Still Servin’

By Phoebe Billups Photographs by Eric Axene

The starkly beautiful High Desert surrounding Victorville, California, is known for its blazing sunsets and mild weather. The white-hot sun glares down like a bank of Klieg lights, so it’s easy to understand why it has served as a backdrop for countless movies and

TV shows. The jagged peaks, silhouetted against a blue sky, split wide open, have provided theatrical scenery for thrillers and westerns as varied as John Wayne’s early movie Stagecoach (1939), Grand Theft Auto (1977), Contact (1997), and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006).

Against this scenic backdrop, Route 66 cuts through the parched sand and winds its way through iconic towns on the edge of the Mojave Desert. This stretch through the Inland Empire is the last outpost before the spectacular and sometimes dangerous Cajon Pass funnels traffic down into San Bernardino and on to bustling Los Angeles itself.

But up here in Victorville, almost as legendary as the area itself, stands Emma Jean’s Holland Burger Cafe, a local and Route 66 staple since 1947. Situated on the northern outskirts, the pistachio-green diner with its geometric California-modern architecture is a holdout from another era. Inside, with a counter and stools, a neighborhood feel, and classic fare like chicken-fried steak, burgers, and biscuits ‘n gravy, Emma Jean’s embodies a welcome MidCentury simplicity. While chain restaurants have risen and fallen in popularity, this classic diner has held steady for

over seventy years. Since the 1940s, the cafe has attracted tourists from around the world, as well as filmmakers seeking to add a dash of authenticity to their pictures. The classic sign that has long served as a beacon at the edge of the road still alerts hungry newcomers that they’ve arrived at their destination.

Humble Beginnings

Bob and Kate Holland built Holland Burger Cafe in 1947 with cinder blocks from the historic cement plant just down the road. Back then, the cafe, now the longest-standing restaurant in Victorville, was the culmination of the couple’s lifelong dream of owning a restaurant. Although it began as a local truck stop, people soon came from all over San Bernardino County to try Mrs. Holland’s pies, and the cafe quickly earned a loyal base. But it was the heyday of Route 66, and the restaurant also became a popular stop with motorists traveling the highway to Los Angeles or Las Vegas, and changes were afoot. Enter the Gentry family, albeit one at a time, to the Holland Burger Cafe. For over thirty years, Richard Gentry trucked cement for the nearby plant whose products built the cafe. A regular customer at the diner, he always made a point of stopping in to order a burger as he hauled loads along Route 66. Then, in the early ‘70s, Richard and his wife Emma Jean moved from their home in Fontana, about 40 miles south, to the Victorville area. There, Emma Jean became a server at Holland Burger Cafe, all the while aspiring to run a restaurant of her own. The couple’s youngest son, Brian, remembers his dad taking him to the diner to see his hard-working mom. When Emma Jean took her break, the family would set aside their busy lives to eat lunch together.

The cafe went up for sale in 1979, and Richard and Emma Jean Gentry were the logical next owners. Richard had saved up enough money from trucking to buy it, and Emma Jean had worked at the diner for many years. She had trod enough steps there as a waitress to be more than ready to rebrand the big sign out front as her own. But she also honored her friendship with Kate Holland by keeping her name on it, too, so that it read “Emma Jean’s Holland Burger Cafe.”

“She was really close to Mrs. Holland,” said Brian. “And when the opportunity came up [to purchase], we jumped on it. They [mom and dad] were going to keep it for a couple years and then sell it, but here we are, forty-two years later.”

To complete the fresh new appearance, Emma Jean put her own stamp on the cafe exterior too, with the nowiconic pistachio-green color. And with that, the new owners were off and running. But Emma Jean had bigger plans than just owning the café, she purchased it due to a deep desire to leave something for her sons. Brian, who was 12 years old when his parents bought the cafe, entertained dreams of becoming a truck driver or musician before he discovered his love for cooking. He spent hours in the kitchen with his mother, which led to his realization that this could be his future.

