Book Review
Greetings from the Lincoln Highway – Centennial Edition
Brian Butko

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Denny

The Lincoln Highway turns a hundred this year. Brian Butko’s Greetings from the Lincoln Highway turns eight. At first glance, the 2013 Greetings… looks an awful lot like the 2005 Greetings… with a soft cover and a “Centennial Edition” banner on the front and it’s a fact that, in many ways, it is the same. It has the same organization with an introductory chapter and a chapter, with map, for each state the highway passed through and a very high percentage of the words and pictures in those chapters are the same, too. Another thing that remains the same and which accounts for the small in percentage but large in number changes is the care and attention to detail. Butko probably didn’t catch everything in the book that the passage of time has altered but he sure tried and he sure got a lot.

Most of changes are tiny and hard to spot. A lot are downers; Diners and motels that were operating in 2005 but have been closed or worse. Some, like the growth of Pennsylvania’s Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor from 140 to 200 miles, are positive. A few changed words handle the bulk of these updates though some are more involved and a few include a photo change. New photographs are easier to spot than new words and I suppose a larger fraction of photos than words were changed but that’s just because the word count is higher that the picture count. The majority of the book’s graphics remain the same. Though I in no way benefit from the sale of this book, in the interest of full disclosure I need to say that I contributed a half dozen or so of the new photos.

Greetings from the Lincoln Highway inside Aside from the occasional new photo, the most visible changes may be in the statistics and maps at the front of each state chapter. Here population numbers from the 2010 census replace those from the 2000 census and the maps get a line for the Proclamation Route. The Lincoln Highway Proclamation Route was a list of cities published by the Lincoln Highway Association on September 14, 1913. Shifts started happening almost immediately and a detailed route was never signed or published that matched the September 14 announcement. But several of the cities dropped in 1913 fought unsuccessfully to return and many have fought more recently and more successfully to be recognized. Butko acknowledges that by including the ephemeral route. All of the quotes from postcards and other period communication that appeared in the margins of the original are still there and a few more have been added.

Greetings from the Lincoln Highway is almost universally accepted as the best book available for anyone wanting to travel or otherwise interact with the Lincoln Highway of today. And it’s more. That’s something I had forgotten. “The Good, the Bad and the Muddy”, the book’s opening chapter, not only introduces the Lincoln Highway, it provides a nice overview of the early days of motoring. When the book moves on to the individual states and a more concentrated Lincoln Highway focus, it offers both history and guidance. It is not a lay-in-your-lap turn-by-turn guide book but the text and maps contain most of what is needed to travel any alignment of any segment. Doing it for real is certainly best but there are enough pictures that doing it in an easy chair ain’t too bad.

Greetings from the Lincoln Highway — Centennial Edition, Brian Butko, Stackpole Books, 2013, paperback, 11 x 8.5 inches, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0811711746
Available through Amazon.

Main Street across America cover I’m reading this book for the third time. I read it around 2005 when I was dabbling with short drives on the Lincoln Highway to my east. I reread it in 2009 when I was getting ready to drive the Lincoln from the east edge of Illinois to the west coast. My current read is in anticipation of another long, hopefully full length, drive of what Drake Hokanson calls Main Street across America. I never read the original, only the pictured Tenth Anniversary Edition which is now fifteen years old itself.

I’m reading the book primarily because Hokanson’s appreciation of the road puts me in just the right mood to appreciate it myself but there are other reasons, too. One is that, like Butko’s book above, much of the original remained in the anniversary edition and provides its own glimpses of the highway when it was only three-quarters, rather than a full, century old. Lastly, it’s a chance to appreciate Drake Hokanson. It you think the Lincoln Highway is largely forgotten now, imagine what it was like in 1988. Hokanson didn’t invent a new road like Carl Fisher and his buddies but he did kind of invent the remembering of it. And that’s pretty cool.

The Lincoln Highway — Main Street across America — Tenth Anniversary Edition, Drake Hokanson, University Of Iowa Press, 1999, paperback, 10.6 x 9.4 inches, 256 pages, ISBN 978-0877456766
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
The Grand Design
Hawking and Mlodinow

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Denny

The Grand Design cover If you think this looks like it belongs here, you haven’t been paying attention. No, books about cosmology, quantum physics, and beyond aren’t what I typically read and I’m clearly not qualified to review them. I was given the book as a gift, I read and enjoyed it, and I intend to tell somebody about it.

