“Route 66 in New Mexico” documentary December 16, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Movies, Road trips, Television.add a comment
KNME-TV in New Mexico has just posted on YouTube another documentary, shot in 2001, about Route 66. This one is 56 minutes long, and focuses on the Land of Enchantment.
Reopening a Route 66 legend December 16, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Restaurants.add a comment
The Braidwood Journal has a story about the recent reopening of the Riviera Roadhouse, a longtime Route 66 favorite in Gardner, Ill.
The important details …
Stover said customers can expect to see few changes at the Route 66 favorite. Stover is already building the menu, and hopes to bring most of Peggy Kraft’s famous dishes back. The restaurant is already serving spaghetti, chicken and cheese bread, and plans to have ribs available in time for New Year’s Eve. [...]
For the time being, the Riviera is running by reservation only on Friday and Saturday nights. Other than that, the restaurant is open from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m., seven days a week. The restaurant will also host its annual New Year’s Eve celebration. New Year’s Eve was the last big hurrah for the road house last year, so the tradition didn’t have to miss out on a year.
Reservations for the Riviera can be made by calling 237-2344.
The old streetcar next to the restaurant will undergo some repairs in the spring and will reopen to visitors, also.
Cruise the Neon Road December 15, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Movies, Preservation, Signs, Television.add a comment
KNME-TV in New Mexico has just posted on YouTube its award-winning “The Neon Road” documentary from 2003.
It’s about 25 minutes, but well worth your time.
Joplin museum may move to Route 66 December 15, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in History, Museums, Railroad.4 comments
The Joplin Museum Complex in Joplin, Mo., asked the City Council on Monday night to move its cramped operations to Memorial Hall on Seventh Street, aka Route 66, and levy a sales tax to help pay for it, renovations and operating expenses, reported the Joplin Globe.
Brad Belk, director of the museum complex, told the council that the plan would give the museum the expansion space it needs to house collections that are in storage. It would make the museum a visitor destination on Seventh Street, the former U.S. Route 66, and place it near downtown revitalization efforts. It also would preserve Memorial Hall, where use has been spotty for several years, Belk said. [...]
The museum has outgrown its 8,000 square feet of display and meeting space, though it possesses what visitors describe as an important collection of minerals that were part of the mining boom that developed Joplin and the Tri-State Mining District that included Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma.
Besendorfer said that when she became a board member and first toured all the nooks and crannies inside the museum at Schifferdecker Park, “I was so impressed yet dismayed that we have phenomenal collections, yet they are in the basement (in storage). Sadly, we have to say ‘no’ to (more) collections. We don’t have the space to save them for later.”
What’s being proposed is a one-sixth of a cent sales tax that would cover the $7 million in expenses. The sales tax could then be lowered once construction bonds are paid off.
The city attorney is also checking to see whether moving the museum to Memorial Hall would violate the facility’s covenants, which allows it to be used as a meeting hall and auditorium. Memorial Hall was built in 1923.
The mayor seemed reluctant to proceed, but a majority the City Council advanced the measure to possibly put the sales tax on a referendum. The council could vote on it as soon as January, with a public vote as soon as April.
I noticed a few Joplin Globe readers want the railroad depot to be the museum. But these pictures show the depot in such disrepair that it would very likely take far more than $7 million to repair it. Restoring the depot is a worthy goal, but you’d better have deep, deep pockets to do it.
Notes from the road December 14, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Events, Music, People, Photographs, Road trips, Vehicles, Web sites.2 comments
I’ve been watching this story carefully, even though it doesn’t have much to do with Route 66.
Johnny Hallyday, 66, a rock ‘n’ roll legend in France, was placed in a medically induced coma in Los Angeles after complications developed in France after back surgery. He’s expected to make a recovery, and he emerged from the coma Monday evening.
The Route 66 connection? He had been embarking on what was reportedly his final music tour, called “Route 66,” a tribute to his age and to the American rock that has inspired his music. It’s too bad Hallyday’s last tour turned so sour.