“I was in my mid-20s, and I really liked what I was doing,” Brian explained. He learned his mother’s recipes and created some new ones.

A true family venture, Richard also contributed to the restaurant’s success — by helping out when he wasn’t trucking, and by encouraging fellow truckers to stop by and patronize the eatery. “He was making his first load, then he’d come through and warm up the gravy and feed all his friends,” said Brian. “He’d get things going for us, then we’d show up, me and my mom.” Many of the customers in those days were truckers like Richard or workers from the local cement plant.

Along Come Changes

After Interstate 15 arrived in the 1960s, traffic ebbed on Route 66. However, truckers still made a point of passing through Victorville and stopping to enjoy the good company and classic food at Emma Jean’s. In the 1970s, a CB radio at the diner allowed truckers to call in their orders before they arrived. But while the diner endured, many of the area’s other historic buildings sadly disappeared.

In 2006, the Pixar movie Cars fueled an injection of love and attention to the Route, particularly among European tourists, although Americans were also rediscovering Route 66 for themselves, and Emma Jean’s, whose history followed the flow of traffic on the route, saw its crowds grow once again.

Passing on an Icon

Emma Jean passed away in 1996, and Brian and his wife Shawna stepped up to help Richard run the diner. Then when their father followed in 2008, Brian and Shawna became the new owners. Their three children, Emma Jean, Sarah, and Joshua, grew up on the property, eating breakfast at the diner counter each day before school. In their free time, the kids began to help out around the restaurant. Joshua, now

The ultimate compliment for a diner occurred in 2007, when Emma Jean’s was featured on an episode of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives TV show. Fieri named the restaurant one of the top three roadside cafes in the United States, earning it a place on page 187 of his 2008 book, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An AllAmerican Road Trip... with Recipes!

Brian and Shawna Gentry pose outside of their historical diner.

eighteen, is on the payroll and recently used his earnings to buy his first car.

The thing is, Emma Jean’s just seems destined to remain a family restaurant at its core. When asked whether one of the kids might be interested in taking over the restaurant, Shawna chuckled and said, “Oh, probably not.” But Brian sees their offspring possibly stepping in as managers or owners, even if they are not in the kitchen every day like their parents. As a family, the relationships that the Gentrys have fostered over forty years lend the diner a warm, friendly atmosphere. Customers are essentially guests, pulling up a chair at the family table. “I’m happy and compatible with the family business,” Brian added. “We have a good reputation and are known around the world.”

Hollywood Comes to Victorville

While some customers have known the café all their lives, other visitors might recognize it from its numerous appearances in music videos, TV shows, and movies. In Train’s Bulletproof Picasso video, The Walking Dead’s Emily Kinney waitresses at Emma Jean’s before taking off on a romantic road trip through the desert. Customers can sit at the counter where Uma Thurman calmly ordered a glass of water after clawing her way out of the grave in Kill Bill: Volume 2. And photographers often pay to use the diner as a backdrop for photo shoots.

In addition to big name movies and TV shows, Emma Jean’s has helped many film school students and emerging directors create shorts, low-budget action movies, and final projects. Brian simply closes up shop early and lets a small crew swarm the premises with their equipment.

Keeping It Simple

In a comforting routine reminiscent of its last 70-plus years in business, Emma Jean’s still opens its doors for breakfast at 5 o’clock every morning except Sunday. Customers peruse a menu that doesn’t look all that different than it did years ago, and Brian cooks right out in front of the customers, employing the “old ways” that Emma Jean taught him. While customers chow down on breakfast or lunch, they chat with Brian or Shawna as they work close by. Bottle-green hummingbirds dart between glistening glass feeders, just outside the window.

Emma Jean’s is a 1950s daydream rising out of the Mojave Desert, a sort of monument to a simpler time. Traffic on Route 66 has waxed and waned since 1947, but the little pale green eatery has stood through it all. And while tourism has helped propel Emma Jean’s to international stardom, it’s still the regulars who make Brian and Shawna happy to come to work in the morning. “They’re the backbone of our business. They’re what keep us going.”