Note that I said “read and enjoyed”, not “read and understood”. I suppose it is a sort of “Quantum Physics for Dummies” but quantum physics is not really a field for dummies. The way the book worked for me was as history and as a glossary. Bits of the history of mankind’s progress in understanding his world is scattered throughout with references to folks like Archimedes and Newton and Einstein. There is a real glossary at the back but I felt as if the body of the book gave me a glossary level understanding of things. As I read about string theory, multiverses, no-boundary conditions, and the like, I may have understood the definitions but fell a little short of fully comprehending the concepts. I don’t mean that I was constantly shaking my head and moving on in bewilderment. I simply mean there were no “ah-ha, of course the world needs quarks” moments.

There are frequent almost folksy attempts at humor or lightness. Some bring on a smile; Many don’t. But I think they all do their job as reminders of just who this is written for. I did not have a thorough understanding of quantum physics when I finished my reading but I did have confidence that others do. I guess that’s really what I got out of the book. I think there’s something of a tendency for us “civilians” to dismiss stuff like multiple universes as crazy talk but there really are people who can get their heads around the theory and I find that reassuring. Maybe some of the ideas really are half baked but the truly wrong ones will eventually be found out and the half right ones will be improved upon. That’s what science at this level is; Admiring and appreciating guys like Newton and Einstein while working as hard as you can to find their mistakes.

granddesign_cry I started off admitting that this book was really out of place here. I do a lot of my reading over meals in restaurants and it was rather out of place in some of the joints where I eat, too. I quickly worked out a way to carry the book that cut down considerably on the funny looks aimed my way.

The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam, 2012, paperback, 6 x 9 inches, 208 pages, ISBN 978-0553384666
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Long Way Home
Bill Barich

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Denny

longwh_cvr Not long ago, a friend mentioned a couple of travel related books he had just read and, when I found one of them available at the local library, I decided to give it a read. It’s Bill Barich’s Long Way Home – On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America. The subtitle is a reference to Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie which Barich cites as an inspiration for his own road trip and book. The books’ basics are certainly similar. Each is the product of a successful American writer of a certain age undertaking a cross country road trip with hopes of learning something of a nation he’s been out of touch with for awhile. Steinbeck did it in 1960; Barich in 2008. Forty-eight years is not the only difference. Steinbeck did it in a custom built camper with unlimited time and, for all practical purposes, an unlimited budget. Barich did it in a rented Ford Focus, with a six week schedule, and a budget he calls “tight”. Steinbeck sort of circled the country, starting and ending at his home in Sag Harbor, New York. Barich makes one more or less straight pass through the center of the nation. But, for me, the biggest difference is that, while I’ve never really cared for Travels with Charlie, I ended up enjoying Long Way Home. Of course, Steinbeck didn’t seem to enjoy his own trip very much; Barich did. I think that rubbed off on me.

I probably also like the fact that Barich describes his route a little better than Steinbeck and that it goes through places much more familiar to me. He drives right through Ohio and tells of eating at a restaurant where I’d eaten just days before reading of his visit. It’s hard to ignore connections like that.

Long Way Home begins with Barich recounting how much he had enjoyed reading Travels with Charlie as a teenager. Stumbling across the book decades later in Dublin, Ireland, triggered plans for his own trip but re-reading it didn’t bring back the pleasure he remembered. I suspect the teenage Barich loved the idea of an unplanned journey across the USA enough to overlook shortcomings in its execution.

Both authors do their “learning” by observing the nation’s countryside, its small towns, and, less frequently, its cities. The story telling is most interesting when it involves some interaction with the locals and that usually happens, as you might expect, in the small towns. Both trips took place during election years and both authors sometimes attempt to get those locals to discuss their political feelings with mixed success. My impression is that Barich is more successful but I can’t back that up with hard facts. Both are pretty successful at getting folks to talk, in general terms, about their and the nation’s financial situation.

Of course, John Steinbeck wasn’t the first person to write a book about driving around the US and Bill Barich won’t be the last. As someone who enjoys writing trip journals, it stands to reason that I enjoy reading them. I enjoyed reading Long Way Home and even Travels with Charlie. Both are, as you would expect, very well written. Trip journals are snapshots. Like photographic snapshots, they record how something appeared to one person at one time. I have little desire to visit the country in Steinbeck’s snapshot while Barich’s is much more inviting. I suspect that On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America subtitle was more of an attention getting device than a description of Barich’s true intentions. I doubt he was really looking for Steinbeck’s America and I’m rather glad he didn’t find it.

Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America, Bill Barich, Walker & Company, 2010, hardback, 9.4 x 6.4 inches, 256 pages, ISBN 978-0802717542
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Indiana Cars
Dennis & Terri Horvath

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Denny

Indiana Cars cover Yes, I am late to the party. This book on Indiana’s automotive history was published in 2002 but, since it’s about old cars, none of the history has changed and the cars have only gotten older.

I learned of and purchased the book when one of its authors performed guide duty on a tour that was part of the Lincoln Highway Centennial Kickoff in Indianapolis. On that tour, Dennis Horvath took us to many of the city’s automotive landmarks and this book contains all of those and more. Though few might consider Indiana Cars light reading, it is certainly interesting reading. Dennis knows automotive history. And he really knows Indiana automotive history.

There is a tremendous amount of it. At one time second only to Michigan in automobile production, Indiana has been home to more than 400 vehicle brands. Some are still widely recognized — Stutz, Studebaker, Duesenberg. Other, such as Lexington, Flandermobile, and Empire, are pretty much forgotten outside of hardcore automotive circles and the pages of this book. Similarly, Indiana had plenty of automobile pioneers. Louis Chevrolet, Harry Stutz, and Eddie Rickenbacker are fairly well known; Guys like Elwood Haynes, Charles Black, and Louis Schwitzer not so much. They’re all there in Indiana Cars.

There is an introduction and “A General Overview by Decade” to get things started. That overview begins in the 1890s. It talks of the overall automotive industry and Indiana’s role in it. There are lots of numbers. It was this I had most in mind when I said that some folks would not consider the book light reading. Statistics are necessary, of course, in showing growth and relationships. The Horvaths do a good job of presenting them but they are still numbers. Numbers don’t make for exciting reading but they make for a good reference book and that’s a role Indiana Cars plays quite well.

Indiana Cars sample Once the background is set, the book moves onto the various manufacturers. Not every mark ever built in the state is covered but there are sizable sections on what the Horvaths consider “Significant Automobiles”. The reading isn’t so dry now. There are fairly lengthy articles on the likes of Duesenberg and Studebaker and shorter ones on others. The book is well illustrated with photographs and clippings from period literature. Facts are seasoned with entertaining anecdotes. Joe Cole got his first car running and took off without installing the brakes. Lack of fuel finally stopped it after many laps around Monument Circle in Indianapolis. In 1891, Charley Black’s six-block drive in a Benz included crashing into both a surrey and a shop window. Those were the good old days.

Trucks built in Indiana have a section as do military vehicles. Many of those pioneering Hoosiers who put Indiana near the front of the early automotive development are covered, too. Appendices include listings of all Indiana cars, major milestones, and other items.

Indiana Cars excels as a source of information The book most likely contains the answer to whatever questions you may have about the automotive industry in Indiana. Car nuts will find it entertaining. They and history buffs will find it educational. Those in neither group may find it a wee bit dry.

Indiana Cars: A History of the Automobile in Indiana, Dennis E. Horvath and Terri Horvath, Hoosier Auto Show & Swap Meet Inc. (printed by Jackson Press), 2002, hardback, 8.8 x 11.2 inches, 198 pages, ISBN 978-0964436459
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Route 66 Encyclopedia
Jim Hinckley

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Denny

Route 66 Encyclopedia - cover E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A
I can’t look at this book without hearing Jiminy Cricket singing. I’ve never read an entire encyclopedia (Including this one — yet) but thanks to Pinocchio’s little bitty buddy, I can spell the word.

I’ll confess to being a little leery every time I hear of a new Route 66 book. How many books does one road need? I think I was doubly leery of this ambitious project because, as Jiminy says, an encyclopedia contains “everything from A clear down through Z” and that’s a tall order. Well, Jiminy… I mean Jim seems to have done a pretty good job covering the alphabet and I’ve once again discovered that Route 66 needed at least one more book.

The encyclopedia made a good impression before I ever read a word. It’s a fairly large hardback with full color glossy pages. The book’s first page folds out to present a three panel map of the entire road lined with photos and images from postcards, maps, and brochures. It is well illustrated throughout with modern photographs from Jim and wife Judy and lots of historic images from collectors Joe Sonderman, Steve Rider, and Mike Ward. It looks like Rider, at least, also contributed some modern photos. I probably ought to mention that I personally know all those guys and Jim, too, but I don’t believe I owe any of them money.

