubadour was interesting. To me, it was not an iconic place. The Ash Grove was iconic. The Ash Grove was where the traditional musicians played, where the Georgia Sea Island Singers or the Chambers Brothers would play. I mean, it was a traditional club, and I’d been there with my dad.

My dad took me there when I was about 14 to see Lightnin’ Hopkins. When I was in high school, I started singing in this club called the Paradox in Orange County with my good friends Steve Noonan and Greg Copeland — who were really my sister’s friends — and I kind of tagged along. I was 15 and they were 17. They were seniors in high school, and I was a sophomore. They let me hang with them and listened to my songs and taught me stuff. They were so cool to me.

Greg Copeland wound up going to San Francisco State.

None of us had a car and we would hitchhike up the coast to visit him and spend the night on his floor and go wandering around North Beach. I mean, this is pre-Haight-Ashbury. It was 1965. I hear people talk about the Summer of Love as 1967 but to me, it was ‘65.

So, I started singing and hanging around these clubs in Orange County. And then I heard about the Troubadour Hoot, from Jim Fielder, who was the bass player for Tim Buckley, who would play these clubs that I was hanging around in, and we became friends. We would play the open mic night at the Paradox and then go to my house afterward.

My parents were so cool, they let us just hang and there’d be a room full of kids with guitars. I grew up listening to blues and collecting blues records. But Fielder told me about the Troubadour Hoot and said, “You just go there, sign up, and wait your turn. You can sing up to four songs.”

Usually, at the Troubadour, it was a procession of people going up to the mic and singing either folk ballads, their own songs, or songs that other people had written.

44 ROUTE Magazine

Were you nervous the first time?

Yeah! It was the big city.

Had you written “These Days” by then?

Maybe, maybe not, I don’t remember. The cool thing is that my friends played my songs. I didn’t sing very well. They would sing my songs, but it was an odd thing for me to try to do, because I wasn’t that comfortable on stage, but it was fun. I started doing it fairly regularly. It was on Monday night. When I moved to LA, it was easy to get there every Monday night. I hung around there for about a year, but I didn’t have a house in Los Angeles, I stayed in Laurel Canyon at my manager’s house—Billy James.

I became a regular at the Troubadour on Mondays, and eventually, the guy that ran the signups said, “You don’t have to get here at four o’clock and sign up.” However, I liked going there at four o’clock in the afternoon because everybody that was trying to get on stage was sitting around singing. There was a little alcove, where the ticket window was. It was a little huddled group of people... and then you might catch them playing that night or you might be in the bar when they’re playing. And if somebody was really good, everybody in the bar would pour into the club and listen to them. I remember when they started the bar, because that was a big change from the coffee house; to have drinking was a whole different thing. I wasn’t old enough to drink, but I noticed that it became a whole different clientele. You’d look over and see Al Kooper (Blood, Sweat & Tears) talking with Odetta, two New York people, and it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s Odetta, and that’s Al Kooper!’ People were too cool to go up and say, “Oh man Al, can I meet you?” People don’t do that. When I think about it sometimes, I think, ‘Man, why didn’t you tell him how much his music meant to you? You were just too f*cking cool to say that. Why did you not say, “Dude I’ve listened to your records from...” ’

David Crosby came into your journey pretty early on.

How did you guys connect?

I met Crosby when he came by the house I was living in with a few other musicians — on Ridpath Drive. What happened in Laurel Canyon in those days was that everybody went to each other’s houses and they sang songs for each other, and Crosby would come by, and he’d say sh*t like, “You guys are lucky man, no one knows who you are, you got a clean slate, the future is yours.” He was very, very generous, and a very charming guy. Not that he’s a humble person, he would say humble sh*t like, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do next,” and he’d been in the Byrds! It was right before they [formed] Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Crosby would come to play with this friend of mine named Jack Wilce. And Jack was sort of in our band. We weren’t really a band, we were sort of a collective of people who were trying to get Elektra Records to let us make a record, and everybody was playing each other’s songs. So, Crosby would come by. Paul Rothschild lived across the street from my manager. He was the Elektra Records producer that produced the Butterfield Blues Band. He was very friendly and attentive, and he’d say, “Hey, have you ever listened to Bertolt Brecht or Kurt Weill? Check this out.”

The thing that’s notable about Laurel Canyon is that producers and artists and record company executives, were all sitting around together and getting high, listening to music, and listening to each other, and it was no longer a hierarchical thing. You met people on the street corner, you met them standing in front of the Troubadour, you met them in the Troubadour bar. Now, the Troubadour has been lionized as this meeting place where everybody hung around, and it’s true, especially on Monday nights, but the rest of the time they were in each other’s houses, and they were in studios together.

It wasn’t a dog-eat-dog rat race, trying to get signed, where you were competing with other bands. There was a whole egalitarian culture of musicians interested in each other’s songs.

Did you find that the people who found success first were very welcoming to newcomers on the scene, or was it more cliquish by that point?

I don’t think it was cliquish at all. I think that there might have been some... I just read something last night about that.

I think Graham Nash said that in England it was cliquish, that there were these hierarchical levels; there were the Beatles and below that the Stones and then the Who, and so on. But I don’t think that it was that way in Los Angeles. But because I was immersed in it, I don’t think that I knew then how to compare it with anything else.

Were you at Woodstock?

No, Woodstock happened, and I heard about it like the next week. It didn’t happen on the West Coast, and if you lived on the West Coast, you didn’t hear about it until later.

Interesting.

Did you think Woodstock was a national event?

Not national, but a lot of West Coast bands headed over to play Woodstock, I guess I assumed that people would have heard.

I’m sure you heard about it if you were a band like CSN. I did go to Monterey though, in a VW van full of my friends.

That must have been a great concert.

Yeah, that was incredible. Monterey was like the first time anything like that happened. Woodstock was the next time, and they were only a couple of years apart. And then they started having festivals all the time.

How did you and Glenn Frey meet?

Glenn and JD [John David Souther] and I met at a benefit.

We were gonna sing on the radio... A DJ that I knew from a producer friend’s swimming pool told me, “We’re doing a show for the free-clinic, you should come by and sing.” But when I got there, he was gone. I stayed around for hours waiting to sing on the radio, but the people there didn’t know who I was. And in truth, I wasn’t anybody. “So, why should we put you on the radio? Are you going to make people call in and donate?” And JD and Glenn were there, in the same situation. That’s where we met, and we just hung around

there for the afternoon. And then they showed up at a club I was playing. I told Glenn that my sister’s apartment was going to be vacant and to check it out. That was next door to where I was living. He moved in there, and a few months later, I moved into the sort of basement below him. We all hung in the same clubs and we bumped into each other all the time. Then JD moved in with Glenn. They were living upstairs, and I met Jack Tempchin through them. It was like being in college, except you’re not really going to school, you’re just doing what young people that age, 18 or 22 do.

And they also played the Troubadour Hoots.

Your career took a very important turn when you got on the radar of David Geffen. How did that happen?

Crosby had told me about him and at some point, I sent him a letter. Crosby said that he was going to tell him about me, but he didn’t. He just got busy. That’s not his fault, he got back in the rock star business and he was busy. But I remember going to watch Crosby, Stills & Nash play the Greek Theatre, and waiting around at the stage door until Crosby finally came out with all his beautiful friends. I’m sort of standing there with all the other people who had seen the show, and he said, “Oh hey, how are you doing?”

(Laughs) And he just blew past me.

But I finally went in and met Geffen, and he agreed to manage me. I’d been hanging around for a few years by then and it was like, ‘Wow, great, something’s gonna happen,’ and then I didn’t really do much for another couple of years because Geffen said, “We’ll take it easy, you’re still learning to sing, and this is going to be great.” He did try to place me with a couple of record companies, and they didn’t really go for it. Meanwhile, he was thinking about starting a record company. And there are some funny accounts of all of this, like him telling Ahmet [Ertegun - co-founder and president of Atlantic Records] “You sure that you don’t want to sign him? He might make you a lot of money,” and Ahmet saying, “Why don’t you sign him David and then we’ll both have a lot of money?” (Laughs)

Initially, didn’t Geffen throw your demo tape and letter away and his secretary later fished it out of the trash?

Yeah, her name was Noni. She was terrific. She said, “David, you might want to listen to this, I think it’s kind of good.”

And that demo was JD Souther playing the drums and Glenn Frey playing the bass and me singing the song “Jamaica”, and them doing some harmonies on it. JD and Glenn of course sang really well... it wasn’t really a great record or anything, it was just a demo made in the studio of my publishing company. I didn’t know he’d thrown the thing away. You get told that kind of stuff later and then it’s a story. Once I was gonna make a record, Crosby was absolutely available to sing on my record. He did sing on it, and that pretty much put me on the map.

David Crosby called you incredible and “one of the probably ten best songwriters around [with] songs that’ll make your hair stand on end”. As a young songwriter, did you feel much pressure to keep churning out the next great song?

No, not pressure, just a desire to write.

ROUTE Magazine 45

I had a friend named Michael Vosse [A&M Records publicist]. And Michael was a good friend of my friend Pamela Polland of this band called The Gentle Soul, and I hung out at their band’s house a lot. Besides my manager’s house, that was like my second home. Man, I didn’t have an apartment. I didn’t live anywhere, really. Eventually, my mother moved to Silver Lake, so I could stay there. At that point, home was no longer Orange County.

Anyway, Michael Vosse worked at A&M Records, and I was so lucky to have that kind of mentoring from people.

My manager was a guy named Billy James who had worked for Columbia, and who also opened the West Coast office for Elektra Records. Like I said, Hollywood was a place where you actually met people and got to know them. I was lucky. Michael listened to my music and said, “Some of these songs are pretty good, but what you’ve done is, you’ve written the same song over and over again.” He put that in my head, and from then on I thought, “Okay, I have to make each of these songs distinct. I just gotta go a little bit further and make each of my songs the only one that is like “that” song.

Then Michael got me a meeting with a publisher named Chuck Kaye at A&M. And this is more like what usually happens in those meetings. He said, “Oh, okay, well,” (after I had played about six or seven songs) “That’s good, I like this one here, you should go write some more like that one.”

I had played him “Rock Me on the Water” and he said, “Okay, go write a bunch more of those.” It was then I had the realization that record companies don’t always know what they’re doing.

Where did you sleep in Winslow? In your car or did you get a motel?

You spent four months recording your first album, and in the middle decided to take a road trip. It was around this time that you had your infamous breakdown in Winslow, Arizona.

Have you driven all of 66, from Chicago to LA?

I wanted to visit the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona where I had been as a kid.

I was driving a ‘53 Willys Jeep wagon. It was a great old car, but it wasn’t a very strong or powerful car. It didn’t even have a radio. What I had for a sound system in the car was a tape cassette player that was about the size of two loaves of Wonder Bread. It was huge and it had a speaker in it that sounded great to me. I had a Creedence Clearwater Revival album that I bought with the cassette player at a pawnshop, and I had a Santana record.

It was great to be out on the road. It was great to go back to the Hopi Reservation. At one point, I was really tired and pulled over to the side of the road, this is somewhere in Arizona around Tuba City, and I decided to sleep for a while next to the car. And somehow, I wasn’t in the sun when I started to sleep, but eventually, the sun came around and I just roasted myself. I was just burnt on one side like a hot dog. I went and found a motel and just turned up the air conditioning and laid there for a day.

The Jeep finally broke down in Winslow, so I wound up spending some time there trying to learn how to rebuild a generator and walking back and forth between my stalled car and the parts store where they were sort of giving me a tutorial on how to rebuild this thing. There were coils and brushes and things that had to be replaced, and these guys in the parts store just kept giving me pointers over the counter. So, I walked back and forth to my car until I got it running again.

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I really don’t remember. I might have been sleeping in my car all the way. No, I must have been, because I remember the motel with the air conditioning being a big expenditure.

I didn’t have any money. But I never had any money, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I guess I had enough, probably had a couple of hundred bucks.

How many nights do you think you actually stayed in Winslow that time?

I had to have been there a couple days, but I don’t remember.

I don’t even have a picture in my mind. The picture I’ve got in my mind is of this campground outside of Flagstaff. But I met this Indian guy in Winslow, and he took me, I mean, I drove, so either after I got my car fixed or before it died, we drove to this creek, it literally had boats in it. Winslow’s got like, a little marina. Crazy, right?

Did you know that you were on Route 66 when you were traveling?

I probably did, but it wasn’t that big a deal to me. There was a television show called Route 66. So, I might have pondered that a little bit, I don’t know, but it wasn’t as much of an iconic highway, in my mind at the time. I mean, it was also a song, “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66.” It’s all pretty far back there.

I’ve never done it in one piece. I probably have in my years of touring, I’m sure I’ve been on all the highways that make up Route 66. I did a lot of antique stores, but funky ones. I don’t mean like, looking at restored furniture, I mean, stores where there’s a few rattlesnake skins up there, maybe a coffee can with human teeth in it. Funky stuff in there. As a matter of fact, I even bought some of those teeth. I don’t know whose teeth they were. (Laughs) And tried to make a necklace out of them. Have you ever noticed that people in the desert line their property with bottles? I loved all this stuff. And the size of the sky. I don’t remember seeing anything that said, “Historic Route 66”. In those days, it hadn’t been restored or exhumed.

You’ve stayed at the La Posada, right?

