People who know of my fascination with Route 66 occasionally ask me whether I would have preferred to live in an era when the Mother Road was more vibrant, where I could see long-gone motels and businesses open and prospering again.
I admit that if a time machine were available, I would visit the 1950s for a short time. But never would want to live in that era because of this.
As a soldier in World War II George Yancy Johnson served with the “Ladies From Hell.” He did covert work in France several weeks before D-Day. He participated in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. During the Korean War he suffered so much from the cold that doctors considered amputating his feet.
But all the medals, and all his war stories, meant nothing in summer 1951, when he and his wife, Phyllis, and their infant son, Reggie, were on historic Route 66 at a motel in Winslow, Ariz., looking for a room.
“The woman in the office was curt. ‘No coloreds,’ ” he recalled.
“That night, as with many other nights, we slept in the Studebaker under the stars,” he wrote recently, when he put his memories on paper.
This is the reason you don’t see but one or two black faces at annual Route 66 gatherings. If you’re a white person, Route 66 generally brings up fond memories. But if you’re a black person who traveled the Mother Road up until about the 1970s, your experiences likely bring bitterness.
That history can’t be changed, but we can do something about it now by treating all races hospitably when they’re traveling America’s Main Street. A few months ago, I saw a black woman with her boyfriend greatly enjoying a meal at the Rock Cafe in Stroud, Okla. Decades ago, that would have been an impossible sight. That’s because the Rock Cafe served blacks only through the back door. But now, owner Dawn Welch and her crew welcome everyone.
Route 66 can’t erase those old, hurtful memories of discrimination. But it can create good memories now.