Book review: “A Route 66 Companion”

Roadies leafing through David King Dunaway’s “A Route 66 Companion” (University of Texas Press, soft cover, 162 pages) may get a jolt of bittersweet nostalgia.

That’s because the pages are sprinkled with intricate pen-and-ink drawings of Bob Waldmire, the beloved Route 66 artist and roving hippie who died of cancer in late 2009. Waldmire’s artwork of landmarks and landscapes may feel like comfort food for longtime Route 66 aficionados. (The art was acquired for the book posthumously from Bob’s brother, Buzz Waldmire.)

It turns out Waldmire’s drawings are one of the few familiar things of “A Route 66 Companion.” This collection of fiction, poetry, memoirs, plus oral history from Dunaway’s own “Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story” project largely delves into little-known history or cultures of the Mother Road. Perhaps it should be titled “A Comprehensive Route 66 Companion.”

The book contains writing excerpts or oral musings from the usual subjects, such as “Route 66: The Mother Road” author Michael Wallis, John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” Texas Route 66 historian and rancher Delbert Trew, and Oklahoma humorist Will Rogers. (Wallis also wrote the book’s forward.)

But “A Route 66 Companion” includes unexpected sources, such as writers Sylvia Plath, Washington Irving, Thomas Wolfe, Zane Grey, Vachel Lindsay, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, and veteran musician Ry Cooder.

The collection of writings and stories starts in chronological order with the prehistory of Route 66. One writer describes buffalo-hunting by Native Americans in western Oklahoma. Washington Irving and a companion tell of their experiences traveling the Plains during the 1830s. An excerpt from Lt. Edward Beale’s journal praises the use of camels in the Southwest before the Civil War.

Then came the railroads. One passage by a Zane Grey entry stands out, and foreshadows the decline of Route 66 by “progress” a century later:

Slingerland hated that great, shining steel band of progress connecting East and West. Every ringing sledge-hammer blow had sung out the death knell of the trapper’s calling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one group of greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass of the plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains dried up in the valleys, and the wild creatures of the mountains driven and hunted and exterminated. The end of the buffalo had come — the end of the Indian was in sight — and that of the fur-bearing animal and his hunter must follow soon with the hurrying years.

After that, chapters are organized in east-to-west geographical order — the prairie, the Plains, the mountains, desert, and Pacific Coast.

Some of the most arresting entries come from minorities along Route 66 — American Indians, native Spanish-speaking peoples, and African-Americans. One excerpt from a 1936 edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book — a guide for traveling African-Americans on where to sleep and eat in segregated America — is among the shortest in the book, but delivers a mountain-size impact:

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for  your convenience each year.

Edmond Threatt of Luther, Okla., also told of his segregation experiences, including “sundown” signs in nearby Edmond and blacks and whites not being buried in the same local cemetery. However, during the 1980s, when he told his story, he saw optimism:

The next generation is more open. ‘Cause they play football together. They’re playing football and running and going to school together and riding, laughing, and hugging each other. I was down last week getting food. One of the white girls, some black guy went over there and took a bite off her sandwich. I saw some people frowning up at them. I sat there in my car just looking. I said, “Now I hope something isn’t going to break out here.” The kids laughed and let him.

The writers and interview subjects aren’t always pleasing. Stanley Marsh 3, one of the creators of Cadillac Ranch art installation near Amarillo, comes across as a grandiose bigot. In another chapter, Robert M. Davis insists all the hype about Route 66 isn’t warranted. He saw the Mother Road as a dangerous highway filled with shysters and “boring” stretches. “There’s no culture with a capital ‘C,'” he said.

Naturally, the book contains a few chapters about driving. Jay Smith’s fictional account of his family heading west on the Mother Road in 1941 is one such example, and becomes vivid in its detail.

We were going fast. We had a 1941 Pontiac, dark green. A business coupe, Dad called it. It had an Indian chief on the hood, Chief Pontiac. His face was orange plastic, and when the car’s lights were on, Chief Pontiac’s face lit. The feathers in his headdress streamed back, a shiny plastic tapering into the middle of the hood, as if he were flying a hundred miles an hour. It felt like we were going a hundred miles an hour. The road wasn’t gravel, it was a long white slap of concrete with tar strips across it. We were flying and the tar strips went “whump” when we hit them. I looked over my father’s shoulder at the round speedometer. The red needle was pointing at 60. We were flying.

Most of the chapters go no more than two or three pages. This makes it good if you encounter a writer whose style doesn’t compel. However, the brevity works against writers you’ll enjoy — you’ll be really involved in the story when it suddenly ends. The brevity of the stories in “A Route 66 Companion” makes it a wash.

The concluding “Future of 66” seems to be the only section of the book that isn’t well-executed. A rocket scientist’s musings of the coming decades seem forced. And Fredric Brown and Aldous Huxley’s visions of Albuquerque in the 23rd and 26th centuries, respectively, seem quaint and unrealistic at the same time. It probably would have been more interesting if Dunaway had tracked down a historian to get his or her educated guess on what historic Route 66 would look like 50 or 100 years from now.

Still, “A Route 66 Companion” proves to be thought-provoking and deceptively sprawling for such a slim volume. Such a broadly themed book will miss the mark a few times. But it also hits the bull’s-eye in ways that will have you thinking about the Mother Road in a new way for weeks. Your mileage may vary.