Yeah, I’ve stayed there a couple of times. It’s a beautiful, historic hotel. A friend of mine named Doug Aitkin, who’s a conceptual artist, invited me to take part in an art happening. It was a conceptual art piece that had to do with America’s train system, and because La Posada was where the train station was, that was one of the stops. It was called Station to Station and it went from New York to Oakland.

And he had a train, and they created art installations along the way, in various towns, and there were certain people on the train doing things. Cat Power [singer-songwriter] was on the train, Giorgio Moroder [Italian composer/songwriter] was on the train. Just the combination of Cat Power and Giorgio Moroder would have been interesting, but I couldn’t see getting on the train, because I didn’t think I’d be able

Image by Nels Israelson. 2002.

to get enough of my instruments on. So, I decided to do a show at one of the stops. We did this show at La Posada in Winslow, and it was incredible. They had taken aboard the train these two sisters who did flamenco, they were from somewhere in New Mexico, and they were really great, really cool flamenco dancers. Cat Power did a show in Winslow and I did a show there. Mavis Staples [American rhythm and blues and gospel singer] had done a show in Chicago. Various people did shows in different places, and I chose Winslow, for obvious reasons, I just thought this would be celebratory and it’d be like a return to Winslow and a chance to play there. I wrote a song for it called “Leaving Winslow.” Beck did a show in Barstow, California, which makes Beck one of the coolest people I can think of. He chose Barstow!

Out of your broke down in Winslow experience came one of the most famous songs in the world, “Take It Easy”.

How far did you get with the song before Glenn Frey got involved?

I had the song about half written, up to “Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona,” and that’s as far as I got.

Although I think I had the last verse too. The Eagles were about to make their first album, and they had been playing this bar in Aspen, to get the kinks out and to develop musically, and I gotta say, when they put it together, it really worked. They went into the woodshed and spent time singing and getting it right, and what they had was that

amazing vocal sound. They had made this trip to Aspen by car, and when Glenn heard that line he said, “Winslow.

I know Winslow.” I was seeing an Indian man standing on the corner. In my mind, I was saying, “standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona,” and wondering how to somehow sum up my experience. That’s the inspiration for that line about standing on the corner. But Glenn put himself on the corner: “I’m standing on the corner,” and he had this girl slowing down to look at him, which is kind of classic Glenn Frey, you know?

Did you write the chorus or is that something that Glenn also wrote?

I wrote the chorus, and I had a version of that last verse.

Glenn really wrote a very small part of the song, but I hasten to say, it’s the part everybody remembers the most. He got so much in that one line, you know? He got “Lord,” “Ford,” “girl,” and “bed” into the same line.

How did he even get involved in working with you on the song?

He came to visit me at a studio that I was working at called Crystal Sound, which was in the same part of town as a restaurant that we all liked a lot. We decided to walk to Lucy’s El Adobe, and as we walked, I sang him that song, walking to lunch, and he said, “Are you gonna do it for your ROUTE Magazine 47

record?” I said, “No, I don’t think so, because I’m finishing the record now.” This is after we had resumed making the record. I’d spent three weeks in the desert, and I came back and we were putting it together. I actually started the song in the back of a Dodge van, because my Willys Jeep broke down for good, after having gotten me as far as Zion, up in Utah.

I was coming back... and this is really amazing luck. I had met these two guys who were just out of the military.

They had been MPs in Vietnam. This guy, Buckmaster was his last name, and he was such a charismatic guy. He and his partner had put together these communal feasts up in the campground in Zion. He was a guy that just walked up to people and met them; he was so personable. They were driving this grey Dodge panel van. We had partied together in Mount Zion National Park. Then I left.

But there I was on the side of the road, broken down, and they knew my car, so they stopped and picked me up, and drove me back to LA. I left the car there.

You just abandoned it?

Well, I didn’t abandon it. I think that we might have towed it to a gas station. I didn’t just abandon it because it was worth a few hundred dollars. And I thought, “I’m gonna have to come back out here.” I just went out there and sold it. I don’t really have much memory of that, but I think I remember having to take a Greyhound bus to somewhere out in the middle of the desert.

Anyway, I had done that once before on a trip with friends from LA to San Francisco. My family’s car broke down in Santa Maria. And it’s funny how you remember the names of these people who come to your rescue, but a man named Belden Dockstader bought my family’s VW van from me for the price of some Greyhound tickets out of there. (Laughs) My mom was like, “What happened to the car?” “Well, it died.”

But meanwhile, Glenn and I were walking down this alley and I already had half the song, because I had started writing it in the back of this panel van. In fact, the melody of “Take It Easy” is a little bit of a recycling of a melody of a song that I had that never really was a whole finished song. And so, it just sort of came at that time.

I gotta say this, in those days, our songs weren’t hit songs.

I was just writing a song, and it wasn’t finished, and Glenn said, “I like that... we could do that.” I said, “Oh yeah, you should.” And he said, “Well, when you get it done, tell us, and we’ll do it.” I said, “Great.” And then he wanted to know if I had it done yet. He called me several times, wanting to know if it was done, and it wasn’t. He said, “Do you want me to finish it?” And the first time he asked that I was like, “No, I don’t want you to finish it! I’ll finish it.”

But the next time he asked, I thought, “Yeah, absolutely, you want to finish it? That’d be great.”

And when he came back with that line, I just thought, “Wow, that works, that really works, that’s great!” Because it made that song, and not only that, the Eagles arrangement of it made it. If I played it for you the way I had it... what Glenn heard was what he was going to do to it. Until they sang it, it didn’t have that big sweeping chorus.

In the early days, The Eagles did a lot of covers, they sang a lot of songs by other people, but they have this incredible arrangement sense, and that was Glenn’s strength. More than writing, he was arranging. In the band, they called him 48 ROUTE Magazine

The Lone Arranger. ‘Cause he’d just take over and say how he needed it to go.

Did you attend the ceremony when Winslow opened the ‘Standin’ on the Corner’ spot?

I did not. They wrote me a letter and told me that they wanted to make a statue and I talked with them about it.

I said, “Look, you should make it of an Indian, you should make it of a straight-backed Indian with a cowboy hat, boots...” They told me that they were not going to make it look like anyone in particular, but a lot of people assume that the statue is me. So much so that, they added another statue that is supposed to be Glenn, but it doesn’t look like him either. (Laughs) The funny thing is, as soon as people started hearing that song, they said, “Winslow, I’ve been there. I’ve been to Winslow.” Before that, I had never heard of it. But you’re out there in the middle of the desert and suddenly you come upon this town and it’s Winslow. At the time, I mean, now I’ve been there many times, coming and going to visit my family in New Mexico, and spent the night a few times at La Posada. And it’s a bigger town than I remember it being.

I don’t know if it got bigger since 1972, but back then it seemed to me like it was only about six blocks long and two blocks wide.

You live near the Santa Monica pier, which is the official end of Route 66. Do you go down there very often?

The pier? Yeah, now and then. It’s funny, you can get to the beach more often when you live inland than when you live right here, because you got business to take care of. I was down there the other day, but I don’t go there every day. The great thing about Santa Monica and the beach is that the people at the beach, they’re on their way somewhere good, they’re just hanging, they’re relaxing. I took photographs underneath that pier for my new record. It’s nice under there.

Under the boardwalk, people just hang there in the shade underneath the pier. It’s great because the water comes right up, these pilings and pylons.

Are there any songs in particular that you’re most proud of?

Oh, of mine? Sure, I have songs that I think are my best songs.

It’s funny, because I was just singing a song last night and thinking, ‘This is one of my best songs.’ It’s not the most well-known song. The song is called “Yeah Yeah.” That is a terrible title, I know, but it’s all I could think of. But the song itself really took me. I wrote it over such a long period of time. I started that song probably in 1980-something. I wasn’t trying to write it the whole time, obviously, you forget about it for years at a time, but I had the first lines. I could never figure it out. I just couldn’t. But when I finally cracked the code... and, actually, I had to make a fundamental change in the first line, and then, bang, the whole song happened.

Here’s the thing, you have a song like “Standing in the Breach” (2014) ... a lot of my songs are fraught with endeavor, they’re trying pretty hard. (Laughs) And then the songs that sometimes are the best are the ones that just happened quickly. I remember thinking that, like on my

second album, there’s a song, “Sing My Songs to Me” and it segues into “For Everyman.” Now, “For Everyman” was a song I spent a long time writing and trying to make a point.

But “Sing My Songs to Me” was something that I wrote, probably a long time before that. It was a carryover from before I had a record deal. It’s curious in that it’s a song sort of looking back nostalgically. This is something I wrote when I was about 16, looking back nostalgically at what? How much had I lived by then? Nonetheless, there’s something in it that I think is really good and something that I didn’t try to do. I didn’t try to do anything, and this good thing happened, and then when I went and recorded it, it wasn’t the most important song on the record, but we found a cool way to do it. I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes, the songs that you work long and hard on, that you invest in and give the most importance in your mind, may not be your best song at all.

You wrote “These Days” when you were 16. You’ve said that at the time you didn’t think that it was a terribly deep song, but those lyrics are highly nostalgic and reflective.

Quite poignant for adults, let alone coming from a 16-yearold. What’s the story behind “These Days”?

Well, most songs come about with a little piece of music.

I think I’d been out walking... I don’t think you really start writing songs from the part of it in which you’re trying to say something important. I think you start by trying to describe something that you recognize, and sometimes it’s the whole kernel of the idea, but in “These Days,” what’s in there is a kind of regret. I don’t really know where it comes from, but there’s a kind of wish to do better. A wish to somehow overcome. Take stock. A kind of sorrow. I can tell you that at that time in my life, I think I did have some stuff to feel nostalgic about.

For instance, I grew up in Highland Park in this beautiful home that was my grandfather’s [Clyde Browne] creation.

He named it the Abbey San Encino. He built it out of river rock and blue granite that he got from various demolition sites, and he just built this thing. To me, that was like, you look at this house and it was unlike any other place, and people came all the time asking, “What is this? Is this a church? What is this place?” And you’d say, “Well, this is a private home.” There was no fence around it, and it was too easy then; they’d walk right into your house. Right through the front door and into the patio. (Laughs) But we moved to Orange County when I was 12.

At 13 or 14, my parent’s marriage had broken up. We were all living with my mom. After a while, my brother went to go live with my dad. So, even though it seems like 16 is a young age to be writing a song about your own feelings of failure or the things that you remember as having been better, I think that occurs in every life and often it does happen early.

Do you ever look back upon that time and just think, ‘Wow, there was a lot going on in my life and heart to write “These Days”?’

Yeah, I do. I think about it from time to time. I’ve actually been thinking about it a lot recently because of the Ron Brownstein book that I showed you that is coming out. It really put me in mind of a lot of this stuff, like, how did I get here? It’s somebody talking about the year 1974 and what

Image by Bill Carter. September 2020.

goes into that period of time; ‘74 is a lot closer to ‘68 than it is to 2021.

I think I’m still sad about my parents. But your parents break up and you deal with it. I’m sad about my sisters, both my sisters are deceased now. They had a really rough time, both of them. There’s a lot of fallout from their lives as a family. I know some really wonderful families that are so... the mom and dad are solid and they’re functional, and the kids are doing so well. And I see what goes into it. And my own family had pretty little of that, although my mother was terrific. My mother was really great, but I just don’t know what it would have been like if we had had that kind of family life.

Even now, I see my son, Ryan, who’s got a two-year-old. He is such a terrific parent. And at times when I’m with them, I reflect on my own parenting, and it makes me kind of blue.

I think I could have been a much better parent. But to see somebody who does an incredible job and go, “Oh my gosh, I see what you’re doing and it’s just so attentive and focused,” and he didn’t learn it from me, he got it from his mom.

I’m from a family where the marriage didn’t stay together, and I’ve been in a relationship for a long time with someone who is also from a family that the relationship didn’t stay together. You’re still a family. Everybody is still your relative, but it’s just not the same. But also, I feel that there are tragedies in our lives where we just move on and just keep going and trying.

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Image by Dylan Coulter. 2021.

With Phyllis’ passing in 1976, you went through a major tragedy yourself. Ethan was about two years old at the time. What was it like being a single dad, raising a son, and being a musician, and pursuing your career? I mean, so much going on. What a balance to try to maintain.

Well, it was my main focus. I only had two things that I hoped I could fit together: being a songwriter and a father.

And I looked at it like this, if I have to only be a father, I hope I’ll know it, and just do that. But life’s not like that and you don’t get a notice in the mail saying you’re blowing it as a parent. You think you have the advice and the help you need, and sometimes you don’t, or you don’t heed it.

The mistakes I’ve made as a parent are still with me. I think about them fairly often. It’s not that you’re not trying the whole time. It’s not that I wasn’t trying then. You’re just distracted by other things and some things don’t occur to you. Or maybe you ignore advice that you should have taken, because you’re overconfident.

On the music part of it, it seemed to me like I had every advantage. I was making a good living and I could hire people to help. So, you think that you’re doing it, that it’s covering it. That may not be the answer at all, or the person that you hired may not be the right person; the person that you hired to spend time with your kid while you’re working.

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But it’s not for not caring. It’s just from not having enough experience, and not having enough consciousness to spread between the two different areas of your life.

Like for instance, my mother was a teacher and her students adored her, and they have come up to me ever since she was a teacher saying, “Your mother’s the greatest teacher, she made the biggest difference in my life.” And I know what they mean, because she did that for me. She encouraged me.

