It’s probably not hard to guess that this post was triggered by two recent reviews of books with titles (Route 66: The First 100 Years & Route 66: 100 Years) that closely resemble the one above. Just like someone’s list of the best guitarists or best albums, those books could not possibly include everybody’s favorites. Reading them stirred up my own memories of the route, and when I finished, it was clear that some of the things and people that stood out in those memories had been omitted. I even briefly thought of pointing that out in the reviews, but quickly and wisely dropped the idea. Including everyone’s ideas of what was significant about a hundred years and more than 2,000 miles is even more challenging than naming everyone’s favorite album in a top 100 list. So, I started planning an entry about a few of the “omissions” on my mind and almost immediately realized that some context was required. Thus, this post.
I initially had 26 in this post’s title to account for the 26 years since my first full drive of Historic Route 66 in 1999. Then I remembered my one and only real-life encounter with a real live US 66. In 1981, my future ex-wife and I were headed toward Las Vegas on I-40 when we exited at Winslow, AZ, for breakfast. I knew almost nothing about Route 66, but recognized the name Winslow from the Eagles song. I even think that had something to do with picking the town for breakfast. I recall grabbing an Egg McMuffin, then driving through a bit of the town, and returning to I-40 on the west side. I believe that at least a tiny bit of that drive was on a still commissioned US 66. I always learn something while writing a blog post, and in writing this one, I learned that “Take It Easy” and the Egg McMuffin were both released in 1972.
As we all know, the route ceased to officially exist a few years later. My next encounter with the route, and probably first encounter with the renaissance, was in 1998 when I attended the Bloomington Gold Corvette gathering in Bloomington, IL, with a friend. I imagine I was already thinking of driving the route when I bought this T-shirt. I still have it and even still wear it occasionally. I recently wore it at the Milles of Possibility conference, where it got a little attention because of the unusual set of cities marked on the back. Most Route 66 folks, including Bobby Troup, forget Bloomington.
A more serious relationship with Sixty-Six began the next year when I made my first full-length drive. The book shown at right was my guide. It was a true mile-by-mile guide with accurate distances to turns, cities, and roadside attractions. Its ring binding (similar to EZ66) allowed it to be laid open in the car. Co-author Bob Moore was a key player in Route 66 Magazine. In 2003, he and Rich Cunningham published a two-volume Route 66 Guidebook and Atlas. I never met Bob, although I did stop by the magazine’s office and gift shop on that first trip. The journal for that trip is still available here.
At left is a scan of the first page of the directions I followed on my second full-length trip in 2003. By then, I had discovered Historic66.com and gave my printer a workout by printing every page of the turn-by-turn directions at the site. What would become Historic66.com was started in 1994 by Belgian Swa Frantzen and his wife, Nadine Pelicaen. This was near the leading edge of the internet, and the website is generally accepted as the first dedicated to Route 66. Swa and Nadine turned the site over to Route 66 Navigation founders Marián Pavel and Jan Švrček in 2021. Details of this cyber-pioneering are told here.
I did meet Swa and Nadine several times, but since their retirement, they have pretty much cut out international travel. The last US visit that I am aware of was in 2018, when they were here partially to photograph the total solar eclipse of that year. I was alone in an open car on that 2003 trip. I kept the directions in the seat beside me with large spring clips at top and bottom. As I finished each page, I pulled it from the clips and crumpled it up behind the passenger seat to keep it from blowing away. At the next stop or at the end of the day, I would straighten them out and place them at the back of the stack. I still have them. The journal for the 2003 trip is here.
There has always been a GPS in my car, starting with the very first of my documented road trips. The earliest ones I used showed me my position on a map and the straight-line distance to cities and other places. They did not offer routing. I actually doubt that routing was even possible before the government dropped “selective availability”, which limited the accuracy of civilian receivers, in 2000. I acquired a unit capable of routing in 2006 and started plotting downloadable routes for my trips. This included some partial Route 66 outings using directions in a first-edition EZ66 Guide, which I’d bought from Jerry in 2005. For my third full-length trip in 2012, I used a store-bought route.