The friendly atmosphere at Emma Jean’s fits hand-in-hand with the nostalgic image that has drawn the eye of so many filmmakers. When Bob and Kate Holland laid those first cinder blocks on the outskirts of Victorville, they may have lived in a very different world. Route 66 was in its heyday, fresh and exciting in the American imagination. Family fun meant packing the kids into the car and setting out on a road trip. And in many ways, their diner is an echo of this simpler, friendlier time, an iconic eatery that still draws locals, travelers, and filmmakers. This timelessness is what has kept Emma Jean’s relevant for the past 70 years, and will undoubtedly keep it up and running for at least 70 more.

EARTHLINGS WELCOME

Photograph by Brennen Matthews

EARTHLINGS WELCOME

Roughly 150 miles from the explosion of color that is Las Vegas, Nevada, sits a much quieter, reflective experience, a short stretch of highway surrounded by barren but beautiful desert and empty, clear blue skies. But this lonely track of road is by no means “normal.” It welcomes the weird, wacky, and strange, not to mention the paranormal. Named the Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996, aligning with the debut of Will Smith’s movie, Independence Day, Route 375 is undoubtedly the Silver State’s strangest road, and that’s saying something.

It all began during the hot mid-year months of June and July 1947, called the Summer of UFOs. Although U.S. airmen had reported strange unidentifiable objects in the skies during World War II, two highly-publicized events in 1947 fueled a mania of interest within the American public. The most publicized event was the Roswell, New Mexico, crash debris — we’ve all heard about that one — but the first event was a little less talked about and focused on a private aviator’s actual brush with flying saucers. Civilian pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold was flying his small airplane on June 24, 1947, when he observed one of the most well-known UFO sightings to date - nine saucershaped objects, flying at high-speed. Of course, the incident left him baffled and unnerved and perhaps inevitably shouldered some responsibility for the now highly-touted Extraterrestrial Highway.

Once the news got out, a nationwide frenzy began. The Air Force started an investigation the following year, simply stating that the UFOs were probably Soviet aircraft — a reasonable explanation during the Cold War. But with that, the American obsession with extraterrestrials and UFO conspiracies was well underway.

By 1950, Nevada’s State Route 375, stretching from ghosttown Crystal Springs to the eccentric little town of Rachel, became closed to all public travel for no official reason. Just nine years ago, the government officially acknowledged those localities as Area 51 and Nevada’s Testing and Training Range. Although Area 51 was created secretly in 1955 as an airbase, America’s long history of UFO sightings and the area’s extremely heavy security have always had people questioning its use. In 1957, the highway was realigned to avoid the topsecret testing sites, and then opened to the public later that year.

Engineer Bob Lazar claimed to have worked with alien spaceships along the highway in 1981, eventually spilling his story to a Las Vegas television station. By that time, conspiracy theories about Area 51 had become mainstream, and Lazar’s stories helped the town of Rachel — population 48 — attract visitors, curious to crack the alien mystery themselves. By 1996, the Nevada Commission on Tourism renamed Nevada State Route 375, the Extraterrestrial Highway, in hopes of attracting more tourists. It worked.

Not only was the renamed highway mentioned in the 1996 film Independence Day, but word quickly spread to road trippers coming from Vegas, and more roadside attractions began appearing. Nevada’s Testing and Training Range, where scientists conducted below-ground tests for nuclear weapons during the Cold War, turned into a museum for tourists. The highway now also flaunts the Alien Research Center, a pleasantly strange gift shop with a towering, 35-foot-tall alien statue named Fred. The only other sign of life is in Rachel at the Little A’Le’Inn, a UFO-modified cafe and motel whose sign out front featuring a pale alien with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes states that earthlings are indeed welcome. Other than that, it is the expansive clear and unpolluted Nevada night sky for stargazing.