As might be expected, the entries are in alphabetical order and the starting page of each letter can be determined from the table of contents. Only ‘X’ is a no-show. ‘Q’ and ‘Z’ get one page each and ‘C’ gets thirty. The rest get something in between. There is a large letter at the outer top corner of each page to further help with locating topics. There is also an index but it is a bit unusual, at least in my experience. Rather than a single alphabetical list, there are sub-lists for people, places (further divided by state), other, and publications. It’s quite usable but it seems like it could get awkward if there were many more divisions or longer lists.

I expected to encounter some new stuff here and I certainly did. The book starts and ends with things I’d not heard of: Missouri’s Abbylee Motel and New Mexico’s Zuzax trading post. There are plenty more in between. Among the many entries that weren’t at all familiar to me are quite a few defunct businesses such as Drumm’s Auto Court in Arizona and the Premiere Motel in New Mexico, several vanished communities including Des Peres, MO, Lela, TX, and Siberia, CA, and at least a few humans. I don’t recall ever hearing of businessman Arthur Nelson and, while it seems like I must have at least read about “father of the good roads movement” Horatio Earle, I sure didn’t recognize the name. On the other hand, a couple searches for folks I did know of came up empty but I believe that, too, is to be expected. It really isn’t possible to include absolutely everything and choices must be made. Every “Best Beatles Songs” list I’ve ever seen has left off at least one of my favs.

Route 66 Encyclopedia - sample 1 This is not my first exposure to Hinckley’s work and, as I’ve said before, the man does his homework. Of course, everybody knows about the Gemini Giant and it’s not too tough to learn that it was made by International Fiberglass. But learning how many cowboys the company made for Phillips Petroleum and how they managed to make some giants with beards and some without and that the company’s founder once set a world record in sailing? That takes some digging. And practically any book with 66 on the cover will tell you how Cyrus Avery was instrumental in getting the pair of sixes for the route after the desired Highway 60 designation was assigned elsewhere. Hinckley does that and also tells us quite a bit about some of his other activities such as his prior role in creation of the Albert Pike Highway and his subsequent role in helping form the U.S. 66 Highway Association. Incidentally, although I have not read every article in the encyclopedia, that is the only mention of the U.S. 66 Highway Association I found. Its post-WWII spark plug, Jack Cutberth, was one of the names I thought I might see in the book but didn’t.

Route 66 Encyclopedia - sample 2 Even without Cutberth, the Route 66 Encyclopedia includes an impressive number and range of articles and many of those articles go into significant depth. The writing isn’t flowery but neither is it terse. It’s lean and efficient. The goal is to get as much factual information between the covers as possible and keep it readable. Hinckley does that rather well. Moreover, I think you’d probably still get your money’s worth if you decided to forgo the text altogether and just look at the pictures.

Encyclopedia Britannica always had yearbooks. (To my surprise, I just learned they still do.) The Route 66 Encyclopedia has updates here. They can also be accessed through a QR code on the back of the book.

The Route 66 Encyclopedia, Jim Hinckley, Voyageur Press, 2012, hardback, 11.1 x 8.7 inches, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0760340417
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Ten Million Steps on Route 6
Joe Hurley & Travis Lindhorst

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Denny

Ten Million Steps - cover “It’s not the destination but the journey.”
“Life begins at the off ramp.”
“Getting there is half the fun.”
Most people who visit this website are probably familiar with those and similar quotes. How about “Friends don’t let friends walk the interstate”?

I and a lot of folk I know preach about taking back roads and slowing down. Joe Hurley took that idea a few million steps further and not only stopped to smell the roses, he saw them get watered and watched them grow if only a smidgen. Starting at the east end of the longest US highway that ever existed, Joe spent about eight months walking its full length. He didn’t really count each step or measure each mile but 10,000,000 of one and 3600 of the other are believable round number estimates. While Joe was walking, Travis Lindhorst, his camera wielding partner, was driving. Joe was within hailing range of sixty and Travis was twenty-seven. Perhaps that saying about wisdom coming with age is not universally true.

This is not a guide book. There are some maps but they are not of a scale suitable for navigation. They’ll show you that US 6 goes through the north part of Indiana and the south part of Nebraska but that’s pretty much the limit of their detail. And Joe does occasionally mention where he slept or ate but the mentions are neither regular nor recommendations. The book resembles a collection of newspaper columns. Some bits that now appear in the book were, in fact, published as stand alone articles during the trip to help finance it but many were composed well after the walk was over.