River Pilot began releasing Route 66 products for certain Garmin GPS models in 2010. I purchased his Ready2Go Tours app (reviewed here) in 2012, and used it for a Chicago to L.A. run later that year. I was quite happy with the product. It was available for purchase for several years, and GPS units could be rented with it pre-loaded. Incompatibility with new Garmin models basically doomed the product. That also seems to have doomed a line of pre-planned routes that were once available from MAD Maps for Garmin units. I had several email and telephone conversations with River that included comments about how we were part of a seemingly small subset of GPS users who understood the difference between being guided to a point and being guided along a route. He had some hope of developing products that would take advantage of the exploding availability of GPS in smartphones, but I don’t believe they were ever seriously pursued. MAD Maps’ similar intentions also went unrealized. To the best of my knowledge, Touch Media’s Route 66 Navigation (reviewed here) is the only successful use of a smartphone to truly follow a route.
I’ve always liked this picture of Ron, Ethel, and Laurel. Laurel Kane operated a small museum and gift shop in Afton, OK, from sometime around 2000 until her death in 2016. Ron McCoy frequently rode along on Laurel’s eighty-mile commute from Tulsa to help with something at the station or to just keep her company. She might sell a few souvenirs while she was there, but that wasn’t really the point. She was there to greet the world travelers passing by and to tell them about her part of Route 66. I mentioned in the review of Route 66: 100 Years that it included a picture from her sizable collection of photos, postcards, and other memorabilia. She would have liked that. My “remembering’ post for Laurel is here.
For me, Bob, Swa, Nadine, River, and Laurel have played significant roles during my 45 (really 26) years on Route 66. I bet they are also big players in some others’ memories of the route, too. Egg McMuffins, maybe not.
That title may look familiar. If so, one reason might be the similarly named Route 66: The First 100 Years, reviewed 
Route 66: 100 Years is an anthology edited by Jim Hinckley of 
Like the beginning pages of many books about historic highways, the introduction includes tales of how the early automobile roads followed native trails, animal migration paths, and train tracks. And it talks about the impact that the popularity of bicycles had on the desire for and development of roads outside of cities toward the end of the 19th century. What makes it a little different from most similar writings is that it provides some details about organizations and specific events during road development during this era of pedal-powered transportation.
The state chapters appear in geographic sequence, east to west, which is the direction most people travel the route. Together, they provide a sort of combination travel guide and history lesson. I’m not talking about a travel guide with turn-by-turn directions, motel phone numbers, and such. However, most towns along the route are mentioned — and US 66 was a great connector of small towns — along with numerous points of interest. There is usually some history given about each town and POI, and there is plenty of history about the route itself.
The book is definitely well-illustrated. I don’t believe there is a single page, besides the index and authors’ bios, without at least one image. These include modern and period photographs, postcards, advertising brochures, and other items. Joe Sonderman supplied some of those postcards and brochures, as did big-time collectors Mike Ward and Steve Rider. I was extremely pleased to see a photo from the collection of the late Laurel Kane included. Many of the modern photos were taken by Jim Hinckley and his wife, Judy. I saw no photos from either Rhys Martin or Greg Hasman, although I know both are excellent photographers. I did see photos from Shutterstock, Alamy, and Getty. I thought both situations were curious, but the final product comes off well.
The quality of the book is quite good. Color and black-and-white images show nicely on the heavyweight glossy pages, and the layout serves them well. All have descriptive cut lines that include source credits. There are numerous sidebars, most with their own images, providing extra information outside of the main text flow.
The individual states that carried US 66 account for eight chapters. The book has nine. Dries Bessels, a resident of the Netherlands, authored a chapter named “Renaissance”. Dries has guided multiple tours down the length of Route 66 and provides an outside-the-country view of the historic road. The “renaissance” he writes about is its emergence as a travel destination for both Americans and foreigners after being bypassed and decommissioned. America, essentially spared the devastation that WWII brought to Europe, was the land of dreams to post-war Europeans, and Route 66 was a tangible thing that rolled right through those dreams. Today, Route 66 is still regarded as a way to experience a diverse range of America.
Frogman is a horror movie. I’m pretty sure the last horror movie that I paid to see in a theater was The Exorcist in 1973. I did that because I liked the book. I went to see Frogman because I liked the festival.
