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.
Chips on Route 66 December 12, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses.1 comment so far
I got this e-mail the other day. Excerpt is below:
My name is Dave Harber. My wife, Debbie, and I are huge Route 66 aficionados having traveled the route at various stages over the past fifteen years or so. We also are web developers, own a custom poker chip business and thought it would be neat to merge our fascination of the mother road with some great looking custom artwork and build a website & create a new collectible using our custom casino quality chips.
Here are the casino chips, front and back, which are available at the 66Chips.com site.
The chips can be purchased individually, or within a keychain. Or the whole set can be purchased for $19.66 plus $5 shipping, which includes free ninth chip that has the U.S. Route 66 shield on the front and back.
So if you and your pals like to play poker as a pastime, these chips will fit nicely into the game.
Give Harber credit for doing something that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been done before regarding Route 66.
“Thunderstorms and Neon Signs” December 11, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Music.add a comment
Here is Wayne “The Train” Hancock‘s finest hour, and the song in 1995 that pretty much kick-started his career.
Here’s Hancock talking about one of his experiences on Route 66 in No Depression magazine in 2001:
“I’ve broken down on my way to shows and gotten there early. I was going through Vega, Texas, and my generator goes down and I pulled in the first place I see which is the Vega Motel on Route 66 and at 4:00 in the morning there’s a guy behind the desk. There’s never a guy at 4:00 in the morning so I figure he’s an insomniac.
“We get up the next day and it turns out there’s an auto parts store on either side of that motel and a garage in both of them. We got there two hours early. The next time I go through town I say, ‘Hey, let’s go through Vega. They got a cool motel there.’ The place is deserted and looks like it’s been closed for thirty years. The auto parts stores were closed too. I’ve got lots of stories like that.”