Hurley retired as a columnist for a Danbury, Connecticut, newspaper shortly before starting his 2004 cross country walk so it is natural that this book is a compilation of column-like articles. As I read Ten Million Steps…, I was reminded of collections I’ve read from another newspaperman, Ernie Pyle. For several years before the start of World War II, Pyle was a popular travel writer. He posted his personal human interest style observations from wherever he happened to be. Joe Hurley’s observations seem a lot like Pyles although they are 70+ years newer and organized in a single line rather than a wild scatter pattern. As presented in this book there is another big difference. Ernie Pyle didn’t have Travis Lindhorst beside him.

Ten Million Steps - sample Sometimes Lindhorst’s photos are coordinated tightly with Hurley’s text and sometimes they just represent the general area. Either way they are always wonderful additions to the story. Some would be right at home in a super-wide hardback coffee table book but then I probably couldn’t afford it. The fairly large format paperback with glossy pages serves the photos well in an affordable package.

Route 6 goes through big cities like Cleveland and Chicago and Hurley neither bypasses them or ignores them in his writing but most of the stories come from the small towns and open spaces in between. He talks with the manager of a bookstore in Yarmouthport, MA, an auctioneer in Foster, RI, and the manager of a tiny theater in Newtown, CT. He stops by the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in New York and a little league game in Pennsylvania. In Galton, PA, he talks with a women who tells him “I spent 16 years scrimping and saving to get out of here then I spent the next 16 years scrimping and saving to get back.” Out west Hurley looks over the remains of Topaz, a WWII Japanese interment camp and walks through a snow storm while covering the all but empty 160 miles between Ely and Tonopah, NV. In between were a lot more towns, a lot more people, and a lot more country. Two locations that Joe counted among his favorites are the Rialto Theater in the not-all-that-small town of Joiet, IL, and Glenwood Canyon in Colorado. Of the latter, Joe says, “I’ve traveled across the United States and nothing has beguiled me more than Glenwood Canyon.”

Joe and Travis and Route 6 and the Geo Metro that Travis used to drop off and pick up Joe each day all made it to California. Only Joe and Travis made it to the coast. In 1964, Route 6 was truncated and Bishop, CA, became its western terminus. Joe and Travis said goodbye to the work-horse Geo when the brakes pretty much vanished during a side trip to Death Valley. To meet their now firm end date, they left the ten year old car with a junkyard mechanic who promised to repair the car and give it to an elderly gal in need of transportation. After the run of its life, the red Geo just might be fetching groceries at the edge of Death Valley.

The current US Highway 6 may officially end just over the California line but the pavement it once followed west is still there and Joe kept right on walking until he reached the Pacific Ocean at Long Beach. West of Bishop, the former US 6 now goes by names like CA 395 and CA 14.

Back on Cape Cod, the traveling odd couple had dipped their hands in the Atlantic. At the end of the Pine Street Pier, they dipped them in the Pacific then Joe and his wife spent a couple of nights on the Queen Mary. I’m guessing that Joe spent a significant amount of his shipboard time with his feet propped up.

Route 6 is a great road. The few sections I’ve driven (MA, PA, UT) have gone through some mighty pretty country and I’m very glad that Hurley chose it for his walk. But I’ll still risk saying that this book could have been written in large degree on several roads other than US 6. Route 6 took Joe across the whole country and gave him a bigger than average sample size but the the book is not about directions and turns. It’s about people and places and steps and stories and it’s a darned good read. More information at route6walk.com.

Ten Million Steps on Route 6, Joe Hurley and Travis Lindhorst, Arkett Publishing, 2012, paperback, 8.5 x 11 inches, 240 pages, ISBN 978-0981678165

Book Review
Stay on Route 6
Malerie Yolen-Cohen

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Denny

Much like the subject highway, my opinion of Stay on Route 6 has gone “coast to coast”. In the end, I settled slightly inland on the positive side.

I was pretty excited when I first learned that an established travel writer had published a book on US 6. My excitement faded as I read the introduction and it was replaced with disappointment after I’d read a few pages of the “guide” portion. I paused then took a look at the blog the author had launched as she prepared for the cross-country trip that would become this book. This somehow allowed me to let go of my preconceptions and accept the book for what it is. It is not a guide to the bypassed twists and turns of a historic highway. It is a guide to food, lodging, and attractions along the current path of a highway with history.

