The Carthage Press has an interesting story about Bob Boots, who now lives in Tulsa, returning to his former Route 66 motel and hometown of Carthage, Mo., for the first time in years.
Boots returned for the purpose of telling his memories for a Route 66 oral history project.
Boots' father, Arthur Boots, built the motel in Carthage in the 1930s.
“It brings back memories to see that office of the Boots Motel,” Boots said. “We used to rent rooms for $2.50 and people would still come and say, ‘$2.50, $2.50, I just want to stay a night, not a week.' They were so indignant.”
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As for Boots, his trip was as much for himself as for history, perhaps a final visit to the town he grew up in and thinks of warmly and a long look at a world that still exists if only in his mind.
“It was a place that needed to be when it happened,” Boots said. “The Boots Motel and the Boots Drive-In, it was like it was meant to be. Carthage has changed drastically. The old part of town is a lot the same, but everything else has changed. It's grown a lot down on this end.
The Boots Motel still stands, but at last report it's no longer operating as a motel.
The Boots Motel came close to being knocked down several years ago when its then-owner, citing poor health, sold it to a local developer. There was speculation that the motel then would have been razed to make way for a Walgreens store. But outcry from the Route 66 Association of Missouri, Friends of the Mother Road and other Route 66 preservationists apparently scared off the developers.