I know how to do that, but there’s a lot more to it. The main things are interest and involvement. But when I look at my son, he’s interacting with his son, like, all the time! It’s like, “Wow.” So, it’s the idea of being absent for big pieces of time, and still thinking that I’m doing it, I’m showing up, I’m there every day, or I take him everywhere I go. But...

Another interesting thing I came upon recently when I thought about the song “For a Dancer,” which I wrote about a friend of mine who died in a fire... He was the brother of a really good friend of mine, somebody that I was close to, and he was an outlier, like a person connected to our scene, but he didn’t make music himself. But he was very creative.

I wrote “For a Dancer” because when he died, that was the only way I could process it. And I wrote that living in the Abbey with Phyllis and Ethan. And then it wasn’t until many years after that I realized that the song had traversed in my life and had become about her.

I’ve sung that song for so many people whose family members have died. People recognize their own loss in that, and so, what I realize is that the songs may originate with me talking about my life, but by the time they’re a song, they’re actually about other people’s lives. And you hope that there’s something universal in them. And this is one of the wonderful mysteries; how you can put in particular details that are only from your own experience, and that gives us even more exactitude. It gives it more of a particular reality — even though those details are your own details — that make it even more universal. And some of the songs, you hear more in them the longer you sing them. You accumulate more experience and more memories and suddenly, certain lines resonate even more now than they did before.

I’m someone who believes that there’s a lot to be said for melancholy. I think that some of the most introspective times in life, and some of the best ways to get through difficulties come when you allow yourself to be sad and to process it. “Fountain of Sorrow” very much speaks of this in my mind.

The lines: Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer I was taken by a photograph of you There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true You were turning ‘round to see who was behind you And I took your childish laughter by surprise And at the moment that my camera happened to find you There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes

It’s been rumored for a long time that the song was inspired by Joni Mitchell. What’s the real story?

Well, we had been close. And then we weren’t together.

We had broken up and I saw her somewhere. But what

was going on in the song was, you’re looking back at someone you knew, and you realize that there were things about them that were there the whole time that you didn’t really pay attention to in the moment. To me, the title should perhaps not be “Fountain of Sorrow,” but “Fountain of Sorrow, Fountain of Light.” It’s about that very thing you just said, you know, it’s where you get the information from, it’s from your sorrow. It informs you.

It’s like what we were saying about “These Days” too, your regret is somehow your teacher. What you would do differently if you could. What you wish you’d known that you didn’t. But, in “Fountain of Sorrow” ... I can still see this photograph that it was based on, really it was a photograph that I had taken of her. And she was sneaking up on somebody, and she was taking pictures... She’s the one who got me into cameras, and so she was gonna take a picture, and she was cracking up. But the fact that I said ‘there was just a trace of sorrow in her eyes’ ... in this particular photograph, I don’t think that’s true, but I put that there because from that vantage point after a relationship, you see that there’s a sorrow. I know it’s there, now, but I didn’t know it in the moment. And it’s not really in that photograph. So, I kind of commandeered the idea of looking at a photograph to just say this thing.

Writing is a mysterious process; you just say stuff and you don’t know why you say it. You know what you’re trying to get at, and finally, by the end of the song, you might have filled in enough of the picture that you get the truth of the situation. I think I err on the side of making sense. But it’s for a purpose, like I really go about getting in touch with the underlying story, the underlying truth, even if it’s a fable. The idea that you paint a picture and you get something from it, telling that story. It’s based on something true. There are times that you can’t finish a song because you’re not really clear on what the truth is.

With the song, “Jamaica,” I thought that I was writing it for this girl that I met, who worked in an organic vegetable orchard in Malibu, actually right by where Shangri-La Studios is now, like right out by Zuma Beach. And it was an idyllic little song, but what the song really describes is the relationship I had just been in, in which I had wanted to hide. I was content to just be with this girl. And she was ready to move out into the world, and she was so vibrant.

She was such a knockout and she was constantly being invited places or approached or hit on, in all those ways in which a beautiful young woman in full sail is. And I, in no way, was a match for that. I wasn’t doing that in my own life, I was hiding in her. And so, that’s what “Jamaica” is talking about. That’s really what happens when you write a song, sometimes you don’t know what it really is that you are talking about, and that’s okay.

“Somebody’s Baby” provided you with a big hit single in 1982. That track was a little different than some of your earlier work.

It’s funny about “Somebody’s Baby” because that song is connected to a movie [Fast Times at Ridgemont High].

People have imagery of like, the cabana scene. Or they have their own thing that they did that year or that summer.

I had a friend who was an activist who literally complained to me, “You’re saying in this song that she’s not really anybody unless she becomes somebody’s girlfriend.”

I’m going, “No, no, no, I don’t mean it like that. I mean that she wants to belong to somebody.” And I had this whole conversation about it, but I really didn’t think that I was saying that much in the song. A therapist that I used to see said, “Look, I think you’re wrong about this song,” because I was really hard on the song. He said, “I think that the song is about something really important. It’s that everybody wants to belong to somebody, wants to be wanted, and the idea that you see somebody, and you think that they must be taken,” and that whole idea. He said, “It’s about something really so simple and so valid that it doesn’t even come on your screen.”

Now in my shows, I go to sing that song, and it’s a moment. I see an entire audience full of women get up and dance, and some of them are young and some of them are old, and some of them are skinny and some of them are plump, and they’re all beautiful. They all feel beautiful.

And I think to myself, “Wow, this song makes them feel beautiful. They feel like who they are is just right. And they’re smiling.” It’s a gift to me.

By the way, as collaborations go, I didn’t start this song, and it was a hard song to write, it was really hard, because Danny Kortchmar [guitarist/songwriter/producer] had this really great hook, and he had this one line, “She’s got to be somebody’s baby.” I thought, “It’s gonna be hard.” So, I’m maybe the most proud of having come up with the rest of that song, because it didn’t start out as my idea.

What do you want your legacy to be, Jackson?

I think it’s in the songs. When you talk about legacy, that means what other people can see of you or what other people will remember of you. And that’s what other people will get, the songs. But the actual relationships, the time spent with friends, the discoveries you make about life, and about places in the world that you’ve visited — all that stuff is pretty much between those people that did it. I am losing a lot of friends. I have two friends that just went into hospice yesterday. I lost one of my very best friends six months ago.

I’m really looking at how much of a person’s life and times is sort of in the things that they collect. I just listened to a talk last night by Eckhart Tolle [spiritual teacher and best-selling author] saying, “It’s not the things. If you imagined your life to be a room,” he says, “It’s not the things that are in the room. Your life is the space. And in that space of a life, a lot of people pass through and a lot of places are visited, and things happen.”

Unless I wrote a memoir, and I think about that sometimes... but I almost feel like I’d have to stop living my life to recount it. And maybe the people I know who have done that are just better at carving out the time to sit down and write. But I’m also trying to write a few songs. When I ask myself what I want to do in my remaining years, I’d like to write some more songs.

Be sure to check out Jackson’s new studio album, Downhill from Everywhere, to be released this summer. It offers some fantastic tracks that are undeniably vintage Jackson Browne, and a few contemporary tunes.

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B

eginning in 1926, tourists traveling on Route 66 were met with an explosion of one-of-a-kind diversions and attractions designed to give passersthrough a sense of each of the enchanting little communities that give the Mother Road its magical reputation.

It was amid this boom of movie houses and concert halls, in Springfield, Missouri, the birthplace of Route 66, that M.E. Gillioz’s eponymous theatre came to be.

“Gillioz desperately wanted to be on Route 66,” said Executive Director of the Theatre, Geoff Steele. “If you look at the announcement of Route 66 and took a map of [the road] and put lights everywhere a theatre opened between 1926 and 1935, it would look like a string of Christmas lights. It just really captured the imagination.”

Bridge architect Maurice Earnest “M.E.” Gillioz of Monett, Missouri, was one of many people struck by the ingenious aura cast by Route 66. By 1925, Gillioz’s brilliantly sturdy bridges and roads connected much of southwestern Missouri, and he was interested in exploring different kinds of architecture. A group of prominent Springfield businessmen had been planning to build a vaudeville theatre and movie house downtown since 1924, but the project only picked up steam when Gillioz took over around August 1925. The steeland-concrete, bridge-like building Gillioz designed was like nothing else in the skyline. And he was adamant it be built along Route 66.

“That street in Springfield was already fully developed, so M.E. bought the piece of land closest to it,” Steele said. “He signed a hundred-year lease with a laundromat one block removed to get the address that was on Route 66. Our lobby is seven feet wide and eighty feet deep and extremely narrow because it used to be a laundromat.”

The unusual, eye-catching building drew the gaze of tourists on the Mother Road, who crowded in to watch the daily matinees. Gillioz quickly realized that the theatre, which hosted vaudeville acts and screened silent films before transitioning to talkies in the early 1930s, had two audiences.

In 1926, Fords did not have air conditioning and people needed a place to stop in the heat of the day.

“Our theatre started showing things at eleven o’clock in the morning and eleven o’clock at night,” Steele said. “People traveled in the cool of the morning and stopped for lunch and they would move on in the evening hours. Then our second

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audience came into play. After dusk, the farmers and people from Springfield proper would go out for the evening.”

The Gillioz operated from sunup to sundown for almost sixty years. During World War II, the theatre hosted songfests to boost public morale. Gillioz passed away in 1962, but his theatre continued to be a place where visitors could join the community for a few hours and forget about their troubles.

In the early 1970s, the interstate bypass and urban sprawl combined to draw people away from the historic theatre.

Businesses in downtown Springfield shuttered their windows and the Gillioz followed suit in 1980. “The thing that saved [the theatre] was that it was really overbuilt,” Steele said.

“Gillioz built the theatre out of what he knew, which was steel and concrete and plaster over it. Other than the doors, the banisters, the armrests, there was virtually no wood. If it had been made of wood during those 26 years that it was empty, there would have been nothing to save.”

Gillioz’s unique architectural style saved the building, but it also attracted a significant vagrant population.

Pigeons dipped through the collapsed ceiling and squatters scrapped Gillioz’s organ for parts.

Attorney and downtown enthusiast Sam Freeman was the sole protector of the abandoned theatre.

“There are stories of Sam chasing some of that vagrant population down the street that had stolen some of those organ pipes,” Steele remembered.

In 2006, Freeman was increasingly concerned that the historic institution would be torn down. He went to local oilman Jim D. Morris, who owned the front and back door of the laundromat-turnedtheatre, which Gillioz had leased. When Freeman asked Morris to buy the Gillioz, Morris asked, “Why would I want to buy an old theatre?” “Sam’s response was, ‘Because if you don’t do it, it’s going to be destroyed.’ Jim’s on record saying, ‘At that point, it became a heart issue and not a business issue.’”

Shortly after that meeting, Morris bought the theatre and reopened it as a non-profit on October 13, 2006. Today, the old marquee lights up with an array of international artists and movie festivals. While the eleven-to-eleven schedule is a thing of the past, travelers on Route 66 are still inevitably drawn to the majestic Gillioz, a living testament to the fact that where the Mother Road’s two lanes cut through the American landscape, art inevitably springs forth.

Image courtesy of Springfield, Missouri Tourism.

GILLIOZ THEATRE

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O

n the corner of West Santa Fe Avenue and 3rd Street in Grants, New Mexico, a sign, whose showy design stands in stark contrast to its weathered condition, overlooks an empty, graveled lot. The sign, organically shaped by a border of yellow rope, bears the words “ROARIN’ 20’s” in a dashing white font against a faded red background, with a single white panel stating “The” in black text above. Today, this sign is all that remains of not one, but two establishments that once thrived right alongside Route 66.

The Roarin’ 20’s was—as denoted by the rectangular sign below the iconic title—a bar, grill, and speakeasy—a style of restaurant that emerged during the actual 1920s as an illicit retreat for those seeking alcohol and intimacy during the years of Prohibition. While the first record of The Roarin’ 20’s dates back only as far as the ‘60s, long after Prohibition ended in 1933, the establishments still sought to mimic the ambiance of speakeasies, originally to a T. “The Roaring Twenties sign was originally from an Albuquerque night club, which boasted beautiful topless waitresses,” recalled Paul Milan, former President of Cibola County Historical Society. “We found this out by mistake— another couple, a friend, and my wife decided to celebrate at this new, attractive club, and were surprised when the waitress simmered up to our table. We had never tasted a martini and decided to try one. The other couple’s husband and I kept ordering martinis, since the waitress would approach us, right under our nose, and we said yes without thinking. It was a tough night and I never had another martini.”

The Albuquerque location on East Central Avenue closed not long after the Milans’ visit. The sign was salvaged by Eddie McBride, who had moved from California with his wife, Dora, to take over his father’s operation in Grants—an old, mom-and-pop, New Mexican-styled hangout called the Sunshine Cafe, Bar, and Dance Hall, which, fittingly, actually had been built during the ‘20s. McBride updated the building for the uranium miners who were sweeping through Grants at the time, adding tablecloths to the tables and installing a drive-up window. Outside, McBride erected the Roarin’ 20’s sign and saw fit to rename the restaurant after it, albeit with “Eddie’s” added beforehand—displayed on the rather out-of-place white panel that instead reads “The” today. So it was that Eddie’s Roarin’ 20’s resumed the business that started in Albuquerque, minus the topless waitresses.

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“After the McBrides, a schoolteacher and his wife [Walter and Ida Candelaria] bought [the restaurant], and then Georgia [Romero] and her husband [Escolastico “Lucky”] bought it in the 1990s,” said Chris Roybal, Marketing Director for the City of Grants. “It never changed after that; it was always some type of a restaurant and bar, [and] it’s always been called The Roarin’ 20’s since then.”