The seeds for recognizing my preconceptions were planted as I read the book’s introduction. That’s where Yolen-Cohen tells readers that Route 6 is not Route 66 and details some of the differences. The need to do this may be irritating but it is a fact. For many people, the only roads they know of are the interstates, some local streets that lead to jobs and shopping, and a mythic Route 66. It is a wonderful thing that Route 66 has the recognition that it does but it sometimes blurs people’s perception of other roadways. I am quite familiar with the phenomenon. I have had several conversations with folks who expected the Lincoln Highway, the National Road, or the Dixie Highway to be just another Route 66 and were disappointed that they are not. It turns out I was guilty of something similar. I don’t believe it was anything in the actual blog that did it but as I read some of the early entries I realized that my disappointment in the book wasn’t very different from that of those travelers. I wasn’t disappointed in the book because it was a bad guide but because it was not like the guides I was familiar with for Route 66 and other historic highways.

So once I got my own expectations adjusted, I found that the book was pretty good at doing what Yolen-Cohen intended. It covers the entire route, offers some casual commentary on the country along the way, and describes most cities and towns it passes through. Sleeping and eating establishments are noted with a distribution that should ensure no one using this guide goes hungry or has to sleep in their car. The emphasis is on locally owned businesses and the owners are typically identified right along with their bistro or B&B. Yolen-Cohen met these people on her 2011 drive so her recommendations have a personal touch. Nearby attractions are also identified and I very much appreciate the effort to visit and describe local museums. I like local museums. Contact information including, where possible, address, phone number, and website, is included for each restaurant, lodging, and attraction.

I can’t swear to there not being other travel guides created as this one was but I don’t know of any. Guides like the ones I mentioned for faded historic routes are typically put together by someone intimately familiar with the road through years of exploration. On the other hand, my impression is that many dining and lodging guides are put together by someone sitting at a desk using a phone and computer to gather recommendations from chambers of commerce and other boosters. Yolen-Cohen certainly did some recommendation gathering but she did it specifically for her trip. She selected and scheduled almost all of her stops before leaving home then colored things in with a single cross country run.

I like that. I like the idea of a single road trip — even one meticulously planned — giving birth to a travel guide. Yolen-Cohen describes this as a lifelong dream. A little innocence even shines through the possibly jaded view of the experienced travel writer. At least it does in the blog. The blog (stayonroute6.blogspot.com) is part of the whole. The book contains some low-resolution maps and some black-and-white photos. The maps help with mentally placing general locations but a traveler is expected to follow the route with posted signs and modern maps. Similarly, the photos help us understand some of what Yolen-Cohen saw on her trip but little more. This is a black-and-white paperback guidebook, not a full-color photo book. It belongs on a car seat, not on a coffee table. But Yolen-Cohen did take color photos and video, too. Both appear on the blog and are worth checking out.

There are few turn-by-turn directions in the book. They are not needed since it is following an active and signed US highway. That is until it isn’t. US 6 was once truly coast-to-coast and ran from the tip of Massachusetts to Long Beach, California. In 1964 the western end was truncated to Bishop, California. Yolen-Cohen carries on, however, and does provide turn-by-turn instructions for following the former US 6 to the coast.

I don’t know of any significant errors in the book but I do know of two insignificant ones. At least they should be insignificant. It’s even possible they would have gone unnoticed if the author hadn’t gone out of her way to draw attention to them. The first one is in the introduction and is partly responsible for me almost giving up on this book early. Calling an “association” a “society” sets the stage for Yolen-Cohen’s joke about the “unfortunately acronym’d ASSHO”. I’m sure this was a legitimate mistake but the fourteen months between the goof’s appearance in the blog and the book’s publication seems ample time to realize that the organization in question is the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO).

The second is when the author berates a Joliet, Illinois, museum that touts US 66 for not also touting US 6. This seems a little off-key since the differences between a historic decommissioned Route 66 and a living breathing Route 6 have been duly stressed. But it turns even more sour with the realization that, despite claims that the museum “occupies the corner of Route 66 and Route 6”. US 6, according to all maps I’ve checked, never gets within half a mile of the museum. A living breathing US 30 does pass by the museum. There isn’t a US 30 section in the museum, either, but a Lincoln Highway (US 30’s predecessor in these parts) display has just been added.

But, even though these errors are quite annoying to me personally, they do not make the book less useful. Anyone looking for a place to eat or sleep anywhere along this long highway can certainly benefit from Stay on Route 6 and the number of museums and other attractions included makes it valuable for sightseeing, too. It’s kind of refreshing to see a guide for a highway that hasn’t been declared dead by someone.