The first stop along the highway is ET Fresh Jerky, an alien jerky shack that looks like it could be straight out of a sci-fi film. “Generally the first question folks will ask us is, do you have a bathroom? And, where’s your nearest gas station?” laughed Kristy Lamb, the manager of the shack. However, the eccentric store — featuring aliens and jerky — keeps roadtrippers interested after their initial questions. “I have a running joke with customers that our jerky comes from aliens, all the animals that are abducted get turned into jerky, and that they just need a human face to sell them,” said Lamb. “That’s why it’s out-of-this-world delicious.”

Fifteen years ago, the shack opened to keep tourists engaged in the alien experience along their long drive down the Extraterrestrial Highway. A fifth generation family member to live in the Las Vegas valley, it seemed like a natural step for Lamb to become manager of the alien jerky shack. Not surprisingly, she is an outspoken believer in extraterrestrial life. “Of course I believe in aliens and UFOs,” said Lamb. “The universe is way too big to say no.”

As travelers come from lively, bright-lighted Vegas, they encounter a vastly different world along the Extraterrestrial Highway. Besides the few roadside attractions, it offers 98 empty, eerie, but serene miles of open road. Over the years it’s become a destination in its own right, and with the mystery of Area 51, which is said to remain an active military base, still alive and well in pop culture and the minds of travelers, the mystery behind the area that started it all persists, compelling travelers to drive the silent, ethereal highway. And they still scan the skies, thanks to Kenneth Arnold.

Murder in the Desert

By Laura Love

“Satan Blows a Hot Trombone” is what John S. Thorp titled his Real Detective true crime pulp story about a hitchhiker homicide that occurred in 1946 near Tucumcari, New Mexico, on Route 66. As I read his article, I felt like I had stepped back in time into a 1940s detective thriller.

My grandfather, J.V. (Jake) Gallegos, passed away years ago, but left a folder stuffed with stories from his old cases. One of the stories was a case that he investigated as an Assistant District Attorney in Tucumcari, New Mexico, working under District Attorney E. T. (Turner) Hensley.

I found news articles to coincide with grandpa’s notes as well as the Real Detective article. Grandfather’s words described the events as they unfolded:

“In June 1946, Dr. Thomas B. Hoover walked into Sheriff Beasley’s office and announced, ‘I want to report a murder.’ Our investigation began west of Tucumcari off of Route 66, near Dr. Hoover’s ranch where he reported discovering [the] body of a tall blond male who had been stabbed in the chest. The soil was sandy and there were tracks [that] the victim had made before he fell and died.

The coroner’s office confirmed a homicide. Sheriff Beasley [went on] the local Tucumcari radio station hoping someone could identify the victim. Three days went by and we still didn’t know who this man was. Frustration was mounting.

One evening I received a call from Beasley, he sounded excited. He told me, ‘You won’t believe it. I turned the pockets of the victim’s trousers inside out and found ‘Drummond’ written by a dry cleaner on the pocket!’ We had a name.

We decided to check the Tucumcari motels. Beasley and I discovered a ‘Drummond and Murray’ had registered at a motel the evening before the murder. The address Drummond gave was ‘Bathme.’ Neither Sheriff Beasley nor I could recall a city so named.

Returning to the office, I said, ‘Hold on Beasley, there’s a Bath, Maine!’ We called officials and requested information on Drummond. When the Finley Drummond home was called, there was no answer. The officers in Maine learned that Drummond had a brother in Missouri. Officials helped us locate the brother, Donald Drummond, in Kansas City.

Back in Tucumcari, a service station operator informed Beasley and I that a young man had bought gas and seemed [to be] in a hurry because he didn’t stop the motor or get out the car. The car was described as a 1938 green Ford.

