The mother of sucker traps, Part 2 January 21, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses, Vehicles.add a comment
Here’s the second part of Car and Driver magazine columnist Patrick Bedard’s interview with a longtime gas station owner on Route 66 in Williams, Ariz., and the car-repair scams that his employees foisted on the public for decades.
An excerpt:
My mind leaps to the possibilities. (“Sir, your radiator is leaking real bad!”) It would be so easy for a getter willing to go too far to poke a screwdriver through the fins as he leaned in to pull the dipstick.
“Oh, yes, it happened,” Killinsworth agrees. “I wouldn’t let my boys carry a sticker in their pocket, a sharpened screwdriver. Poke a tire,” he says, “then it would bubble.”
This was back before Goodyear and Firestone had tire stores everywhere, not to mention Walmart, Kmart, and Big O. “We stocked all the good movers, bought up to 500 at a time on 30-60-90, pay a third every 30 days. I could space ’em out so they didn’t all come at once. You can’t sell from an empty shelf,” he says.
“But my boys never used tools,” he says. “You don’t want to poke a tire, then have the guy not buy one; the tire goes flat, and he starts rolling that thing up in the rocks. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. So we never did that. To my knowledge.”
The whole thing is worth reading. It’s a good thing for Bedard’s source that there’s a statute of limitations.
Part 1 of Bedard’s column is here.
“Big Fat Stupid SUV” January 21, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Music.add a comment
Bill Burnett‘s song here has Route 66 content near the end.
Lyrics are here.
My, how times have changed January 20, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, History, People, Road trips.5 comments
Today, “Route 66 Backroads” author Jim Hinckley sent me a link to a 1949 edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book.
The guidebook says it provides a “list of hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops and various other services can most certainly help solve your travel problems. It was the idea of Victor H. Green, the publisher, in introducing the Green Book, to save the travelers of his race as many difficulties and embarrassments as possible.”
“Difficulties” was a euphemism for “beatings or worse.” In certain parts of the country, if a white person were offended, black motorists sometimes were in danger for their lives. Although the number of lynchings started to decline markedly in the mid-1920s, there were still three confirmed such killings even in 1949.
A copy of the Green Book can be seen here (warning: huge Acrobat file). Looking at the towns on the Route 66 corridor, it’s disquieting to see that black motorists often had to go long stretches between “tourist homes” to stay the night. In Illinois, for instance, there is nothing between Chicago and Springfield, and nothing between Springfield and East St. Louis. That’s a long haul on two-lane roads.
It was the same in other states: nothing between St. Louis clear to Lebanon in Missouri. In Oklahoma, if you needed a restaurant or room outside of Tulsa or Oklahoma City, you were out of luck. In New Mexico, there was nothing between Tucumcari and Albuquerque. And in Arizona, there was zilch for blacks along the Mother Road.
And James Loewen’s 2005 book, “Sundown Towns,” revealed there was a wide swath of small towns in Illinois and the Missouri Ozarks in which blacks were not welcome after sundown, up until the 1970s.
Now, 60 years after the Green Book’s publication, the United States has just inaugurated a black man as president. Route 66ers often deride “progress” because it often takes away the historic businesses we love. But this is the kind of progress we can support.
“I have a dream” January 19, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in History, People, Road trips.7 comments
NOTE: I posted this two years ago. Now, with a black man about to become president of the United States, it’s worth looking at again.
This is the full version of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
So what does King have to do with Route 66? Well, there’s this passage:
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” [...] We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. [...] We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: “For Whites Only.”
I occasionally long to time-travel back a few decades to see Route 66 during its heyday, along with its restaurants, motels and businesses. But I have no desire to stay in that time of widespread racial discrimination.
Michael Wallis, author of “Route 66: The Mother Road,” alluded to this during a speech in 2003:
… [T]he late great Nat King Cole, the man with the velvet voice who helped immortalize this very highway by singing Bobby Troup’s “Get Your Kicks,” [...] for way too long would not be able to check into even a modest tourist court or dine in a greasy spoon on the Mother Road or any other road in this country.
