Route 66 in the News
Photo Exhibit Gives Impression of 66
2008-01-18 22:00:17
LONGMONT, Colo. - One digit short of Satan’s sign, Route 66 was where you went to get your kicks. But the fabled road was almost called Route 60, and before the popular song claimed it for free-wheeling tourists, dust bowl escapees followed it to California, and later it was Kerouac-minded adventurers who rolled down its path, finding themselves as they explored the country.
Old Route 66 — the promise of escape, the pull of the unknown, the motorist’s gateway to the enchanted deserts of the West — is now locked away in legend. Affordable air travel and the homogeneity of the modern interstate highway system have rendered cross-country travel a banal, if convenient, affair.
But Route 66 itself — that is, the actual pavement on the ground — mostly still exists, and it continues to rev the engines of enthusiasts who at every chance go steering around the curves of America’s most famous open road.
One of those people is Shellee Graham. In 1990 a magazine spread jump-started her interest in Route 66, and she realized her St. Louis home was just a couple clicks of the odometer away from the old highway. She went to see it for herself, and she brought her camera.
Since then she has returned to Route 66 repeatedly, traveling its length from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Coast and recording in photographs its distinctly American roadside accommodations and attractions.
Her work will be on display at the Longmont Museum & Cultural Center as part of the exhibit “Return to Route 66: Photographs From the Mother Road,” running Saturday through March 9.
The exhibit features 69 pictures (might they have thought to trim the selection by three, just for numerical neatness?) and also will include four vintage automobiles from the private collection of Stephen Tebo and gas station memorabilia from the collection of Clyde Hodge.
Route 66, following the Federal Highway Act of 1921, was commissioned in 1926. It spanned more than 2,400 miles between Chicago and Los Angeles, crossing through the states of Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The route was not chosen on the spot. The highway largely followed an amalgamation of pre-existing byways.
“Trails, traces, fence-row tracks, farm-to-market roads, and even some private drives were linked with stagecoach routes farther west to create something resembling a continuous roadway,” writes author Tom Snyder in his “Route 66 Traveler’s Guide.”
The highway’s myth was already cruising through the national consciousness when in 1939 John Steinbeck published “Grapes of Wrath,” which featured Route 66 as “the mother road, the road of flight.”
Fascination only accelerated when songwriter Bobby Troup’s wife, as the couple was driving to Hollywood, blurted out, “Get your kicks on Route 66!” and he parked the phrase in a catchy tune that was recorded by, among others, Nat King Cole and the Rolling Stones.
Steinbeck’s “mother road” has collected many nicknames. They include “the Main Street of America,” “the Main Stream of America,” “The Middle Route” and “The Will Rogers Highway.” Certain accident-prone parts were called “Bloody 66.”
Graham’s images provide a side-window view of the road’s sights from the Midwest to the desert. She seems especially attracted to motel signs. It must be said there’s something about the post-war, neon aesthetic of these small-town beacons that’s alluring, and that was the intention: “TV,” “Budget Prices,” “Cocktails.” Pull over, honey, let’s call it a day.
The pictures also give a sense of the oddities to be found along Route 66. Cadillac Ranch, in Amarillo, Texas, is one of the best known (and odd it is, a lined-up collection of 10 vintage Caddys buried nose first in a field), but countless examples of the strange dot the route, many of them created by entrepreneurs catering to strangers passing through. The Jack Rabbit Trading Post, in Joseph City, Ariz., sells curios, and its “world famous” status allows it on its billboard to announce simply, “Here it is,” as documented in a photo by Graham.
Her “Dog on Route 66,” one of the most striking images in the show, has much to say about the history and mystique of the highway. A black and white dog, seeming to obey the stay-right rule, trots down the road toward the viewer. The highway, cracked and pocked, cuts through an open landscape of grass and mature trees. Route 66, as identified by a white shield painted on the pavement in the foreground, is centered in the frame and extends away from the viewer so that its shoulders converge near the top, except the far end of the road is shrouded in mist, which leaves the viewer longing to push down the pedal and follow the road wherever it leads.
~Quentin Young, TimesCall.com
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