This confirmed the description the victim’s brother had given us. We thought that the man may not have wanted to get out of the car because of blood stains on the seat. Drummond had probably been stabbed in his car, then got out and took a few steps before falling to the ground. A call from officials in Phoenix, Arizona, informed us that the green Ford had been located and a young man and woman were apprehended as they were getting into the car. The young man, James A. Murray, told the officers that he had purchased the car, but he had no receipt for it. Neither the young man nor the woman could give the officers proof of purchasing the vehicle. Under intense questioning by Arizona officers, Murray admitted that he had stabbed Finley T. Drummond. Murray had been hitchhiking through Oklahoma in the blistering summer sun and Finley had given him a ride. Murray was returning from a funeral in Oklahoma for his two younger brothers who had accidentally drowned. Drummond’s brother told us Finley had been a marine and was on his way to California to be best man at a wedding. Murray waived extradition and we obtained our extradition order from the Governor of Arizona to the Governor of New Mexico. District Attorney Hensley, Sheriff Beasley and myself went to Phoenix to pick up the car and Murray. At the trial, Murray repudiated his confession and insisted that the officers in Phoenix had forced him to confess. He claimed the officers questioned him for long periods of Mugshot of James A. Murray. time and put words in his mouth. His other defense was that Drummond had made a pass at him. They pulled off the road and that’s when Murray stabbed him. Donald Drummond testified at the trial. In his testimony he stated that his brother had never demonstrated any homosexual tendencies. He said Finely was exceptionally kind, even with strangers. Hensley and I thought that we had a first-degree murder [case] with the death penalty. Murray had stabbed Drummond without provocation while having the intention of committing a felony, stealing the car. This made it first degree murder. The verdict came in. Murder in the first degree but the jury recommended leniency because of his age; Murray was 19. Judge J. C. Compton committed him to life in the penitentiary.” These and many other similar stories abound from my grandpa’s days as an ADA.

A TOWN WITH HEART

Alongside the Mother Road’s path through Litchfield, Illinois, stands a museum with a heartwarming origin story. The Litchfield Museum & Route 66 Welcome Center, at 334 North Historic Old Route 66, is housed in a new but retro-style building with neon signage, an homage to Vic Suhling’s gas station which formerly occupied the site. The restored Suhling neon sign (ceremoniously re-lit in October 2013), stands nearby, and with the historic Ariston Cafe across the road, offers photographers a plethora of photo ops.

Although requiring the entire community to make it happen, the vision for this attraction is credited to one man with a passion for local history and a love for his hometown. David Jackson was editor of Litchfield’s local newspaper for several decades. Through his collections of local memorabilia and his newspaper column of Litchfield history, “Break Time,” Jackson’s dream was finally, but posthumously, realized—to one day open a museum that valued local history as much as he did. Jackson sadly passed away in 2010.

However, Jackson’s widow, Martha (McHenry Cassity) Jackson, and his daughter, Anne Jackson, were determined to save Dave’s dream from fading into obscurity. This stepmother-stepdaughter team (Anne is the daughter of Dave and his first wife, Mina) were a force to be reckoned with as, with fellow community members, they organized an association and planned a museum. To that end, Martha purchased the Suhling property in 2011.

Jackson’s treasure trove provided the impetus for the association’s first fundraising effort. “I ran across a book created by the Jacksonville Historical Society that featured old postcards from that town. It just so happened that my dad had a large postcard collection from Litchfield,” said Anne, secretary of the association. “We thought maybe we could do a similar project, so in April 2011, we had a meeting to discuss the possibility. An hour later, we came out of the meeting with plans for the postcard book to be our first fundraiser.”

Soon, the newly-established Litchfield Museum Association began selling copies of Greetings from Litchfield, Illinois— Pictorial History in Postcards, curated from Jackson’s collection. The town rallied in support of the association’s mission in various ways, including donations, grants from local trust funds, and a sponsored 2,000-mile bicycle trip on Route 66, completed by resident Andy Ritchie.

By May of 2012, the association had raised enough money to begin construction, and within a year, the grand opening took place on June 1, 2013. Litchfield residents had also pitched in with material donations to furnish the exhibits, such as a desk from Litchfield’s original City Hall and a 1904 cornerstone and time capsule from the Old American Radiator Company.