“As a boy, I saw the ‘No colored’ signs at gas stations on my Route 66 just as I did on the roads of the Deep South. I also saw signs in cafe windows declaring, ‘No dogs, No Indians,’ and only yards away a Native American craftsman sold his hand-fashioned art from the sidewalk. Black families traveling American’s byways packed their own food and often slept in their vehicles. They didn’t get their kicks on Route 66, or at least the kind of kicks I was getting as a youngster as a hitchhiking Marine. At highway stops such as the Rock Cafe in Stroud, Oklahoma, during the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s and into the ’60s, black travelers went to the back door to get their food to go. None of them walked inside.
I’ve noticed that racism along Route 66 nowadays is more subtle and has evolved, targeting Asian-Americans who own motels along the road. One of the more snide comments is: “If you smell curry, leave in a hurry.”
I’m not the only one who has noticed this unwarranted bias. Wallis saw it, too, and urged Route 66 travelers to “choose the high road” instead.
“… [J]ust look around you. Just look at our highway today. Read the … signs on motels and other businesses proclaiming in great big letters “American Owned.” … Signs that serve no good purpose except to divide us and slap us in the face.
“… Remember the many, many reputable motel owners and operators from Indian, Pakistan, and Asia who are doing their dead-level best to provide service in their adopted homeland. Many of them are American citizens. Most are well-educated and hail from the state of Gujarat in India. Many of these have the surname Patel, as common a name in that state as Martinez is in New Mexico. [...]
“So please, I ask you to make your decisions wisely. Mark Twain said, ‘Travel cures prejudice.’ That may be true, but still you have to consider your actions and the daily decisions you make as a traveler.
“You my good friends, my loved ones . . . strive to be all you can be. Take the high road whenever you can. Reject the ignorant and the ill informed. Turn your backs on the purveyors of hatred. Seek out the good in all people. Conform your actions to the good of all others. Release your righteous indignation. Admit when you’re wrong. Embrace your own humanity.
“Choose the high road. It takes strength and discipline to choose that path. Take a step in its direction — one step at a time, one day at a time.
“Make every single day your own masterpiece. Make wise choices but never be afraid of risk. Seek out the crooked paths, the roads of genius. Enjoy the journey.”
“House of the Rising Sun” in Baxter Springs? January 19, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, History, Music, Towns.3 comments
The answer to the question: Sort of. The story behind this is complicated. So bear with me.
I just finished reading Ted Anthony’s excellent 2007 book, “Chasing the Rising Sun,” which traces the tangled and twisted origins of the famous song, “House of the Rising Sun.”
It’s nearly certain that you’ve heard the tune. But if you haven’t, here’s the definitive version by The Animals, which became a No. 1 hit around the world in 1964:
I had long assumed that “House of the Rising Sun” had sprung forth in the Deep South from a black blues singer in the early 20th century. But Anthony’s research reveals that the song almost certainly came from white singers in the Appalachian Mountains just after the Civil War or earlier. There also is evidence that “House of the Rising Sun” may trace at least some of its origins from the British Isles.
Anthony also discovered that “House of the Rising Sun” differed markedly depending on what region of the country it was performed. Sometimes it was in a minor key, sometimes major. It often was titled “Rising Sun” or “Rising Sun Blues.” One prominent folk singer swore that the house in question was a women’s prison, not a bawdy house, as has been long assumed. The song has long been considered as a cautionary tale about the evils of prostitution. But other versions have warned against alcohol, gambling and conniving men/women. And a few versions didn’t even mention New Orleans.
Which brings us to the now-quiet Route 66 town of Baxter Springs, Kan.
A folklorist in 1929 collected a set of song lyrics sent from a man in Tennessee. One set belonged to a variation of a tune called “The Rambling Cowboy.” Most of it contains the usual cowboy images, but here’s a section that caught Anthony’s eye:
There’s a girl in Baxter Springs
They call her the rising sun;
She has broken the heart of nine.
Love, boys, and this poor heart is one.
Baxter Springs once was well-known as a rough-and-tough cowtown. Here’s some history about the town after the Civil War from the Legends of America site:
Though the town took on all the appearances of prosperity, it also inherited a reputation for being one of the wildest cow towns in the West.
After the long cattle drives from Texas cowboys found the town a welcoming sight after several months on the dusty trail, making the most of the numerous Baxter Springs saloons. Offering up flowing liquor, card games and available women, every third business in town was a gambling house or a saloon. Public hangings, gunfights and saloon brawls soon became common occurrences.
