Book review: “Pop 66”

“Pop 66,” a collection of Wes Pope’s black-and-white pinhole-camera images taken over a 20-year period on Route 66, contains plenty of intrigue.

But it’s Pope’s text that elevates the book (hardcover, 115 pages, Press Syndication Group) into part travelogue, part family history.and part biography.

Subtitled “A Dreamy Pop Can Odyssey Along Route 66,” part of the book’s main title could refer to the two aluminum soda cans used as a pinhole camera. The title also could refer to “popping” a quick image with a camera.

Pope, who worked as a photographer for newspapers in nine states, also earned a master’s degree in documentary film. He began traveling Route 66 in 1998 and started his pop-can-camera hobby shortly after that.

This video describes the book and Pope’s photography methods:

“Route 66: The Mother Road” author Michael Wallis, who wrote the book’s forward, explains the appeal of Pope’s pinhole-camera images: “Like the highway itself, Pope and his photographs are not in any way predictable. Nothing about them is contrived.”

Pope echoes Wallis’ notion: “With the best images in the project, I always say that I didn’t make the picture; the camera made the picture.”

This unpredictability shows up with several images:

• Flags flapping in the breeze at Shea’s Route 66 Museum in Springfield, Illinois, and from an 86-year-old man’s wheelchair give an illusion of movement.
• Occasional halos around objects, such as the “Mountain Lions” ruins at Two Guns, Arizona.
• Odd lighting accents, such as a bright baseball cap on the Blue Whale in Catoosa, Oklahoma.

The book also proves to be a historical document, with portraits of people on Route 66 who since have died: Bill Shea, Bob Waldmire, Dixie Lee Evans, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Some places have disappeared or changed:

• The Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum, shown at the Dixie Truckers Home in McLean, since has moved to Pontiac.
• The Aztec Motel in Albuquerque was razed.
• Shea’s Route 66 Museum in Springfield closed after its founder’s death, and the station has been repurposed
• The new owners of the Wigwam Motel in Rialto, California, dispensed with its racy “Do it in a teepee” slogan and greatly improved the property’s look and reputation.
• M.E. Sprengelmeyer, publisher of the Guadalupe County Communicator in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, recently sold his newspaper.
• A memorial on a chain-link fence at the Murrah Building terrorism bombing site since has morphed into the more formal Oklahoma City Memorial.
• Exotic World museum in Helendale, California, moved to Las Vegas.
• The fiberglass giant at Bunyon’s restaurant in Cicero, Illinois, moved to downtown Atlanta, Illinois.

Unlike many Route 66 travelogues, “Pop 66” takes a west-to-east format. And, for what essentially is a photography book, Pope proves to be an excellent writer. He muses about the Mother Road early:

“Over time, I’ve come to understand that Route 66 is two things. It’s an idea floating around in our culture: a symbol that shows up on bumper stickers and plastered on the walls of kitschy drive-in diners. It’s also a physical place, where you can trace the layers of our history the way a geologist looks at the walls of the Grand Canyon. While some guidebooks consider it a look back at a simpler time, I don’t think Route 66’s past or present is so simple. Yes, Route 66 is pre-interstate highway system, and pre-big media. There are relics of Mom and Pop businesses that have mostly been replaced by chains. But it also traverses plenty of things that are very complicated: our changing attitudes about race, the treatment of Native Americans, the country going to war again and again, the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl, the story of the Okie Exodusters (my relatives). Today, beyond the souvenir shops, there is something else going on. There is a poverty of the land and a toughness of the people.”

And the book isn’t afraid to show the grittier side of Route 66. He writes:

“Restoration and preservation are important, but I love finding things the are real and maybe untouched.”

Pope delves into his family’s nomadic history and its effect on his restless spirit. That spirit often is reflected in Pope’s images ant text from the Mother Road.

The book ends on a somber but satisfying note at the funeral of a beloved relative who grew up in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Pope’s photos are fascinating, but his writing had me wanting more.

Recommended.