“We are continually amazed at the generosity of the residents of the Litchfield area,” said Anne. “The constant influx of items that stream into the museum keep the displays fresh, and the volunteers excited and busy!” Coupled with Route 66 merchandise, a Veteran’s section, and a gallery of photos from Litchfield’s rich past, the contents of the museum perfectly encapsulate the quaint and hard-working spirit of Litchfield.

In a city with two Route 66 alignments that sit practically side-by-side, it is fitting that the museum has been met with nothing but support and success from Mother Road enthusiasts and pride and assistance from local residents.

“We are really proud of our connection with Route 66,” said Anne. “We welcome visitors from all over the world to our small town, and we think we can show these visitors what small town America is really like.” The museum stands proudly as a symbol of the power that community and historical appreciation can have, even in a town of only 7,000 people— something David Jackson would certainly be proud to see.

Desert Noticeboard

Avista of road and desert stretch out as far as the eye can see, the horizon disappearing into the blue sky. The land is barren for miles, interspersed with long abandoned remains of civilization and views of the Marble Mountains. It is remote and hot. The intense desert heat simmers off the tarmac, and every now and again, a painted shield bearing “66” appears on the parched highway, assuring you that you are on the Mother Road stretch in the Mojave Desert.

Then, along the sunbaked banks of the old highway, rocks in black and brown, stark against the light sand, appear, meticulously arranged to spell out names and words: STARK, DON, Shane♥Karen. Travelers have spelled out their names and messages in dozens of stones, a seemingly random occurrence of messages to no one.

This phenomenon appears in the Mojave Desert about ten miles east of Amboy, California, along Route 66 and continues for miles. For years, travelers have spontaneously gathered the scattered, ancient lava rocks and created an outdoor Route 66 rock art gallery.

The rocks themselves are believed to have come from the Amboy Crater, a dormant cinder cone volcano, located about three miles west of the town of Amboy, that last erupted 10,000 years ago. As it erupted, it spewed ash and debris into the atmosphere, scattering the contrasting rocks across the desert floor.

Some enterprising travelers have brought their own spray-painted rocks and added their white, blue, or redcolored rock messages to the collection, helping them stand out from the rest.

“I’ve been driving through here for maybe ten years, and you can see a lot of people writing things like little initials, heart initials, just names and things like that. I think it’s just a cool little memory that people have. They pull over, write their names, take pictures, and it’s a memory that stays there,” says Nichole Healy, an employee of historic Roy’s Motel and Cafe located in Amboy.

About ten miles east of Amboy is Roadrunner’s Retreat, a closed restaurant and service station built along Route 66 in the 1960s by Roy and Hellen Tull. It closed in 1973 when Interstate 40 bypassed that section of Route 66. Today, the ‘60s Googie-style station that once served the traveling American public lies empty and dormant, its 30-foot-tall neon sign no longer buzzing.

Yet the stone messages were a phenomenon even back in the heyday of Roadrunner’s Retreat. “I know that as a kid growing up and heading out there with my grandfather the rock work was constantly evolving,” said Ryan Anderson, current caretaker of Roadrunner’s Retreat.

The true origins of how the rock messages started — or who started them — is unclear, but by the time that F. B. “Duke” Dotson and his family took over the venue from the Tulls in 1963, the rock messages had already started. “Travelers would stop for food or gas or even a restroom break; they would run across the street and arrange the rocks into their names and such. People would eat at the restaurant and go directly across the highway and rearrange the stones into their own name and walk back to their cars and leave,” Anderson recounted, as told to him by Duke Dotson, son of F. B. Dotson. “Some of the stones have remained untouched and even have dates next to them.”

The stone messages are a unique feature of this stretch of desert road, and a testament to the human urge to instinctively leave one’s mark. I was here. Perhaps these rock stories are a way for visitors to leave something permanent of themselves behind, to create a bond with the landscape, or just to prove they survived the 100-plus-degree desert temperatures.