The author also uncovered profane and explicit lyrics for “Rising Sun” that were sung by miners in Joplin, Mo., and northwest Arkansas as long ago as 1905. Considering the close proximity to Baxter Springs and its then-sordid reputation, Anthony doesn’t think it’s a coincidence.
So there it is. Baxter Springs has a link, albeit peripheral, to one of the world’s most famous songs.
An online rest stop January 18, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Photographs, Web sites.add a comment
Douglas Knight, a photographer based in Amarillo, Texas, has alerted me to his new Route 66 Rest Stop site.
It’s a place for him to display his photographs from Route 66 and to sell them. He’s also selling keychains, magnets, bookmarks and other merchandise.
His stuff also is being sold at the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, Okla.; Route 66 Gift Shop in Seligman, Ariz.; Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo; El Rancho Motel in Gallup, N.M.; Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean, Texas; and the Alanreed Travel Center in Alanreed, Texas.
Knight also says he plans to expand the site with more history and information about the Mother Road.
Suicide Bridge January 18, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Bridges, Ghosts and Mysteries, History.add a comment
An image of the Colorado Street Bridge from an old postcard.
The LAist has a story about the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, Calif., which once carried Route 66 on the way to Los Angeles. Here’s a startling fact about the 1913 bridge that gives it its nickname:
Six years after the construction the first suicide took place, and it is now estimated that more than one-hundred people have plummeted to their deaths from the heights, although it has been argued that the figure is closer to two-hundred. Many of these suicides are blamed on the Great Depression of the 1930s which left many local folk so distraught that the only way they could exit the gray times was to end their life.
Researchers who’ve investigated the bridge claim that many people have been lured to their deaths by a strange specter, a ghost of a construction worker who allegedly fell to his death six months before the structure was finished. At the time no one was sure about the incident because the worker was said to have plummeted into a concrete pit used to support one of the pillars of the bridge. His body was never found.
The story about the construction worker is doubtful. But that doesn’t make the sheer number of suicides any less disturbing. That’s too bad. The bridge is striking enough architecturally on its own to be famous.
Hello from Japan January 17, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Music.add a comment
I don’t know who this pianist is, other than he’s from Japan. But this arrangement of “Route 66″ is superb.
New song takes place on Route 66 in Texas January 16, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Highways, History, Music.add a comment
The Gourds, a folk-rock band out of Texas, has a song, “All the Way to Jericho,” on its new album, “Haymaker!” that takes place on Route 66 in the Lone Star State.
The Jericho in the song, according to a review in Pitchfork Media, refers to the notorious Jericho Gap of old Route 66 in the Texas Panhandle. The Jericho Gap was an unpaved portion of the Mother Road that turned to mud after the slightest rain, providing locals a cottage industry in towing services.
And the lyrics to “All the Way to Jericho” do seem to refer to the gigantic cross that’s nearby in Groom, Texas.
An excerpt of the song can be heard here. And the song also is available for purchase on iTunes.
Changes in Route 66 Preservation Program January 16, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in People, Preservation.add a comment
Changes are afoot in the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program.
Longtime program manager Michael Romero Taylor has moved on to a new post at the National Parks Service’s National Trails office. His cohort for the entire tenure of the program, Kaisa Barthuli, will become the acting program manager until it sunsets late this year — unless it is reauthorized by Congress for another 10 years, which is looking increasingly likely.
John Murphey joined the Route 66 staff as of Jan. 5. Barthuli had this to say about him in an e-mail:
John comes to us from the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office, and has extensive knowledge of historic preservation and historic roads. He will bring great energy and experience to the program, and we are very fortunate to have him.
From other accounts I’ve heard, Murphey will be an excellent pickup for the program. I have little doubt the Route 66 office will hum along without a hitch.
However, I’m sad to see Taylor go. We’ve known him for about eight years. He’s soft-spoken and courteous, and his enthusiasm and dedication to the Mother Road were genuine. And I think his (and Kaisa’s) accessibility was one of the strong points of the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program. If you contacted the office about a historical question or a preservation crisis, you could rest assured that you’d get a prompt answer or some sort of action would be taken.
As I’ve said before, people like Mike and Kaisa are rare instances of giving the term “bureaucrats” a good name. And, now that I think about it, that may have been a big reason why there’s so much sentiment to renew the program.