The Romeros owned The Roarin’ 20’s until the early 2000s, when the nation encountered an economic downturn. Liquor licenses became highly profitable when sold to supermarkets, so the Romeros sold theirs to the Walmart Supercenter in Grants, ending one of the restaurant’s main draws—as evidenced by the third sign down the signpost that reads “Package Liquors.”

No longer seeing the merit in keeping the establishment, the Romeros sold it to a man named Alfred Mirabal, who has left it untouched ever since.

By 2015, the restaurant had seen too much wear and tear and was torn down, leaving the lot empty except for the sign and its post.

The decade the sign alludes to was a time of expansion for America, filled with new inventions, new laws– both liberating and restrictive–and a growing economy ripe for expenditures. Neon signage also began its reign of popularity, and while the sign holds no gas-discharge tubes, every inch of its white “ROARIN’ 20’s” text is lined with light bulbs, imitating the extravagance embraced during the era.

“From what I remember—it’s been 20 years since [my husband and I] ate there—the lights on the outside chased each other,” said Roybal. “I’m assuming they [still work, but] I’m not sure there’s power to them. We are hoping to open a neon park here, but at this time, infrastructure comes [first].

We get a lot of tourists because of this one sign.”

The Roarin’ 20’s sign speaks to an era when Route 66 was just a work in progress, as the country was beginning to open its eyes to a world beyond the homestead. Not everyone was on board with the radical changes brought on by the decade, but there is little doubt that the ‘20s cemented their place in history, much like many locations on the Mother Road.

It would be a terrible shame if this sign was to fall by the wayside as both of its restaurants have, and hopefully it will be preserved along with many other relics of this expansive age. If the proposal for a neon park reaches fruition, Grants, New Mexico, may have an even brighter future.

Image by John Smith.

The Roarin’ 20’s

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CARTHAGE 56 ROUTE Magazine

NOSTALGIA

By Cheryl Eichar Jett Photographs by David J. Schwartz – Pics On Route 66 ROUTE Magazine 57

I

lluminated on a summer night by a sprinkling of stars, a pale moon waxing or waning, and a neon sign, the local drive-in movie theater stood ready for its silver screen to light up with the evening’s featured movie. No less symbolic of the Mid-Century than the era’s classic cars and cozy diners, that iconic amphitheater of entertainment was a truly American phenomenon. Who doesn’t have memories of their local drive-in, the aroma of popcorn wafting from the concession stand, the sound of children frolicking on the playground, and the magic of a dusky evening sky as the movie begins? There’s just no denying that the drivein theater was–and in a few fortunate places still is–the quintessential family attraction.

Entertainment for the Automobile Age Although the drive-in movie theatre was invented in the 1930s, its popularity didn’t come of age until the postwar economic boom. Seemingly all of a sudden, American families lived their lives via the automobile, with drivethrough restaurants, drive-in movies, and drive-up banks the new normal. Richard M. Hollingshead Jr. patented his drive-in theater design and opened the first one in 1933 in Camden, New Jersey, with partner Willis Smith. When this new and affordable evening entertainment caught on, the format multiplied across the country to the tune of more than 4,000 in the 1950s. The drive-in movie theater had a bombshell impact on the American family. Instead of gathering around the radio or the piano in the living room, Mom and Dad bundled their kids into the station wagon for an evening’s entertainment that also included a playground for the kiddos and inexpensive “road food” from the concession stand.

On the outskirts of the charming Missouri town of Carthage stands one of those iconic outdoor theaters, virtually unchanged from when it was built in 1949.

Deservedly on the National Register of Historic Places since 2003, the venue still boasts its original screen house and neon signboard, as well as the low-slung concession stand and glass-block ticket booth, both graced with touches of Streamline Moderne style. On a nine-acre lot, the drive-in was registered as its own historic district! The only modern addition is a metal support building added during the 1990s restoration. On a spacious, tree-lined lot, the drive-in sets back just enough to allow a pretty green lawn and the historic neon sign out front to beckon movie-goers, vintage theater enthusiasts, and Route 66 travelers alike.

“It’s one of only a handful of drive-in theaters still operating directly on the length of Route 66,” explained Callie Myers, Executive Director of the Carthage Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s something we include in all our marketing. It’s a great asset, with great ownership and a value to the community. And the Route 66ers are interested 58 ROUTE Magazine

in the iconic visual; they like to see the quirky spots and get the feel-great photo opportunity. They really like to get the retro feel of the place, even if there’s no movie [that night].”

A Drive-In for Carthage William D. Bradfield and V.F. Narramore, Bradfield’s son-inlaw, operators of the Roxy Theatre on the Carthage square, jumped into the drive-in craze just three miles outside of town in 1949.

Using 65,000 pounds of steel, the Ozark Engineering Company from Joplin built the screen house with a 66-foot-high screen, 90 feet wide, plus 50-foot wings. Creating ramps for 500 cars, Sweeney Construction Company from Neosho did the earthwork. And as Bobby Troup’s song, “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” swept across the country, the drive-in’s owners blessed their new creation with a good-luck name.

The Route 66 Drive-In opened to the public on September 22, 1949,—an opening night the owners might rather have forgotten. The movie choice, a musical comedy named Two Guys from Texas, was said to be a flop (despite a cameo

by Bugs Bunny), a sound amplifier quit working, and a projector light shorted out. Despite the tentative start, the theater was considered to be one of the finest in the Midwest and continued to draw crowds from across the Tri-State area. Sometime after 1953, a wider screen was installed to accommodate the new CinemaScope movie craze.

The Dickenson Theatres chain purchased the venue in 1971, but a dozen or so years later, drive-ins were a dying breed, their demise hastened by television and movie rentals. Like many others, the Route 66 Drive-In was in a state of disrepair and, rather than sink more money into it, Dickenson opted to close the theater and sell the property.

From Theater to Salvage Yard— And Back Again Inspired by a defunct drive-in filled with old cars in Fort Scott, Kansas, Mark and Dixie Goodman purchased the Route 66 Drive-In on Old 66 Boulevard in 1985 to use as an auto salvage yard. They left all the structures intact but packed the parking lot with used vehicles. Their dismantling business lasted ten years before the aura of the old drive-in got to them. Route 66 travelers were continually stopping to ask about the drive-in’s past. Randomly, someone offered to buy the ticket booth (although they couldn’t bring themselves to sell it). Local friends asked, “But what about the drivein?” And then there were the Goodmans’ own fond memories

Nathan and Amy McDonald.

there. It became an easy choice to restore the theater to its former glory.

The project took them and restoration partners, Wes and Janice Alumbaugh, two years, doing 90% of the work themselves, with Alumbaugh volunteering his construction company. Nine semi-trailer loads of crushed cars and 1,280 tires were hauled out, and 1,705 tons of crushed rock were brought in to resurface the parking area. Triumphantly, the Goodmans re-opened to a long line of cars in the fading light of April 18, 1998. But by 2016, after 30 years of ownership, Mark and Dixie were ready to retire. And, in a twist of fate, the next owners had already been on the property for a decade.

A Family of Caretakers Jasper County Sheriff’s Deputy Nathan McDonald had been working security at the drive-in for ten years and had admittedly fallen in love with the place while becoming good friends with the Goodmans. “The owners let us bring our family, so if I was there working, we were usually sitting in the front row watching whatever movie was playing,” Nathan explained. “It was a rainy Sunday night in 2016 that

I was outside talking to Mark, and I said, ‘Hey, if you’re ever ready to sell this place and your kids don’t want it, let me know.’ We ended up buying it. It was a good thing for the Goodmans, too, because the philosophy we had as far as how to run the theater was the same. So, the blood, sweat, and tears that they put into the property was able to be maintained, because we just carried on what they had built.

Our part now is to take care of this 71-year-old property.”

The McDonalds, both graduates of Salem High School and natives of Salem, Missouri, where Nathan was an officer with the Salem Police Department, embrace small-town values and work ethic which fit perfectly into Carthage’s well-loved drive-in. “Our families have similarities, working folks, so we’re rooted in the foundation of faith and family in a small town. Salem was a good place to grow up,” Nathan said. “[Salem’s] a tiny town, about three or four thousand people, everybody knows everybody. We were always together; we didn’t have a lot but what our parents did to make us happy was to go camping together,” Amy added.

On February 1, 2017, it became official—Nathan and wife Amy Boxx McDonald purchased the drive-in—the first new owners of the theater in more than three decades.

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Get your ticket at this vintage booth.

That same day, Nathan retired from the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department, and soon after, Amy retired from her position as a State of Missouri support clerk after 19 years.

“I had to hang it up,” said Amy. “It was too much for me to keep up the house, cook, clean, get the kids where they needed to be–and then also run a drive-in!” Now, Nathan holds a full-time job as a Human Resources director at Dyno Nobel Transportation in Carthage while Amy runs the day-to-day drive-in operations and keeps sons Jake and Easton, 14 and 11 years old, and daughter Ayla, 13, in tow.

But on weekend movie nights, the whole family is at the drive-in, working in tandem.

March 31, 2017, was the McDonalds’ opening day of their first year, followed by two more successful seasons, including a celebration in 2019 of 70 years since the drivein first opened. But then, 2020 arrived with its unique challenges. Unable to open their season normally in March 2020, the McDonalds allowed local churches to hold services at the drive-in into the summer, overlapping with their delayed restarting of the movie schedule in May. Now open for their fifth season of family entertainment, the McDonalds appreciate their clientele from cities and towns throughout the Tri-State area, as well as the interest from their Route 66 visitors.

A Surviving Gem A rare and authentic survivor, this is one of the few intact drive-ins still in operation in the US today. Because the city did not grow up around it, the property retains its rural feel, and the Streamline style of the concession stand and glass blocks of the tiny ticket booth transport one right back to the 1950s. Enhancing the vintage aura, some original driveway markers and speaker poles still stand, although the speakers are long gone and an FM transmitter 60 ROUTE Magazine

now provides audio. The concession stand offers familiar snacks and sandwiches, and children still climb on the original playground equipment.

In this perfect setting, it’s easy for old home-town memories to surface of “the way things were”–of your pajama-clad kids, yawning and settling down in the back seat as they try to stay awake for a few more minutes, or your arm sneaking around your date’s shoulders before the first feature ends.

“The idea of the drive-in was America’s love of the car, so they would pull into a theater, the speaker would be there, and people would stay in their car and watch the film. [But] nobody stays in their car now!” said Nathan with a chuckle. “Everybody sits out by their car, laughing, playing catch, no one’s on their phone. It’s like you’ve stepped through those gates and you’ve come back to a society of interacting human beings and we just enjoy each other’s company. It’s just that step out of the hustle and bustle of everyday life so you’re in that moment, and you just can’t find that anywhere else. It really makes the place special, and that’s what we were drawn to and we want to continue for many years to come.”

“It is the local attraction that people put on their calendars, and people do travel from miles around,” said Myers. “People travel back to yesteryear and enjoy passing that on to their children. We are very proud of the drive-in.

It almost always sells out and is kind of the premiere community event. People go out and tailgate and begin to gather. It’s sort of an event within an event. It’s a fun thing for locals.”

There is a magic that separates America from much of the rest of the world, a beauty that celebrates the simplicity and the ungeneric in our lives. Tucked peacefully into the countryside of tiny Carthage, Missouri, the Route 66 Drive-in offers not only family-friendly pictures to enjoy, but a reminder of a period when spending time together away from the distractions of life truly mattered.

It’s still a fun thing for the McDonald family, too. “When we moved here in 2006, the people in the area were used to having a drive-in movie theater. Then we talked to our friends and family back home [in Salem], and they’re like, ‘why a drive-in theater?’” Nathan recalled. “But for us, if you’re there on a warm July night, and the sun goes down and the stars are up and there’s a good movie on the screen, popcorn’s popping, you can’t get that atmosphere anywhere else.” Throw in some fireflies twinkling on the lawn, just enough moonlight, and a loved one or three for good company, and we’re there, too.

VISIT CARTHAGE beautifully historic

www.visitcarthage.com ROUTE Magazine 61

The city of Cuba is a well-known juncture along Missouri’s stretch of Historic Route 66, but its history as a site of national crossroads actually extends back nearly a century before the Mother Road came into existence. Originally traveled by Native Americans in their seasonal movements, settlers began platting the city in 1857 around a planned railroad and hauled iron ore from the location’s mines to St. Louis by ox cart.

The railroad soon came through, giving way to expansion, and with expansion came a greater need to regulate law and order. And it is here, in this original section of Cuba, that the oldest surviving government building in the city still stands: the Cuba Jail.

The Jail’s first incarnation was a small wooden building that was destroyed rather easily prior to 1908.

“There were some young guys that liked to have a good time,” said Marilyn Stewart, former Chair of The Historic Preservation Commission, “and they would get a little bit excited while they were drinking pretty bad, because it was 2, 3, 5 in the morning and they would be out, riding and singing up and down the street. So, at 1 at night, the marshal stopped them and said, ‘You boys are coming with me.’ He put them in the jail, they slept it off, and they were a little bit disgruntled because they were having fun. A couple of nights later, they got together, [attached a rope to] the wooden building, and took off [on their horses, dragging it] down the street.”