“As people are traveling by, they see the [stones] and ‘Let’s do that’ out in the middle of nowhere … let’s leave our mark,” said Delvin Harbour, historian at the Victorville Route 66 Museum. The volunteers at the Victorville Museum document the quirks of their section of Route 66, maintaining the story of the historic road.

Even as Route 66 has changed, the stone messages are a way for travelers to keep the traditions of journeying down the Mother Road alive, adding to its wonder and quirkiness.

“I think it [the rocks] add to the uniqueness, the randomness that you’ll find out here that you just don’t see in other places,” Healy adds.

If you have a message or name that begs to be written on this desert landscape, be careful in the heat, especially in the summertime — it is the desert, after all.

LA FONDA’S GIFT SHOP

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LA FONDA’S GIFT SHOP

A SANTA FE MERCHANT SINCE 1922 A SANTA FE MERCHANT SINCE 1922 GIFTS • JEWELRY • BOOKS • APPAREL • HOME • KIDSA SANTA FE MERCHANT SINCE 1922A SANTA FE MERCHANT SINCE 1922 GIFTS • JEWELRY • BOOKS • APPAREL • HOME • KIDSA SANTA FE MERCHANT SINCE 1922A SANTA FE MERCHANT SINCE 1922

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Casey CLAYPOOL

As the capital city of Illinois, Springfield is not only centrally located, but is home to its fair share of the state's iconic attractions. But Springfield is also home to the headquarters of the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, the nonprofit organization that looks after everything Route 66 in all of its communities up and down its 3��-plus miles of the Mother Road. Route 66 state license plates, the Visitors Guide, serving its �� communities, and marketing its attractions and events are all part of promoting each and every mile of the Prairie State’s sizable stretch of Route 66. In this Parting Shot, get to know Casey Claypool, the woman behind the Byway’s outreach, from exciting downtown Chicago through quaint villages and unique cities to the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

What is the most memorable place you’ve visited in America? Sanibel Island, Florida. Along Route 66? The Pontiac Museum. What did you want to be when you grew up? An Air Force pilot (after watching Top Gun of course). Who has caused you to be starstruck? Michael Jordan. What characteristic do you respect the most in others? Honesty. Dislike in others? Jealousy. What characteristic do you dislike in yourself? My procrastination. Who would you want to play you in a film based on your life? Tina Fey. Talent that you WISH you had? Playing the piano. Best piece of advice you’ve ever received? The way someone treats you reflects how they feel about themselves. Best part about getting older? Seeing my three daughters grow into young adults. What would the title of your memoir be? She Had to Learn How to Love Again. First music concert ever attended? Jimmy Buffet. What is your greatest extravagance? Regular facials & massages. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My hair color. What do you consider your greatest achievement? My three beautiful daughters. Most memorable gift you were ever given? Becoming a mother. What is the secret to a happy life? Being married to your best friend and living life to the fullest. What breaks your heart? Seeing one of my daughters hurting. What is the last TV show you binge watched? Yellowstone. What is your favorite song? Come to Me by the Goo Goo Dolls. What is your favorite musical artist? Ryan Bingham. What is still on your bucket list? A vacation in the Maldives. What do you wish you knew more about? The Solar System. What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives? Fall in love. What fad or trend do you hope comes back? Big Hair. What movie title best describes your life? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. First celebrity crush? Kirk Cameron. Ghost town or big city person? Ghost Town. What does a perfect day look like to you? My husband and our three daughters on the beach on Sanibel Island. What would your spirit animal be? Dolphin. Which historical figure — alive or dead — would you most like to meet? John Wayne. What meal can you not live without? Pizza. Bizarre talent that you have that most people don’t know about? I can touch my nose with my tongue. What makes you laugh? Listening to others laugh. What do you think is the most important life lesson for someone to learn? Do what makes you happy. What is one thing you have always wanted to try, but have been too afraid to? Skydive. What do you want to be remembered for? My work ethic and being a good friend.