— IPD, a Volvo parts supplier, is holding its annual online photo contest involving vintage Volvos. In the lead is Jack Connelly’s 1966 model, parked in front of the Cyrus Avery Memorial Plaza in Tulsa, under the big neon Route 66 shield on the catwalk. The Route 66 yahoo group has been merrily stuffing the online ballot box in recent days, and you can do the same.
— Laurel Kane’s Afton Station in Afton, Okla., was prominently mentioned in an article about U.S. 60 by David McLane for OhmyNew International. U.S. 60 merges with Route 66 in parts of northwestern Oklahoma. Kane also has a blog here.
— The Rose Bowl Events Center is hosting an “old-school, Tulsa honky-tonk, New Year’s Eve party” starting at 7 p.m., said owner Sam Baker. “Enjoy a cold beer, concessions, complimentary midnight champagne toast, party favors and top your evening off with some lucky black-eyed peas and corn bread,” he said. The cost is $15 a head. Entertainment will be the Round Up Boys, a very good local Western swing band. Proceeds from the event go to the American Cancer Society. The Rose Bowl, on the 11th Street alignment of Route 66, was a bowling center for many years.
— A new reader-generated site has launched, called FavoriteRoad.com. It’s a place for “road trippers” to share their stories and photographs about their favorite two-lane highways and road trips. It’s sponsored by Asphalt Magazine.
Film features mural painters in Pontiac December 14, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Events, Movies, Towns.add a comment
Scott McCoy, the former mayor of Pontiac, Ill., and owner of McCoy studios, has produced a documentary film about the Walldogs mural painters when they descended on the city last summer, reported the Bloomington Pantagraph.
The title of the film is “Murals on Main Street — The Story of Walldogs in Pontiac, Ill.” The two-hour film is coming out on DVD, including a two-hour bonus disc of bloopers and other features.
The video recounts how mural artists from around the world came to Pontiac in June to paint more than a dozen murals on downtown buildings and other sites. It offers explanations of who the subjects of the murals tie in with Pontiac history, including its role as a Route 66 community.
It also includes footage of the preparation for the event and how the murals have affected the community.
McCoy also did follow-up interviews with the artists and even traveled out-of-state to get some of them.
You can go here to order both the DVD and the bonus disc for a total of $19.95 through the holidays.
A chat with Quinta Scott December 14, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, History, People, Photographs, Web sites.2 comments
Quinta Scott's nighttime image of the now-gone Coral Court Motel in St. Louis. (Courtesy of Quinta Scott)
A little over three decades years ago, photographer Quinta Scott was learning how to use a recently purchased but unwieldy Speed Graphic camera. After shooting a photo at the historic Eads Bridge in St. Louis for a book, she made the fateful decision to also shoot photographs along the city’s Route 66 alignment of Watson Road.
Months after capturing images of the 66 Park Inn, Casa Grande Motel and other historic motels in west St. Louis, the idea of a Route 66 book popped into Scott’s head.
“No one thought it was a good idea,” Scott recalled during a phone interview from her home in Waterloo, Ill., near St. Louis. “My husband thought it was crazy. But I knew it was a good idea, and the only other one who thought that was Susan Croce Kelly.”
Quinta Scott
That idea eventually led to two books: 1988′s “Route 66: The Highway and Its People” (with text written by Croce Kelly) and 2000′s “Along Route 66,” the latter which concentrates on the architecture and history of businesses on the road. Much of the research for the two books occurred in the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, years before Michael Wallis’ “Route 66: The Mother Road” shot to the best-seller list in 1992 and reignited interest in Route 66.
Scott and her former book partner’s research also proved valuable to historians. She and Croce Kelly traveled Route 66 in five- and seven-day chunks to photograph longtime businesses and knock on doors to find more about them. They decided to mostly focus on businesses that were established from 1926 (when U.S. 66 was born) to 1956 (when the interstate highway system was established).
“We got there just in time,” Scott recalled of those interviews. “We were talking to people who were about to retire or just retired. These were the people who invented the roadside business, starting in the Depression.”