In April of 1908, the Cuba residents elected to have the wooden building replaced and the city purchased the lot on the corner of what is today South Main Avenue and Prairie Street, where the previous structure stood. Within the year, the new jailhouse—sometimes known as the “calaboose” for its single-room, block building style—was built with concrete walls, an iron door in front, a metal cot for prisoners to sleep on, and inscribed with the words “CUBA-JAIL” and “1908” outside to state its purpose. The building served the city faithfully for decades, eventually being upgraded in 1944 with the addition of a septic tank, modernized water facilities, new mattresses for the cot, and a new paint job.

In 1954, the Cuba Jail was abandoned in favor of a new jailhouse that was constructed behind the City Hall and Fire 62 ROUTE Magazine

Station on North Smith Street. In time, at around 1975, even the new jailhouse fell out of use as prisoners were instead taken to the county seat of Steelville, eight miles south of Cuba. For the remainder of the century, the Cuba Jail was left untouched, and the building, as well as the yard around it, lived free of human interference until Verlin Boda, of Boy Scout Troop 463, discovered it in 2004.

“At that point, we were getting our city recognized as [being] historic,” said Stewart, “and we got the Historic District, and [the Cuba Jail] was within [that], and we were doing a big thing on preservation.

For about 15 years, we were taking care of buildings. And I think [the Cuba Jail] was just something that [Boda] and his dad saw—his dad was a Scoutmaster—and went, ‘Hey!’ They came to the Commission and asked if they could [restore it], and we looked at it and gave them the nod to go ahead.”

Boda got permission to begin the task on October 4, 2004, from the board of aldermen and the mayor at the time, John Koch. Boda then went to work, cleaning out the inside and outside, building new furniture for the space out of wood, and he even located the iron door that had disappeared from the entrance sometime after its retirement.

“They found a temporary holding place at the City Hall that had the iron door,” explained Stewart. “It’s not used for anything, it’s just there. Somebody said, ‘Why don’t you get rid of it?’ ‘We can’t. It’s too old.’ So, they [reattached it].”

For Boda, the project was not only a way to help preserve a piece of Cuba’s history—it was also a task that would earn him his promotion to Eagle Scout. And on March 31, 2007, the city rewarded his efforts with the rank in question at a Court of Honor ceremony held at Recklein Auditorium. From there, the Boda family seemingly left the area and not a record exists of them beyond the unusual achievement.

Today, the Jail still stands in downtown Cuba, just a blockand-a-half south of iconic Route 66. Though the interior is closed to visitors, they can still peer through the bars of the iron door to view the setup of the room, and the key to the Jail still hangs in the mayor’s office. While no longer in use, the Jail represents a time in Cuba’s history that still attracts visitors in search of a glimpse of a simpler time.

Image by Jerrye & Roy Klotz MD.

CUBA, MISSOURI’S, Finest CALABOOSE

WAYNESVILLE, MO

Today 12:38 PM

“Be back Monday. Got a new route planned.”

CLEAR YOUR SCHEDULE. GET TO PULASKI COUNTY, MO! Any time you make your way down Historic Route 66, you’ll come across places that are spectacularly quirky and one-of-a-kind. Our advice? Stop. Take it all in right here in the birthplace of the byway.

Because when you do, you’ll experience gems like art galleries and other interesting places that make a road trip through Pulaski County like no other. Plan your trip at pulaskicountyusa.com.

ROUTE Magazine 63

ROCKIN’

By Phoebe Billups

Photographs by Marshall Hawkins

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ON

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S

troud, like many of the little communities constellated along Route 66, emanates a quiet presence of a simpler time, when children played on the street from sunup to sundown, and people greeted each other like old friends at the local diner. A growing town at the dawn of the 20th Century, with four cotton gins, two newspapers, and two banks, Stroud, which once was known for its rough and tumble taverns, made headlines with the capture of outlaw Henry Starr and his cohorts who had attempted to rob the town’s two banks, the First National Bank and the Stroud National Bank, at the same time.

Today, Stroud’s tranquil Main Street, with just two stoplights, belies its wild past. But one of the town’s main anchors, the Rock Cafe, is still drawing people to this quiet midwestern community. And as much of a great experience as the venue is, there is more than just great food and ambiance pulling people in.

Dawn Welch, the Rock Cafe’s current owner is famously known as the inspiration for the larger-than-life personality behind Sally Carrera, the spunky lawyer-turned-motelowner in Pixar’s 2006 blockbuster Cars. The credit put a spotlight on Welch and the little cafe, whose neon shimmers over Stroud like a crown jewel. However, the story of “the Rock” truly begins more than eighty years ago, when Route 66 first tore through the Oklahoma prairie.

Steady as a Rock In 1936, the Mother Road carved its path across Oklahoma. In Stroud, H & P Service Station owner Roy Rives bought the sandstone dug up and leftover by the construction of Route 66 for five dollars and used it to build the squat, flat-roofed building that would become the Rock Cafe. “He finished it in 1939,” Rives’ granddaughter Susan Riffe Suliburk said. “They would plow up the land and he would go and pick up the rocks. Grandpa was always scrounging up stuff to use in other ways.” The Rock Cafe’s one-of-a-kind design, with the Mother Road literally woven into its foundations, is the product of Rives’ ingenuity.

Born to settlers driven west to Kentucky by the Civil War, Rives came from creative, resilient people. In the early 1920s, he moved to Stroud, something of a boomtown after oil was struck nearby in 1923, to escape a life of farming and to open a filling station. Rives thought up the Rock Cafe as a way to lure his oldest daughter and son-in-law, Allene and Ed Riffe, who married and moved to Sayre, Oklahoma, in 1939, back to Stroud to run it.

His plan worked and Allene and Ed returned to town in 1939. The cafe found immediate success as a Greyhound Bus stop, and with the depression ebbing, there were plenty of ready and willing patrons, from travelers to soldiers departing for war. However, World War II caused national food rationing and running the diner became more difficult.

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“My dad raised the price of hamburgers from seven cents to a dime and he got boycotted by the truck drivers because they thought that was too expensive,” Suliburk said. “I think that’s one of the things that soured him on [it].”

In 1942, the Riffes left the Rock for wartime jobs—him in the oil industry and her running a nursery school—and Ed Smalley, an army cook freshly returned from overseas, took over the lease. Smalley served up burgers in the kitchen until 1946. In its heyday, the Rock was a little truck stop with two shiny red booths, a jukebox on every table, and eight bar stools where customers could sit up at the counter and watch the cooks flip buckwheat pancakes. For locals, it was a special gathering place.

In 1959, Smalley’s aunt, Mamie Mayfield, acquired the lease, running the cafe 24 hours a day from 1959 until her declining health forced her to retire in 1983.

Mayfield became the friendly face of the cafe and under her management, the cafe’s popularity grew like wildfire with vacationing families and long-haul truckers who could stop in at any time of the day for a quick bite and a cup of coffee. For the local high school students, it became the favorite watering place.

When Mayfield retired, Smalley was filled with dread at the prospect of the Rock being torn down. The cafe was where he and his wife, Aleta, first snuck kisses behind the jukebox and three of his four sisters met the truck drivers that they would marry. In 1983, he bought the building from Rives.

Over the next decade, Smalley made renovations and toyed with the idea of giving the Rock to his son, but the cafe’s fate ultimately remained uncertain. Then, as so often happens on the Mother Road, serendipity lent a hand.

In 1993, Dawn Welch got ‘lost’ in Stroud and Smalley found the perfect heir to carry on the Rock Cafe’s legacy.

Around the World and Back Again Welch’s dreams of becoming a world traveler began in Yukon, Oklahoma, where she grew up watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island on TV. Her wanderlust was not diminished by the fact that money was tight in their household. Welch’s mother taught her how to stretch a dollar early on and, when she was fourteen, Welch began working at Ken’s Pizza, where her manager, Maurie Gingell, took her under her wing. The first thing Welch bought with her earnings was a little motorcycle, which she still rides to work to this day.

In school, Welch’s favorite subject was history. She dreamed of becoming an archeologist and exploring the pyramids in Egypt. In 1989, at the tender age of twenty, she did leave her “quintessential small town Oklahoma” existence for a life of adventure, but not quite the one she had envisioned.

As a purser with Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Welch worked ten-hour days on the ship and then got off and explored dazzling ports from Aruba to Barbados. She met her first husband, a Swiss-German cook named Christian Herr, on one of the ships. For four years, Welch would work for nine months, visit her mother in Oklahoma, and spend two months globetrotting. “On the cruise ship there were 800 employees and maybe ten of them were from America,” Welch said. “I’d meet people from all over the world and travel to their countries and their families would host me.”

Welch immersed herself into other cultures in Norway, The Cars Story England, Italy, and France, every place she dreamed of Anyone who has seen Cars will remember Sally Carrera, the exploring as a child. One of her favorite memories is of Porsche who abandoned her glamorous life in the fast lane casting fishing nets at sunrise on a Turkish lake with a as an LA lawyer to unite a small community along Route friend’s father who spoke no English. By the time she 66. If this sounds familiar, you are not mistaken. turned twenty-four, Welch had seen more than most The Rock Cafe’s story changed forever in 2000 when people do in a lifetime. She was ready to settle down. At a small fleet of Cadillacs filled with Pixar executives least a little. rolled into town. Route 66 historian and author Michael When Welch visited her mother, now living in Stroud, in Wallis led animator John Lasseter, scouting inspiration for 1993, she was making plans to open a sub shop in Costa characters in a film that he was developing, through the Rica. Fate intervened. “I was rollerblading down Main doors of the Rock Cafe around 9:30 p.m. to meet Welch.

Street and this old man in an old truck, Ed Smalley, pulled She excitedly showed the director her flickering neon sign, over and told me that my mom had told him I wanted to which she promised would be “newly refurbished” the next buy a grill,” Welch said. “He took me to the Rock Cafe and time he visited, and all the small things that made her so unlocked the doors and there was all this dusty restaurant proud of the cafe. equipment.”

Welch agreed to buy some of the equipment and told Smalley about her plans. “He asked me if I knew how to speak Spanish or run a business. I told him I’d been a shift supervisor at Ken’s Pizza so of course I knew how to run a business. He kind of chuckled at me. I was 24 years old. He said, ‘Why don’t you stay here for six months and learn how to run a restaurant, and then go to Costa Rica and learn the language?’ That made sense to me.”

Herr joined Welch in Stroud and their daughter Alexis was born in 1994. Herr ultimately decided to return to a life of travel, but Welch fell in love with the little town and decided to stick around. “It was a simple life, but then the Rock Cafe also brought in international tourists every single day.”

Dawn Welch serving some friendly customers.

Welch met her second husband, Fred Welch, in Stroud, Between 2000 and 2003, Lasseter returned to the Rock and they welcomed a son, Paul, in 2000. Welch’s mother with Pixar and Disney executives several times. Welch was always around to help watch the kids or make a handwould not find out whether she or the Rock would be painted sign for the cafe. Alexis and Paul grew up at the represented in the film until the night it premiered. She had Rock, helping out around the restaurant for pocket money. no idea how closely Lasseter was taking notes. Everything Alexis became a prolific cook and waitress and Paul remains Sally does and says in the film, from her broken neon sign Welch’s “crisis management team of one,” doing everything to her sass, to her iconic blue color (Alexis’ favorite at the from snaking drains to hanging Christmas lights. time), are echoes of Welch.

In 2002, Welch’s longtime manager Beverly Thomas Even the “tramp stamp” on Sally’s bumper was inspired joined the cafe. A preschool teacher by trade, Thomas by a story Welch shared. “When I was 24 years old and we started picking up shifts on the weekends to earn a little had all these motorcycle groups coming through, I wore the extra money and be close to three sons in their early teens, same outfit every time,” Welch said. “Real biker chick look who worked at the Rock through high school. Welch, and I had this fake black widow spider crawling down my Thomas, and the five children formed an unbreakable bond stomach like a tattoo. I played this whole part of being the that is at the heart of the operation to this day. Thomas ‘black widow waitress.’ I was real mean to customers and and Welch have seen each other through births, deaths, she became really famous. That’s the reason Sally has the graduations, and a Route 66 trip to California that Thomas tramp stamp, which I was horrified [by].” calls a “very clean version of Thelma and Louise.” “My After 2003, the visits from Pixar tapered off. By 2006, husband calls her my work wife,” Thomas said. “The good Thomas was convinced that the ship had sailed. When times and the bad, we’re family.”

ROUTE Magazine 67

Dawn Welch outside the Rock Cafe.

Pixar called to invite Welch to the May premiere in 2006, everyone at the Rock was shocked. When Welch and her husband at the time attended the star-studded premiere at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, they were in for an even bigger surprise. “She just knew that she got invited, and they were so starstruck and excited to go,” Thomas said. “They took two days off work… and I held down the fort here. When they went, that’s when John Lasseter pulled her aside and said, ‘You are Sally. As you’re watching the movie, look for your character.’ So, as she’s watching the movie, she’s just in tears the whole time.”

At the time, the cafe staff consisted of just Thomas, Welch, and their children. Within thirty days of the premiere, Disney filmed a commercial at the Rock that aired in France, Spain, Australia, England, Mexico, and all across America. Business tripled that summer. The cafe, which seated just 25 people then, found itself inundated with visitors from around the globe.

Trial by Fire Starting in 2006, it seemed like things could only get better.

In October 2007, Guy Fieri filmed an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives with Welch. The Rock hired two new full-time employees. Even through the winter months, the waves of tourists grew and grew. Then, as Memorial Day kicked off what was gearing up to be an even wilder summer season, a fire gutted the cafe. “That just brought everything to a stop,” Thomas said. “That ended us right then and there.”