Stay on Route 6, Malerie Yolen-Cohen, CreateSpace, May 2012, paperback, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 257 pages, ISBN 978-1468049398
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Fips, Bots, Doggeries, and More
Tracy Lawson

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Denny

Fips, Bots, Doggeries, and More cover In 1990, Tracy Lawson’s parents gave her a stack of twenty-one photocopied pages as a Christmas present. Transcribed onto the typewritten pages was the journal of her third great-grandfather’s 1838 trip from a Cincinnati suburb to New York City. In 2012, Lawson is sharing those pages and the experiences they triggered, in Fips, Bots, Doggeries, and More. The book is comprised of two sections. “Section I — 1838” contains the journal along with Lawson’s illuminating comments and notes. “Section II — 2003-2009” contains accounts of the author’s own trips along the route. Both sections are liberally illustrated with black and white photos and drawings.

The writer of the 1838 journal was Henry Rogers, who operated a successful mill in Mount Pleasant (now Mount Healthy), Ohio. Traveling with the 32 year old Henry were his wife and her parents. The miller was both literate and observant and he sets out to record “…all interesting subjects and things that come under my observation”. The journal provides a most interesting look at nineteenth century road-tripping. Henry recorded expenses and named names so we know, for example, that the group spent a night at Winchester’s hotel in Jefferson (now West Jefferson), Ohio and paid $2.50 for the privilege. That $2.50 covered bed and board for four people and two horses. Along the way, he records expenses for tolls, horseshoes, wagon tyres, and “face barbering”, etc..

The travelers picked up the National Road in Jefferson, Ohio, and followed it and its extensions to Hagerstown, Maryland. As a fan of the National Road, I enjoyed reading Henry’s descriptions and found his pre-bridge entry to Wheeling, Virginia, which required a ferry over each of the two Ohio River channels at costs of 25 and 37.5 cents, especially interesting. They passed through Brownsville, Pennsylvania, during construction of the first cast iron bridge in the United States. It doesn’t appear as if Henry realized that the bridge that would soon carry the National Road over Dunlap’s Creek was the first of its kind but he described it as “splendid” while being forced to cross on an “..old narrow bridge that looked as though it would scarcely bear its own weight.” At Hagerstown, the group turned northeast and headed toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then through Abbottstown and York to Lancaster. Roadies will recognize the Gettysburg to Lancaster route as the future path of the Lincoln Highway. From Lancaster, they continued northeast to Trenton, New Jersey, where they spent a little time and made a visit to Philadelphia before moving onto New York City.

The 1838 journal is accompanied by sidebars that explain unfamiliar terms or provide background for certain passages. The journal’s text is cross referenced to a set of end notes. A subsection titled “Expansions” contains short dissertations on subjects that were part of Henry Rogers’ world. These include mills, finances, politics, medicine, fashion, and more.

The author made three trips specifically to experience and research the route her great-great-great-grandparents had followed. Two were driving trips with her daughter and one was a solo fly-and-drive outing. These trips are covered in “Section II” with a blend of genealogy, personal discovery, and general history. It’s fun reading that mirrors Henry’s journal in the sense that both are straight forward reports of some relatively unscripted travel. Henry’s journal held my interest more but there is a good chance that this was because his travel was so much different from today’s. Lawson describes some of the places she stayed and ate much as Henry did and there is even an encounter with a less than savory character that is reminiscent of some of the “scoundrels and topers” encountered by Henry. But Ramada and Cracker Barrel don’t have the same zing as names like Sign of the Bear and Cross Keys Tavern.

Lawson does locate and visit several of the places mentioned in the journal including a few, such as Pennsylvania’s 7 Stars Inn, that are still operating. She also picked up some information at libraries and local historical societies though the trips were not as rich in field research as she had hoped. They were more successful, it seems, on a personal level. She was able to familiarize herself with the path her ancestors traveled and the world they lived in. The mother-daughter time was, as the ads say, priceless.

That personal connection won’t be there for most readers of Fips, Bots, Doggeries, and More, but it is still an entertaining and informative look at a road trip back when thirty-one and a half cents fed a family of four and two horsepower was plenty.

