KUAF’s Route 66 stories, all in one place August 12, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses, Museums, People, Radio, Restaurants, Theaters.add a comment
KUAF-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate based at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, posted daily reports from Route 66 in Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas this week.
Here’s the complete set of broadcasts, which you can hear at the link:
- Monday, a report from Vintage Iron Museum in Miami, Okla.
- Tuesday, a report from the Coleman Theatre in Miami, Okla.
- Wednesday, a report about Scott Nelson at the Eisler Bros. Store in Riverton, Kan.
- Thursday, a report about Melba Rigg at 4 Women on the Route in Galena, Kan.
- Friday, a report about the 66 Drive-In in Carthage, Mo.
I found the reports to be engaging and informative.
A new wrinkle on Wrink’s Market July 19, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Books, Businesses, Food, History, Museums, People, Radio, Restaurants.9 comments
For an all-too-brief period, Terry Wrinkle resurrected Wrink’s Market, the longtime Route 66 business in Lebanon, Mo., owned and operated by his late father Glenn Wrinkle.
When Terry shut down the business in 2009, the future of the building looked cloudy.
However, in recent weeks, the old Wrink’s Market has found new life with D.C. Decker’s Cowboy Emporium, which operates as a part restaurant, part art museum, and part western museum.
The restaurant part is tucked into a corner of the Wrink’s building, where “healthy” sandwiches are served with about a dozen varieties Arbuckle Mountain fried pies.
Decker’s also serves and is a supplier of Arbuckle’s Ariosa Coffee, “the coffee that won the West.”
The museum part includes a lot of Old West memorabilia, including a genuine 1896 Hickory chuckwagon.
Decker once was a custom boot maker. Some of his handiwork sits on the shelves.
And the store contains plenty of western-themed art for sale.
The proprietor is Don Decker, an expert on the culture and history the Old West and American Indians.
He once hosted a radio show in Arizona, and said he assisted “Route 66: The Mother Road” author Michael Wallis when Wallis was researching a book about Cherokee Nation chief Wilma Mankiller.
Decker is happy to show you around and tell stories. Don’t be surprised if you stick around longer than you thought — a common but happy problem with the many characters who inhabit Route 66.
(D.C. Decker’s Cowboy Emporium is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. It is in the old Wrink’s Market off Exit 130 of Interstate 44. The phone number is 951-219-0813. Don Decker also is on Facebook here.)
Pearls of news items May 7, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Books, Events, History, Preservation, Radio, Signs.3 comments
Today, I was asked to attend the Route 66 Archives and Research Collaboration at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. The event was organized by the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program.
I made my pitch for the ample online news archives of Route 66 News. But, as is typical of such gatherings, I heard a few pearls of newsworthy items from other attendees during the session.
— OSU-Tulsa, which holds the Cyrus Avery Archives, said is digitizing the archive’s papers and photographs. Avery, an advocate of good roads during the infancy of the highways era, is known as the “Father of Route 66.”
— Lee Anne Zeigler, executive director of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, said the group also is digitizing its collection of about 50,000 architectural drawings, including Tulsa’s many art deco buildings. A number of structures on Route 66 undoubtedly will be part of that collection.
— Zeigler also said TFA received a grant to restore the two clocks that originally were at the top of the historic Meadow Gold sign in Tulsa. The original plans for the clocks were found in Cincinnati, so the new clocks should resemble the old ones.
— David Dunaway, an author and the producer of the acclaimed “Route 66: Across the Tracks” radio program, is compiling a literary and oral history anthology of Route 66. It will be published in March 2012 by the University of Texas Press.
— The Autry National Center in Los Angeles will host a “Route 66 and the Way West” exhibit in summer 2014. It likely will be a traveling exhibit once it finishes its run at the museum.
— Dennis Whitaker, planner for the City of Tulsa, provided a report on various Route 66 projects in town, including:
- The city is conducting a feasibility study on how the Route 66 Experience near the Arkansas River can be built. It’s anticipated the complex will house a restaurant on its third floor, a museum and interpretive center on the second floor, and office space and a gift shop on the first floor.
- The long-awaited bronze statues will be installed at Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza later this summer. The sculptor suffered a serious injury in a fall, delaying the project.
- Whitaker said the Route 66 decorative “gateways” on the east and southwest parts of Tulsa are set to go out for bid in late 2011.
- A park, called Oasis Park, will be built near 11th Street (aka Route 66) and Mingo Road. It will include a history of Route 66 motor courts.
From the trail of “End of the Trail” March 31, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, People, Radio.add a comment
Dan Rice of 66 to Cali on the Santa Monica Pier is traveling down Route 66 to the Midwest to promote his new book, “End of the Trail.”
Here’s his interview yesterday with host Pat Campbell on KFAQ-AM in Tulsa. Rice mostly talks about his recovery from traumatic brain injury, but he also talks about Route 66 near the end. It’s a good chat.
UPDATE 4/2/2011: Here’s Rice being interviewed on NBC Chicago.
UPDATE 4/11/2011: Here’s Rice in an article about his visit to a church in Lubbock, Texas.
“Across the Tracks” CD set is re-released March 24, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in History, Radio, Road trips.4 comments
David Dunaway’s acclaimed documentary radio program, “Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story,” has been re-released as a three-CD set for just $14.95.
The program was produced in 2001, heard across more than 200 radio stations, and was excerpted on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Here’s more about it:
ACROSS THE TRACKS: A ROUTE 66 STORY is a nationally distributed series of three, one-hour audio documentaries, with great music and readings from artists who’ve celebrated 66: Woody Guthrie, Ry Cooder, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, Bobby Troup, plus dramatic excerpts from films and old radio – Orson Welles and Wolfman Jack.
Here’s a sample of the series, from Chicago. You’ll hear Route 66 author Tom Teague, who died a few years ago, in the beginning. You’ll also heard Martin Milner, co-star of television’s “Route 66″ drama from the 1960s:
You can hear more excerpts at the interactive website.
Only about 500 copies of “Across the Tracks” have been made, so you’d better order one if you don’t have it.
(Audio sample and art courtesy of David Dunaway)
The woman behind Chicken Boy February 20, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Attractions, Businesses, Radio.1 comment so far
Southern California Public Radio produced a feature about Amy Inouye, who saved a fiberglass Chicken Boy figure from the top of a closed downtown Los Angeles restaurant and re-erected it on her studio on 5558 N. Figueroa St. (aka Route 66) in the Highland Park neighborhood of L.A.
From the article:
[S]he reached out to a small group of supporters, selling Chicken Boy t-shirts, lapel pins, and watches to an expanding network of curiosity hunters by mail. Slowly, a broad base of interest began to grow as the statue made appearances in columns in The San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, on radio programs, and most frequently, in the Los Angeles Times’ “Only in L.A.” column.
Two decades later, Inouye, now a successful graphic designer, moved her studio to Figueroa Street in Highland Park, along historic Route 66. The historic setting and the flat roof of the building which houses her studio, she says, attracted her to the neighborhood.
Many meetings, permits, and bureaucratic hurdles later, Chicken Boy found a new home atop Future Studio in Highland Park. Towering above the historic neighborhood alongside a slew of iconic signage, Chicken Boy peers down on a new generation of curious passersby, living up to the motto Inouye coined for him decades ago: “Too tall to live, too weird to die.”
Appropriately enough, her studio can be found online at ChickenBoy.com.
Electric art January 22, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Events, Museums, Radio, Signs.2 comments
Here’s a good video from Southern California Public Radio about the “On Route 66, Lights” exhibit along the street and median in West Hollywood, Calif., that includes four neon signs from the The Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles.
More about the public art display can be found here.