Thomas and Welch, who had closed up early for the last day of school activities, rushed back to the cafe at 11 PM 68 ROUTE Magazine

with their husbands and children in tow. The families sat outside the cafe and wept. “[Welch] said, ‘Listen, I know you’re going to have to get a job. Just don’t get a good job. In one year, we’re going to kick these doors open,’” Thomas said. “I looked at her as we’re crying and thought, ‘You’re kidding me?’ I said, ‘Okay.’

On the way home, I told my husband, ‘It’s done. We’re done.’”

Reopening was never a question in Welch’s mind. “Everyone’s looking at this fire saying, ‘Okay, the Rock Cafe’s gone.’ I told my kids, ‘I’m gonna rebuild it.’ They looked at me and said, ‘Yup, it’s gonna be rebuilt.’ They were the only ones that believed that was true. They’d go there with me every day and help me clean out the inside of the [building].”

People from town poured out to help save the beloved landmark.

Combing through the rubble, Welch was touched to find that the grill that Rives scrounged up in 1939 was still intact, miraculously saved by the fallen hood vent. Over the course of a month, Welch, her children, and their army of volunteers, slowly pieced the historic sandstone building back together.

One year and nine days after the fire ripped through the cafe, the Rock Cafe officially reopened for business.

Thomas and Welch watched the travelers return in droves.

Since 2009, the number of visitors has only grown.

On the Up and Up Today, the Rock Cafe boasts an assortment of the old and new. A poster of Lightning McQueen signed “to Sally” hangs on one wall and another is filled with artwork by iconic Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire, who often stayed in the Welchs’ little green house when he passed through town, fixing her son’s toys and creating doodles for them of himself with his Cars character. The sweet hippie VW van Fillmore is thought to have been based on Waldmire. The simple neon sign from the late 1940s still shines. Plywood cutouts of Lightning and Sally, which Welch’s mother made herself, sit in front of the quirky building, which Welch rebuilt with sandstone from the Turner Turnpike, out by original Route 66, where Rives found the foundations of the Rock nearly ninety years ago.

Welch’s journey has been winding and serendipitous, filled with incredible highs and lows, but she is grateful that it dropped her in Stroud. Anyone who comes to the Rock Cafe hoping to learn the story behind Cars will not leave without discovering what makes Stroud and the cafe so special.

“My favorite thing about the Rock Cafe is when people really get it,” Welch said. “You can physically see them slowing down and enjoying each other, just doing the simple things.”

ROUTE Magazine 69

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

April 23, 2021 Few people know that when photographers schedule midday, outdoor portrait shoots we are secretly praying for “mostly cloudy” conditions. Direct sunlight is harsh, it leaves dark shadows and a clear blue sky is often uninspiring. Big, soft, fluffy clouds… that’s where it’s at. When an outside portrait is composed, the sky usually takes up a large amount of real estate and clouds make the image much more interesting by giving texture and subtle contrast around the subject. Most importantly, from a lighting perspective, clouds help diffuse and spread light evenly, softening shadows and offering the subject a more delicate and forgiving light.

I was on my way to the photo shoot at the Rock Cafe in Stroud, praying for mostly cloudy conditions. However, Mother Nature over delivered. For a mid-April Oklahoma morning, it was unusually cold. It had rained the night before and everything was still damp. Thankfully, it wasn’t dark or gloomy. There were times that the clouds would occasionally part, allowing soft warm tones to peer through, but those moments were scarce. I knew it was imperative to find an interesting way to shoot inside the café.

Right outside of the kitchen, I found a long hallway that connects the outside patio to the host station. The walls are 70 ROUTE Magazine

painted with black, chalkboard paint that have been written and erased repeatedly, leaving fading words and clouds of chalk dust. The walls have a lot of character. Opposite is a narrow window that peers into the kitchen, showing the staff hard at work. At the threshold of the doorway is a working stoplight. On the ceiling, a single, bright fixture, struggles to find surfaces to bounce light from, and I thought to myself, this hallway could be my picture. As I framed my shot the light glowed invitingly green. It was a good omen.

As a photographer, I must be able to embrace my surroundings. Like the sun in a cloudless sky, this uncovered fixture was bright, warm, and harsh. I asked Dawn, the proprietor of the Rock Cafe, to stand directly under the fixture, take a step back, and lean against the wall. This gave her a bright, dramatic light, with a full view of the kitchen window and the stoplight.

You can’t see this hallway from the street. You are unable to study this area while dining. If you blink on your way to the patio, you just might miss it. It’s a small part of the historic Rock Cafe, but I found it to be a great place for a picture.

—Marshall Hawkins

Miami, Oklahoma

The gateway to Oklahoma on Historic Route 66

DELUXE INN Miami, OK

visitmiamiok @miamioktourism @visitmiamioklahoma

ROUTE Magazine 71

OUR TOP 5 AUTO MUSEUMS ON ROUTE 66

Pontiac – Oakland Museum Pontiac, IL

Route 66 Car Museum Springfield, MO

Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum Sapulpa, OK

Route 66 Auto Museum Santa Rosa, NM

New Mexico Route 66 Museum Tucumcari, NM

What better place to have a car museum than in Pontiac, Illinois, right? Not only does this museum showcase a variety of Pontiac’s through the ages, but it gives a good glimpse into the Oakland brand as well. The constantly changing roster of vehicles will have you going back again and again.

From early Brass Era cars, classics, sports, to cars from the silver screen, step back in time at this museum that displays over 70 privately owned vehicles going as far back as the late 1890s. Standouts include the famous truck from the film “The Grapes of Wrath,” the Gotham Cruiser, and a 1936 Horch 853 Cabriolet.

See some of the coolest cars at this decommissionedArmory-turnedmuseum and home of the world’s tallest gas pump. Over 30 historical and classic cars, on loan from various private collections, provide loads of automotive nostalgia. In addition, enjoy the Route 66 memorabilia and military history that it offers.

Any car enthusiast will know that this place is worth stopping at.

On show are over 30 automobiles that have been rebuilt, modified, and restored into works of art by owner Bozo Cordova. From Hot Rods, Corvettes to Chromes, it’s a walkthrough automobile history. Also, enjoy vintage memorabilia and a gift shop that is stocked with some unique finds.

Displaying a modest but unique collection of classic cars, including a 1929 Ford Model, a 1937 Studebaker President, and a 1956 Mercury Montclair, among others, plus the world’s largest Route 66 Photo Exhibit, and a selection of old school memorabilia, make this museum deserving of a visit.

Stop in when next in Tucumcari.

72 ROUTE Magazine

Image by David J. Schwartz – Pics On Route 66.

Nothing celebrates America’s love affair with the automobile like Route 66. With almost 100 years of car history under its fender, this road has seen it all. And so can you. America’s motoring legacy, culture, and glamor endures at these mustvisit museums that each highlight and showcase the cars that once cruised this fabled highway.

ROUTE Magazine 73

I

n Downtown Buckeye, Arizona, at 1015 Monroe Avenue, stands a 22-foottall, 1200-pound, fiberglass statue of a ragged yet contentlooking man. Donning baggy pants, a hat, a bandana, a copy of the Wall Street Journal and glove in one pocket, and another glove, a banana and empty candy wrappers in the other, a shoe with a flapping sole, and a Phi Beta Kappa key hanging from his rope belt, this character exudes an air of intelligence and worldliness.

His name is Hobo Joe, and he is just one among the legacy of coffee shops that populated Arizona during the ‘70s.

“He was not really a hobo,” said Arizona historian Marshall Trimble. “This was kind of a world traveler. He was a philosopher and he was also a connoisseur of good food—that’s just quoting the motto of the [original] Hobo Joe.” The original Hobo Joe was also 25 feet tall, created in 1967 by ex-Disney artist Jim Casey in Culver City, California. After Hobo Joe’s Coffee Shops first opened in 1965, founder Herb Applegate commissioned Casey to sculpt his mascot and send the variously sized molds to Scottsdale, Arizona, where they could be mass-produced in a fiberglass factory. By the end of the 1960s, each of the eight existing Hobo Joe’s venues had a life-sized, 5-foot-tall statue standing outside of it.

Of the 25-foot-tall versions, only two have their existence recorded. The first was erected in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, early on and did not have an easy life.

“It was damaged about two months after it was erected,” explained Trimble. “According to the stories, some upset union people tried to set it on fire and did enough damage to it that it had to be sent back to California—at least, that’s what they say—to be repaired by the artist who did it. But did they send it back to California, or what happened?

But we know this: nobody knows where it is now.”

The second giant Hobo Joe is the one that resides in Buckeye. Cast by Marvin Ransdell—the owner of a fiberglass factory presumably responsible for the hoboes—in 1967, the second giant was never erected for the restaurant chain and instead lay in Ransdell’s backyard, unpainted, until his death in 1988. The reasons for its negligence are disputed—some say Ransdell created the statue for Applegate but was never paid for the job, while May—the widow of Applegate—claims

74 ROUTE Magazine

not to recognize Ransdell’s name.

Whatever the case, this giant statue was willed to Ramon Gillum, a friend of Ransdell and owner of the meat factory, who had the statue painted and erected outside of his slaughterhouse in July of 1989, with a plaque denoting the hobo in memory of Ransdell.

The statue was purchased and refurbished in 2016 by the Buckeye Main Street Coalition.

“It was years ago when [the Buckeye statue] was [lying] in a pasture,” said Don Parks, a statue collector in Phoenix.

“I tried to buy it, but the people wouldn’t sell it. But they did have other ones, too—they had the little 5-foot ones that were brand new and had never been painted.

And [Gillum] wanted $6,000 for [one of them]. But the big one, they wouldn’t sell.”

The more numerous life-sized hoboes have done their own fair share of traveling ever since the coffee shops closed in the late ‘80s. Parks has owned two of them since 2012, having found one in a restaurant supply store in Phoenix and the other which he could not recall the circumstances behind.

Another statue was anonymously donated to the Arizona Railway Museum in Chandler between 1985 and 1987.

Accompanying this hobo was a perfectly intact statue of his canine companion—a rare find nowadays. The hobo currently resides in storage.

Also, buying into the culture of hobo train-hopping, the John Bell Museum of Verde Canyon Railroad in Clarkdale, Arizona, houses a 5-foot-tall Hobo Joe—donated in 2011 by Dale Randles, Sr., who had previously bought it at an antique store in 2004 to fit into his own Hobo Joe’s restaurant in Cottonwood, Arizona—opened in 1980 and permanently closed by 2011.

The old coffee shops may be long gone now, but the hoboes’ ideology of owning the freedom of the road lives on. Throughout Arizona and California, a vagrant Hobo Joe may have secluded himself into any warehouse, garage, or museum, and there’s no telling where one will pop up next. While real-life hoboes’ only aim was to travel in search of work, the Hobo Joes are instead a manifestation of the romanticism of the open road, going wherever they please in search of new adventures. It is this notion that makes them synonymous with the spirit of America’s Main Street.

Image courtesy of Marine 69-71.

A M E R I C A’ S h B E L O V E D VA G R A N T

TH E BI RTH PL ACE O F RO UTE 66

R A IL H AV EN MOTEL

Experience history in comfort and style at the Best Western Rail Haven Motel, located in the birthplace of Route 66, Springfield, Missouri. Just a short distance from the city’s vibrant downtown, you’ve got the classic neon of the Mother Road right at your door and the heart of the Ozarks right at your fi ngertips.

Built in 1937 and welcoming visitors since, come and experience Route 66 at the motel that defi nes the warmth and hospitality that a trip down America’s Main Street has always been known to offer.

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ROUTE Magazine 75

It’s quiet in Fort Davis, Texas. The town is peaceful, an agricultural-based community where everyone knows everyone. The Davis Mountains decorate the landscape and most of the backroads in the town remain unpaved. With the nearest household retailer 170 miles away, it’s safe to say that Ft. Davis stands comfortably in the ‘middle of nowhere.’

But in this quiet corner of Texas, there’s a spot that has been drawing in visitors since its opening in 2000.

Right across from Ft. Davis’ National Historic Site is Rattlers and Reptiles, home to Buzz Ross’ Rattlesnake Museum. The yellow, stucco, nondescript building has a large painting of a snake encircling the planet earth with the faded words ‘The Largest Live Rattlesnake Exhibit’ written right above it. Inside, in the dimly lit back room, are lighted glass boxes lining the walls, each housing a unique desert creature—Gila monsters, tarantulas, and lots and lots of snakes, both venomous and otherwise. The stars of the show are the rattlesnakes; intimidating serpents that promise to wow visitors. And it all started with one man.

Jeffrey “Buzz” Ross was born in London, England, in 1944 during a buzz-bomb raid that earned him his nickname. His family then moved to Fort Worth, where his father, an American Army Air Corps pilot, was stationed, when he was just seven months old.

At a young age, Ross was fascinated with all sorts of wildlife, but quickly discovered a particular admiration for snakes, an interest that would persist throughout his life. In 1979, he moved to Ft. Davis and bought a property that was littered with rundown vehicles but had a vacant 1,400-square-foot house, perfect for keeping snakes. Ross cleaned the place up and went into taxidermy.

“When I walked in, it was a taxidermy shop and he [Ross] was doing one last year of his taxidermy work. He had some snakes in the shop and they were just sitting in cages in the back,” said Scott Teppe, current owner of Rattlers & Reptiles and friend of Ross. Teppe arrived in Ft. Davis and met Ross for the first time after returning home from a geology survey at Big Bend National Park.

