The Historic Highways blog has been online only about a week, but I like it a lot already.
Dave Eames of Kansas City, formerly of Tulsa, collects roadside memorabilia, including from Route 66. He seems to favor stuff from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, which isn’t a bad thing.
The image above is from a U.S. 60 brochure, which piggybacked on U.S. 66 in Oklahoma.
Anyway, he’s scanning his collection and putting it on his blog. It’s nostalgic look at the pre-interstate era. Historic Highways is going on the Route 66 News blogroll, and I would advise regular excursions there to see what new treasures he’s posted.
We left Albuquerque,NM (my dad, my sister and myself), heading for Los Angeles on Route 66, in the summer of 1941. We were traveling in a 1937 Chevrolet. I was 7 yrs old. My dad had found a job with the Santa fe Railroad and he was moving the family to California. My mother, along with my other sister (traveling by train), had arrived in Los Angeles a week or so before us.
What I remember most about trip is what seemed like an endless desert, with an occasional small town, where we would buy food of gas for the car. When we were close to LA, I remember thinking what funny looking trees they had here (palm trees).
A couple of days later my dad asked if we would all like to see the ocean (the OCEAN–WOW). So off we went, down Route 66, heading toward Santa Monica. My mom had us roll down the windows so we could smell the salt air as we got closer to the ocean (it was great). And finally, we were there; the Santa Monic Pier, the Palisades, the palm trees, the big iron cannons, and yes, the Pacific Ocean.