Bill Snowden wrote in Cape Cod Today about his remarkable adventures on Route 66 in the summer of 1967.
An excerpt:
My journey to Rte 66 started on the Cape and wound thru the Midwest, going south all the way to Los Angeles. Rte 66; a two lane asphalt history lesson, all 2,000 miles, unwinding like an old black phonograph record track; scored, scarred and full of every dream, regret and sorrow America recorded on it’s asphalt since the Great Depression. Every mile I walked and rode on it felt like an old 78 rpm, hand cranked song, singing a feeling of wide openness, a time when there weren’t so many of us. Every deserted gas station I saw from Oklahoma to Arizona sang of the Joads, hobos and Oakies, of Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, of Jack Kerouac’s, “On the Road” and Neil Cassidy, of nameless long dead mothers who lost their kids in childbirth, while pulled over on the grassy shoulder of Hope’s Highway. Route 66 started somewhere for everyone who took it. It was a wonderful old road, as long, endless and hopeful as the dreams of its travelers. But like all dreams hitting reality, it, too, came to a dead end sooner or later.
The whole thing has a wistful beatnik vibe. That’s a good thing, by the way.