“I walked in and was looking at the animals while he was talking to a gentleman,” Teppe said. “When he got done, he came over and asked me how I liked the snakes. I said, ‘They’re great,’ [but] that he had mislabeled some of the cases. I assumed 76 ROUTE Magazine

that they were for different animals in the cage and that [he] never changed the label. I said, ‘That’s not what’s in there.’”

In that moment Ross glared at Teppe, asking what the hell this stranger knew. Teppe retorted and stood his ground. That was their first conversation.

After about 10 minutes of wrangling back and forth, Ross opened up to Teppe, appreciating his moxie, and invited him to take a look at the rest of the snakes he owned.

“He told me that he was thinking about turning the taxidermy shop into a live display so that he could show live animals to people instead of dead ones,” said Teppe. Ross already had notes on what he wanted to do but didn’t have enough species for display—luckily for Ross, Teppe offered his own collection for what would become Rattlers & Reptiles.

“We built everything out of scrap. It was a very low-budget operation, so everything takes twice as long when you don’t have the money to buy the right stuff. I literally lived in the building that is now the rattlesnake museum for two months.”

After building cages together and transforming the property, alongside numerous volunteers, on July 4, 2000, Rattlers & Reptiles opened for business.

“It was great,” said Teppe. “[The] Fourth of July is a nine-day party in Fort Davis.”

Thanks to the holiday traffic, the Museum saw dozens of people venturing inside, each of them keen to experience the state’s natural wonders. Everyone was impressed with what Rattlers & Reptiles had to offer.

For a time, the Museum thrived, always happy to educate curious visitors. But as the years passed, the shine on the Museum’s star began to fade. Buzz Ross battled leukemia, among other ailments, during the last years of his life. In that time, as Ross suffered, so too did Rattlers & Reptiles. The Museum became quite rundown. But its doors remained open.

On May 3, 2018, Jeffrey “Buzz” Ross passed on. But even after his passing, Rattlers & Reptiles has continued to live out his dream, thanks to the love and appreciation of friends, volunteers, and a steady flow of fascinated tourists.

So, if you’re ever looking to get up close and personal and hear the buzz of some West Texas rattlers, be sure to visit the Rattlers & Reptiles Museum, in the middle of nowhere, in true rattlesnake country.

Image by John Smith.

SOME TEXAS R&R

ROUTE Magazine 77

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ROUTE Magazine 79

A GOOD TEXAN Matthew McConaughey

By Brennen Matthews Opening Image by Vida Alves McConaughey

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T

he first time that I had a conversation with Matthew McConaughey was in 2014. He was fresh off a string of enormously successful projects: Dallas Buyers Club — it earned him widespread praise and numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actor — and HBO’s smash series True Detective, and he had the hugely anticipated Interstellar about to hit the Big Screen. He was excited to talk about a memorable trip to West Africa and a charity that he and his wife Camila, had launched — the just keep livin Foundation — that focuses on empowering high school students to lead active lives and make healthy choices to become great men and women. To say that Matthew McConaughey is a world of energy and vision is an understatement. McConaughey is both passionate and strategic. He has managed to artfully balance his decades-long career, his foundation work, his (almost) 10-year marriage, and his role of father to his three children, and most recently, he has added author to his title with his bestselling memoir Greenlights (2020). With that Texan friendliness that warms the spirit through and through, Matthew McConaughey continues to rise above celebrity and invest his time and life into the things that truly matter most. As we sit down again, there is once more a lot to chat about.

What is the first road trip that you remember doing with just you and your dad?

I’m the youngest of three. I’ve got an older brother, 66, [another] brother, 57, and then I’m 51. My 66 [year old] brother, became best friends with my dad; he was coach of the baseball teams, etc., and they ran together. My middle brother too. When I came along, dad had become more successful [professionally] and we moved to Longview, up in east Texas; a big oil booming city. And he was busier, [often] on the road.

He was still there for me as a dad, but he wasn’t like my baseball coach.

I remember really enjoying whatever solo time I could get with him, I relished it. He would sometimes take me on these traveling business trips to go meet people, either to make a pipe deal or to meet people that he was trying to collect money from; he thought that bringing his youngest son along might shame them into paying him back. Sometimes it did work, I must say. So, we’d get on the road… he drove this truck, it had the horn on the front — the hood ornament — and it was on a spring. I would always grab that horn and turn it around so that it was facing him. And he wouldn’t notice it for days and days. And then all of a sudden, a day or week later, he’d be in his car, and he’d be like, “Damn it! Who turned that damn thing? Boy!” He knew it was me; it became a running joke.

This is what I remember about those trips: he had a book with all of his numbers and pen scratch of people that he was going to meet [from] his business relationships. But it was all mismatched, scribbled. It was my job to organize it. I had very good penmanship. So, on those trips, I’d sit over on the right and transcribe his business books and contacts over to a different book. He loved to ride with the driver’s side window down, AC on high, radio on, smoking a cigarette, leaning over to the right, with a box of fried chicken in the middle. He would grab a piece of that chicken with his cigarette in hand, while he’s just driving, and he always drove about five miles under the speed limit. He’d drive like 51 in a 55 with the right 82 ROUTE Magazine

side of his tires about two and a half feet over the line on the shoulder. He loved to take his time.

I remember we’d sit there and eat chicken and he’d drive; we’d be listening [to music], AC on full blast, windows down, radio one digit off frequency… then we’d finish the chicken and… I’ll never forget this: he had a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex, because the chicken was all greasy, right? He’d stop and get the Windex and he’d go, “Ch-ch-chch,” all over, and get those paper towels and wipe down the windshield, the top, the basin, the console, the steering wheel, everything, and he just kept driving, and kept listening to that station that was one digit off frequency. (Laughs)

Looking back now, do you think that those were times that you got to know him better, not just as your dad, but as a man?

Yeah, I mean, even the stuff we didn’t say; just being with him, and not with my two older brothers. It was always us as a family. But just he and I, me riding shotgun, which I didn’t get to ride shotgun much, because if the whole family went, I was in the back. But just he and I riding shotgun. I’ll never forget this — a big approval moment for me on one of those road trips, where we went as a traveling salesman — I put in my Tears for Fears cassette and I turned up “Shout”; I loved that song. And we were driving, and I’m listening, jamming… I’m gonna share my music with my dad, and I’ll never forget, he sat there and started going, “Shout, shout, let it all out.” And he reached up on the nob and he cranked it up, all the way, and sat back and started raising his voice, “Shout,” and he looked over, and when the song was done he goes, “Damn buddy, I liked that one, that’s a good one.”

And I remember being like, “Yes! I just shared music with my dad!”

Those were also our trips where he had the birds and the bees talks with me. He talked about respect of self and respect for women.

Was it uncomfortable for you?

No, they were more cool, because again, the fact that it was my dad and I solo, that superseded any discomfort. It made me feel like I was having a rite of passage; that my dad was saying that I was about to start a stage where that kind of intimacy was going to begin, and here’s what to do and not do. So, I think, just the fact that he was sharing those with me was like… I’m getting wisdom from my father.

Your eldest son Levi is around the same age you were when you took those trips with your Dad. Do you feel that this stage allows you to reflect even more on those times with your Dad that you were talking about?

Yeah, well you know, I hadn’t even thought about it until you brought it up. And I just went, “Oh yeah.” It just reminded me of something that happened this morning… I’ve got three children, right, and how do you spend time [with them]? They like to have [you] full time, but I have one that’s looking for the individual papa, right now, even if it’s just five minutes.

“Hey, want to watch me play my favorite game?” He’s needing that, you know? And I was needing that in those times from my Dad. That was my time with Dad, nobody else’s. It was really important.

You’re a big fan of Airstreams.

Yes! This one is a Smithsonian.

Stained glass window in the back, that right there is from an S-33 submarine, it’s a panel with all my lights and switches on it, that right there is my world map that’s all backlit, and you can put magnets on any part of the world where you’ve traveled. This is my galley over here, obviously, and it’s got bourbon cask floors for the runway. I designed this one from the shell. I got nothing but the shell off the assembly line in Ohio and designed this whole floor plan on a napkin in a bar about 19 years ago. I still have that napkin.

What sparked your interest in the first place?

You know, I remember that I had gone from a car to a van.

I had a van that I talk about in the book called Cosmo. And I tricked Cosmo out, I customized it. I had [a] speaker, I could record ideas. I had the hole in the back with a funnel where you could pee out the back without having to pull over. I had a couch in the back that leaned into a bed, and I had a desk in the back. I’d pull into someone’s office or be on the set of a movie, and I’d stay in Cosmo, because I had everything I wanted.

As I got comfortable with that amount of space, I remember I was driving with my buddy Gus, we were headed north on the 101, north of Los Angeles. And there was an Airstream; we were going northbound, and there was a truck pulling an Airstream on the southbound, and I remember looking at it going, “Wow, look at that! That’s those Airstream trailers I’ve heard about. How cool is that? Man, that’d be awesome to get one of those one day.” And my buddy Gus, who was my manager at the time [said], “Well, McConaughey, you can if you want.” I go, “What do you mean?”

He goes, “You got the money, you can.”

I was like, “I sure can, can’t I?” My first one was a 28-foot International...

CCD. I lived on the road in that one for four years. The idea of having my life in this minimal amount of square footage was very exciting. I learned through life that too many options can be more stressful. The idea that I could have my life hooked up to the back of my truck or van, and I can go where I want, when I want, pull into a beautiful place, love it, and whenever I feel like going [again] (snaps fingers).

You leave.

Boop, later. [Time] to go find new backyards.

When you were on the road for those four years, were you taking film assignments and other projects?

So, I would like… I had one parked at a studio in LA once, I parked on our lot in New York, I parked in Alberta on set, I parked and lived in Gadsden, Alabama, on a set, and I

parked and lived in New Mexico one time for some work. In between there, what was really cool, was taking my meetings on the road.

So, I’ll pick you up... I’m headed towards Tucson, Phoenix, or maybe if it’s a longer trip, we’re gonna talk for longer, El Paso, whichever way I’m heading, and I’ll pick you up at Albuquerque airport at 10AM tomorrow morning. You and I will chat on the way. And I would time it out before you and I set up our meeting, by how long our meeting was going to be, and you’d get your departure ticket out of the next airport.

So, I’d pick you up at one, keep driving, you and I’d chat about the project, which is a great place to talk to someone about creative ideas or business. And then I’d drop you off at the next airport and you catch your departure flight out. So, I got to keep moving.

And most people agreed to that?

Loved it! They loved it, and trust me, in every one of those meetings, I think I ended up getting what I wanted. I won all those negotiations, because the office that they were in, they were like, “This is wild, but this is cool man.”

Do you think you would ever switch from an Airstream trailer to an RV motorhome?

I’ve thought about it, there are pluses with an RV. I mean, to set it [trailer] up and break it down, which I like to do, again, taking my time, it’s about a 45-minute gig. It’s like a boat, so to lock everything down so that it handles bumps on the road, to unplug the water, the electricity, bring up the stabilizers, hook up the truck, back it up, hook it up, about a 45-minute gig for me when I’m in. Today, it would probably be an hour and a half because I haven’t done it in a while. But that’s to set up and that’s to breakdown. RV is, man, pull up, press button, “Boop!”, stabilize, you’re there. The other great thing about the RV is, “Hey family, you’re riding here with me.” It’s ROUTE Magazine 83

not bothering me.” Then I ask them a question: “Where are you coming from?” Then they’re like, “Well, I’m coming from Oregon.” You know, cool, “What’s the prettiest thing you’ve seen?” Now we’re in a conversation, but we’re in a conversation where they know that I’m not about to ask them to be best friends and move in, but we’re having a trailer park… there’s an understanding in trailer parks that everyone’s out doing their own thing.

If the door is open, come on over, but if the door is shut, the unsaid rule is that you don’t go unsolicited and knock on someone’s door. And if you do, they have every [right] to go, “Hey man, door’s shut.”

Have you found that the kids are starting to enjoy road travel more? I find that there is always a struggle to get them to put down the electronics.

I never knew that.

While I’m pulling, yeah. So, we’re all packed in the truck, and then when we get there, we come here. RV is, you’re driving and, “Hey buddy, can you make me a ham and cheese sandwich?” You know? And you’re right here. You’re talking and driving, so there is convenience to it, and you get to cover more ground, and you don’t have the 45-minute setup, 45-minute breakdown to leave. But they’re just not as beautiful once you’re in.

Camila and I have talked about it. But we’ve got to get these kids shepherded out of the house first before we’re like, “Okay.” And that’s a thought, you know, if we go into that next season of our life and the kids are out of the house, Camila and I might be like, “Okay, now let’s hit the road.”

You tend to get recognized when you overnight at a campground, I’m sure. But you’re a pretty laid-back guy, so folks must tend to relax around you and not get too starstruck.

That’s the goal.

Do you have to work extra hard to create that experience?