Scott said a crucial point in the research occurred in Lebanon, Mo., when they encountered Joy Spears Fischel of the Joy Motel, formerly Camp Joy (“That was the beginning of the motel … it started as a campground”), and Jessie Hudson, co-founder of the still-operating Munger Moss Motel.
Going to Oklahoma also was crucial.
“We thought there was nothing left in Oklahoma because everybody left, like in ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’” Scott said. “But people like Leon Little didn’t go to California; they established a roadside business.”
Leon Little and his wife Ann established a gas station on Route 66 near Hinton Junction, Okla., and the couple proved to be valuable historical resources for Croce Kelly and Scott. The Littles even saw a film crew shooting footage on Route 66 for the Oscar-winning “The Grapes of Wrath,” Scott said, including the scene where Grandpa dies at the west end of the Pony Bridge near Bridgeport.
Scott’s work led to more than 2,000 images on black-and-white negatives (many of them unpublished), about 100 hours of taped interviews with longtime Route 66 businesspeople, and handful of color photographs. She said she’s considering bequeathing her collection to archives at University of Missouri-St. Louis or Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
But, for now, Scott’s “The Mississippi: A Visual Biography” should be hitting bookstores in a matter of weeks. Scott also maintains two blogs, Quinta Scott’s Weblog and Along Route 66.
After that, she is considering a third Route 66 book. This one would be about how energy extraction — from coal-mining to oil wells to solar-energy plants — has affected the Mother Road’s landscape through the decades. If the book happens, it would necessitate another trip on the Main Street of America — including to the Sooner State.
“I love Oklahoma … People think Oklahoma is to be gotten through, but it makes my heart go pitty-pat,” she said. “And I love New Mexico … all of New Mexico.”
(Quinta Scott is holding a holiday sale for her Route 66 photographs at AlongRoute66.com through Friday. If you buy two 8-by-10-inch black-and-white prints for $47 each, you get the third free.)
Dancing skeletons and cooking with excrement December 13, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Religion.add a comment
I never thought I’d type that in a headline. But it accurately conveys the latest edition of “Route 66: A Road Trip through the Bible.” This one’s about the Book of Ezekiel.
Football frenzy in Stroud December 12, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Restaurants, Sports.add a comment
Jenni Carlson, a sports columnist for The Oklahoman, tells how the Route 66 town of Stroud, Okla., has been in a frenzy since its high-school football team has played its way to the Class A state championship game.
Dawn Welch, owner of the Rock Cafe in Stroud, plays a big role in the article. It’s the first time since 1981 that Stroud has played for a state title.
Stroud lost to Tonkawa 7-6 in the state final on Saturday night. A missed extra-point kick after a touchdown was the difference in the game.
Recession hurts Indian jewelers December 12, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses.add a comment
According to an Associated Press story out of Gallup, N.M., traders and makers of American Indian jewelry have seen sales drops of as much as 80 percent since the U.S. recession began in earnest last fall.
One of those interviewed was the owner of Richardson’s Trading Co., one of the oldest such businesses in Gallup:
In Gallup, there’s a saying — perhaps exaggerated — that 80 percent of the world’s American Indian jewelry comes through the western New Mexico hilltop town. Whatever the figure, there’s no disputing that local traders who sell jewelry and other crafts, such as colorful wool rugs and pottery made by members of the nearby Navajo, Hopi, Acoma and Zuni tribes, are also feeling the pinch.
Traders say their wholesale business, which in the past has come from the East and West coasts and Texas, has fallen between 25 and 40 percent this year.
“We don’t have the numbers that we used to have. That’s because their business is down,” said Bill Richardson, the 91-year-old owner of Richardson’s Trading Co., which sits among a line of jewelry stores on historic Route 66. “They don’t need this stuff. What do you need this stuff for? You can’t eat it.”
If you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping, you may want to consider throwing some business to the Indian jewelry shops. It sounds like they can really use it.