Starting tomorrow, the Route 66 Interpretive Center in Chandler, Okla., will show a new 20-minute documentary about one man’s journey on Route 66 in 1959 and his revisiting the Mother Road decades later.
Howard Dickman, a longtime trustee with the museum’s historic Old Armory building and a Chandler resident, spent about 18 months working on the film. He was kind enough to provide a DVD copy a couple of weeks ago. He said the version I watched is “very close to a final product.”
Here’s a summary:
In 1959, Dick Besser wanted an education in a state different than his home state of New York. He and a buddy drove to the University of Arizona and just happened to drive on U.S. Route 66. It was such a memorable trip that in the year 2000 Besser retraced his adventure by driving Route 66 once again, this time in a new 2000 torch-red Chevy Corvette.
This movie documents life of the ’50s with pictures, postcards, letters and stories from that first trip. The film then documents how life had changed along Route 66 41 years later. With the use of over 100 pictures, narrated by the producer’s wife, Victoria Dickman, and interspersed with Dick’s stories, this film paints a personal experience with the most famous highway in America, U.S. Route 66.
This film may sound like a glorified slide show, but it’s crisply edited and engaging throughout, especially when Besser and his pal get into a couple of misadventures along the way.
The film turns out to be much like a Ken Burns documentary on PBS. Go see it.
The movie will be on loan at the museum indefinitely, but is not for sale.
(Photo of Dick Besser provided by Howard Dickman)