No, and I’ve gotten better at it, I can do it. I can get someone who may be like, “Hey, wow!” I can get them to baseline quicker now than I could 25 years ago. I’ve learned to… early in the conversation… for instance, if you came over here like, “Hey man!” I’d respond, “Yeah man, I’m out here just like you, wide-open country, enjoying some beautiful quiet time in private. How about you?” And they’re like, “That’s what I’m enjoying too! Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.” “No, you’re 84 ROUTE Magazine

That’s something I think all parents are trying to balance somewhat. You know, it’s like, even for adults, we leave, take off to the destination, and we carry our habits that we have [with us]; we take our proverbial video games. A road trip initiates you. And for me, it’s usually about the afternoon of day two or day three, that I start to go, “Oh, I forgot to even look at my phone. Oh, I didn’t even want to open my laptop. Oh, pull over whenever we want. Oh, look at that, cool, let me do a U-turn.” It’s a great initiation — a road trip — and I think it happens that way with the kids too. They start off, they want to pull out an iPad and start playing a game before you’re even out of the damn driveway. But after about a day and a half, they start to look around, you pull over a few times, a story happens, somebody screws up, a joke happens, you see an awesome sight, you see a black bear on the side of the road or a beautiful river you didn’t know about that you decide to hop in and go swimming in; all of a sudden those iPads are like a distant second place for entertainment.

Have you been to Amarillo and the smaller towns along the Texas Panhandle, Route 66?

I have! I had a real audio trip there on, it was on Route 66 I believe… it was a very gentle breeze of a day, it was really quiet. And I pulled over because I was writing something down, I had a thought, so I pulled over. I’m writing, you can see the horizon all around, and I hear this sound (light tapping). It’s getting louder on my left ear, it was, (taps louder).

And it went on for like twenty seconds, it was like a slow rise in volume until it got to where it was like going, “Pat, pat, pat”, and I was like, that is one of the slowest ramp-ups of volume coming up on my left ear. And as I turned to the left, this little kid rode by on a bicycle, and he had two playing cards close lined on his spoke. And the fact that I heard it, like, 25 seconds back, very faint, and it got that loud right in my left ear, it was just like… beautiful, beautiful.

Image by Levi Alves McConaughey.

against the law to travel with your family in a trailer, so I can’t have my family in this Airstream while I pull it.

What do you appreciate the most about Texas and Texans?

I’ve covered almost all the states for sure. I’ve done that drive out west and back here to Austin 40-something times.

I’ve gone north, I’ve traveled across 70, across the 40, all the way on the 10. I have done 66. I mean, Texas is, you know, you’re gonna see a hell of a lot more Texas flags in Texas than other state flags anywhere. And they’re gonna be next to the American flag. But there’s a certain identity that we have here in Texas; you have expectations as a Texan. It’s still a renegade state, it’s not a tyrant state, but it’s a renegade state. We like it when people pick their own way to go, but the hospitality is across the board. I hear more and more [from] people that are not from Texas, but come to Texas and are living here now… I always like asking, “What is it?” “Man, this infinite optimism you guys have, wow.” I go, “You didn’t have that [in your home state]?” They’re like, “No!” I never saw that; it was just inherent. Or a friend of mine said the other day, “Texan friendliness is a real virtue.” And I’m like, “And you can tell that much difference from where you’re from?” He’s like, “Oh, night and day.”

You started keeping journals at around the age of 14. You don’t hear about a lot of boys actually keeping journals.

What prompted you to start recording your thoughts, feelings, and experiences so young?

I think a couple things; even at that young age, I was having those existential questions of like, “What are we doing here?

What does success mean?” Which later on in [Greenlights] I talk about, [how] for me it became fatherhood. “Oh, that’s why I called my Dad’s friends ‘sir’! Cause they were all fathers.” But I didn’t know that at 14. So, I had big questions.

And then secondly, it was regular 14-year-old sh*t: “Why do I have these pimples on my face? What’s this fuzz growing over my pecker?” You know what I mean? I was going through a pubescent sort of awkwardness and just jotting it down. And then it became, I’m in a movie theatre, watching a movie, and I hear something that cracks me up and I laugh out loud. And after I quit laughing, I notice that I was the only one who laughed — in the entire theatre. And then later in the same film, the whole theatre cracks up and I’m like, “I didn’t think that was funny. Am I weird?” So, I was just writing idiosyncrasies, things that I found weren’t matching with the world, and then trying my best not to judge myself on it. I slowly started to find my own identity through some of those, and just continued to write.

So why now? What made you feel safe to write your memoir Greenlights at this point?

I got more selfish. I mean, selfish in saying, “Hey, I love being an actor, but I’m doing somebody else’s script, directed by someone else, lens in a camera by someone else, edited by someone else, packaged and then put up there to share with you.” Cool, but that’s four filters. Can I get rid of those filters? Well, the written word is only one filter, it gets rid of three filters. It’s not live interaction, which is zero filters, but it’s one filter, so that’s getting rid of three filters, that’s getting more selfish. Go have a look and see if you have a story worth sharing.

I told myself, “Nah, you know what, when I die, Camila or somebody will open up that treasure chest and if something’s

worth sharing, they’ll share it.” Which was kind of a cop-out.

And I was like, “Well, maybe you don’t have a book worth sharing, but why don’t you go off and look yourself in the eye at who you’ve been, see what you remember, see what you forgot.” And I went off and did that.

You completely went off the grid to write your book.

I went out first to Fort Davis Mountains, where I was conceived, out near Marfa, and stayed in a little cabin. I went there because I love the desert. I love how clean the desert is and how alive it becomes at night. I’m stimulated in the desert. I went to a place with no internet connection. I went to a place with no cell reception. I went to a place where nobody could find me, even if they tried. So, I would be stuck with me, and who I’ve been the last fifty years.

I knew that when I would get bored, the only place I had to go for entertainment was who I’ve been or the stories I’ve written. I knew that when I wanted to reach out late at night, call somebody or go somewhere, I didn’t have the ability to.

So, because I put myself where I inevitably didn’t have those choices, it was like, “Whoop.” Or relatively speaking, “Let’s go figure out. Let’s have a deep look at who we’ve been over the last 50.”

I was actually averaging about 17-hour days. The hardest challenge was just telling myself to go to bed and let my mind turn off. I got the fever early on and I just said, “What’s the gig? Let’s go.” I started writing and took about five of those trips… it was a total of 52 days.

What was your writing process like?

I found seven themes through writing of the last 40, 50 years, seven things that my mind went to. There were more about these seven things than anything else: there were stories, people, places, prescribes, poems, prayers, and bumper stickers. So, those seven stacks were there in front of me, and now I said, “I’ve gone through it all, found what was really kind of there, the columns of my last 50 years of writing.”

That’s where I found how to put the book together. Let’s make the stories the narrative, let’s make prescribes, poems, prayers sort of flash-forwards to flashbacks, sort of callbacks to where stories came out.

That’s where the title Greenlights came from. I was like, “Aw geez, you’ve done some fun stuff, you’ve done some crazy stuff, you’ve done some wise stuff. Boy, you took a lot of chances that paid off, you pulled some stuff off, you worked hard to get what you want, you got lucky, you fell down.” And I was like, “Oh, but every time I fell down…

Dad dies, year in Australia, not studying my lines trying to wing it in that movie that turned out to be a four-page monologue in Spanish.” Very soon after I was like, “Oh, you had time for great success now, because you learned from that failure, and if you wouldn’t have been that embarrassed or that hurt at that time, I don’t know if you’d have jumped up to succeed and have the courage that you did soon after.”

So, that’s when I was like, “Oh sh*t, it’s all green lights.”

And that’s where the title came from.

On that note, please make sure to grab a copy of Matthew’s new memoir, Greenlights. It is available online and in stores nationwide. If you are on the lookout for a great read that is packed with fascinating stories, this book is for you.

ROUTE Magazine 85

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ruising down Foothills Boulevard into Rancho Cucamonga, California, the bright lemoncolored building, west of Archibald Avenue, is hard to miss. The building's distinctive features: the flat roof canopy, curved arches, and vintage glass-topped gas pumps, harken back to a simpler time.

A time when pulling into a service station meant a smiling attendant filled your tank, checked your tires, and gave your windscreen a wash. The locals might only know it as the “yellow gas station on Route 66,” but the rich history of this brightly accentuated building is still present within its walls.

Originally built in 1915 by local Henry Klusman, the Rancho Cucamonga Service Station has been part of Route 66 before it even was “Route 66.” William Harvey was the first owner, operating the station until 1925, when Ancil Morris, a Richfield oil distributor, purchased it. The Richfield Service Station became a lifeline for fuel, food, and water for the thousands of migrant families that had journeyed through the harsh, empty Mojave. In 1945, the station changed hands again and became the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) under Arid Lewis, who operated until 1971. The building went on to house other business ventures too, but with time, this once architectural beauty eventually deteriorated, from the elements and neglect, and wound up empty and boarded up. The property was bought by an advertising company who used the site for a billboard.

“The station had been vacant since the mid ’80s,” says Anthony Gonzales, president of the Inland Empire California Association (IECA), a non-profit that now owns and runs the station. “The land had been acquired by Lamar Industries [in 2005, so that they could] protect their sign, and [prevent] congestion.” Gonzales grew up in the area and saw the station 86 ROUTE Magazine

while it was running.

Though he doesn’t remember how it looked in its hey-day, he does remember how he got tied into the project.

“I happened to be at a car show and there was an individual who approached me and asked if I would be interested [in working on the project].” As it turns out, Gonzalez was interested.

In 2009, the building was designated a historical landmark and in 2013, Lamar Industries donated the building to the IECA who took on the task of restoring it to the Richfield Station glory of the 1930s and 1940s, with the yellow and blue colors and the classic Richfield sign, donated by a collector, and estimated to be over 60 years old. It took heart and a community spirit to get the building back in shape for the grand opening in 2015.

Walking around the station, you can see an array of names carved into the bricks that make up the sidewalk. They tell a story of names written into history.

“Everybody that’s touched this facility,” says Gonzales, “hammered a nail, or painted a wall, or swept, [has a] legacy [here]. We’ve [established] ourselves as being on this earth because we can be associated with the station. That seems to have resonated well with the people.”

Today, this architectural icon, the only gas station on Route 66 with this particular style of architecture still in existence today, stands as a museum and historical reminder of America’s transportation and road travel revolution.

A drive west toward Santa Monica can be a hectic affair after emerging out of the peaceful serenity of the silent desert. The traffic, the energy, the constant eruption of modernity, flood the final stretch of Mother Road, but waiting there, patiently in the melee of traffic and generic strip malls is a historic destination that still beckons visitors off of the busy road and into its serenity.

Image by Ron Reiring.

T H E Y E L L OW STAT ION I N R A NC HO C UC A MONG A

ROUTE Magazine 87

PARTING SHOT

Ellie ALEXANDER

What is the most memorable place you’ve visited on Route 66?

Santa Monica Pier! Most famous or noteworthy person you have ever met? State Senator Barack Obama. What characteristic do you respect the most in others? There’s nothing better than kindness. Dislike in others? Dishonesty, rudeness, arrogance, laziness. What characteristic do you dislike in yourself? Bossiness – I can’t help myself! Talent that you WISH you had? A poker face. Best part about getting older? Getting wiser. What is your greatest extravagance? Our 1890’s Victorian Home. What is the weirdest roadside attraction you’ve ever seen? Carousel horses in a farm field. Best state to see giant objects?

Illinois! What makes Pontiac, Illinois, so special to Route 66 enthusiasts?

Authentic hospitality and friendliness. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Wife, Mom, Stepmom, Grammy. Most memorable hotel/motel that you have stayed at? Wigwam, San Bernardino, CA. Most memorable person on Route 66?

Bob Waldmire. Last book you’ve read? The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. What is still on your bucket list to visit? The Grand Canyon. What movie title best 88 ROUTE Magazine

describes your life? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Ghost town or big city person? Big City girl. What does a perfect day look like to you? Road trip, beach, family, friends. What is your favorite place on Route 66? Pontiac, IL. Strangest stop on Route 66? Harley’s Sand Hills Curiosity Shop. What would your spirit animal be? Dog, definitely a dog! Which historical figure— alive or dead—would you most like to meet?

Martin Luther King Jr. If you won the lottery, what is the first item you would buy? Food for the hungry. Unique attributes of Illinois’ stretch of Route 66? Urban & Rural; Skyscrapers and Farms. What food item can you not live without? Chocolate. Bizarre talent that you have that most people don’t know about? Decorating on a dime. What makes you laugh?

My kids, they’re comedians.

Most unknown (but should be) stop in Pontiac? The Dargan Park Sculptures. What do you think is the most important life lesson for someone to learn? Humility. What is one thing you have always wanted to try, but have been too afraid to?

Water skiing. What do you want to be remembered for? Being a fair and kind person. Best time of the year to visit Pontiac Spring—Fall.

Illustration: Jennifer Mallon.

Often, travelers try and make their way through Illinois’ stretch of Route 66 pretty fast, eager to find themselves in the brilliant, diverse culture and scenery of the great American West. But to do so, they are forced to enjoy but a quick glance at some of the very best that the Mother Road has to offer. Illinois is jam-packed with Route 66 treasures and unique experiences, and no small town is perhaps more deserving of your time and interest than quaint little Pontiac. Situated only two hours south of bustling Chicago, Pontiac is home to five diverse, well envisioned museums, a collection of wonderful murals (some of the best on the highway), and a wide assortment of other classic Americana goodies. And behind the must-see town is a lady who defines passion and focus for destination marketing. She loves Route 66 and understands her town’s special position along its �,��8 miles. In this issue, meet the woman with big Route 66 plans, Ellie Alexander.

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With more than 300 days of sunshine a year – and a unique mix of tranquil waters, rugged mountains, and tons of fun – it’s hard to stay inside. Discover Lake Havasu City – just a short drive from Route 66 – and play like you mean it.®

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