There are some minor errors. Perhaps I’m just sensitized to this sort of thing but referring to US 36 as State Route 36 and saying the Madonna of the Trail Monuments were “erected … on US Route 40 and US Route 66” with no mention of the National Old Trails Road bothered me. Aside from increased knowledge of her own ancestors and the world of 1838, it seems Tracy Lawson gained some insight into heritage road trips. In the Epilogue she says “And if I were driving the National Road again, I would eat at all the restaurants that were once taverns Henry mentioned in his journal!” I hope she makes that happen.

Fips, Bots, Doggeries, and More, Tracy Lawson, The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, April 2012, paperback, 9.1 x 7.1 inches, 156 pages, ISBN 978-1935778196
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Oklahoma Route 66
Jim Ross

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Denny

Oklahoma Route 66 cover I like this book so much that I have three copies of it. Well, maybe not three exactly but more than two. I got my first in 2007 in anticipation of an Oklahoma trip. It didn’t take me long to discover that the copy was flawed and it didn’t take much longer for a replacement to be provided. A printing error had caused many pages of that first copy to be omitted, duplicated, or otherwise jumbled. The replacement, with all pages present and in the right place, was quite an improvement. This second edition is also an improvement though not that drastic. With it’s accidental mishmash of pages, that first copy was essentially unusable. Every other copy of first edition Oklahoma Route 66 was eminently usable. The second edition is even more so.

The book’s organization is essentially unchanged from the first edition, Michael Wallis’ “Introduction” has been replaced by a “Foreword” written by Jerry McClannahan and Ross’ own lead in, which was once called a “Foreword”, is now a “Preface”. But, as Shakespeare might say, an introduction by any other name would still introduce and both Jerry and Jim do just that. Jerry helps to establish Jim’s credentials in a fun to read couple of pages then Jim fills in a little of the space between the two editions. He also explains, just as he did in the first edition, that this is literally a book about the road. Roadside attractions and Route 66 personalities are not entirely ignored but they are secondary. The route itself is the book’s focus.

Where did it go and when did it go there?

Jim Ross is really good at digging out answers to that question as well as communicating them. It is in communicating the route’s changing course that this edition’s biggest single change, color, really pays off. As Ross says himself in that preface, it is “…nice for the photos, but especially helpful with the maps.” Photos and other images are used extensively throughout the book. Some are newly acquired and in color though many are the same ones that appeared in the previous edition but now printed in color where applicable.

I don’t believe that any maps have been added to this edition though many have been revised to reflect changes on the ground or better understanding of past alignments. There are, of course, quite a few “past alignments” to be dealt with. In the earlier edition, dealing with them meant annotations on black and white maps. It worked. The information was certainly there and it could be extracted with a little reading and thought but it is so much easier when a green line marks the original alignment and other colors mark later alignments.

The maps appear in a section titled “The Tour”. It follows those introductions and short sections on the road’s history and construction and an explanation of the maps. “The Tour” is the heart of the book and it does indeed serve as a guide for an east to west tour of Historic Route 66 all the way through Oklahoma. Driving instructions are for what Ross calls a “through” route. This means that dead-ended abandoned stretches are not included. They are shown on the maps, however, and described in the text so someone set on finding every possible inch of Sixty-Six can do so. The text also describes the communities along the route and some of the landmarks in between and it usually provides some interesting history on those communities and landmarks including some that no longer exist. The tour is well illustrated with photos and other images and they are not just filler. Ross is as well known as a photographer as he is an historian. His own current photos are mixed with some by others and quite a few historic ones from various archives. “The Tour” of Oklahoma Route 66, even in an armchair, is far from boring.

Oklahoma Route 66 second edition, Jim Ross, Ghost Town Press, October 2011, paperback, 9 x 5.9 inches, 220 pages, ISBN 978-0967748177
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Wabash 1791
John F Winkler

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Denny

Wabash 1791: St Clair's Defeat Back in November, I stopped at Fort Recovery specifically to pick up a copy of Wabash 1791: St Clair’s Defeat and to hear the author speak. There’s a blog entry about that visit here. John Winkler began his talk that day by briefly describing the circumstances that preceded the battle then, while frequently pointing to a projected map of the battlefield, he stepped through November 4, 1791, by locating key figures and events in space and time. He spoke from memory and it was obvious he knew his stuff. The knowledge he demonstrated in that talk fills the pages of Wabash 1791. In fact, the book could be considered a hard copy version of that talk — with a few thousand-fold increase in detail.

Winkler begins the book, as he did that presentation, by talking of things that led to the battle only here he is not quite so brief. The world at the end of the eighteenth century can be pretty tough for modern-day readers to imagine. When the Battle of the Wabash took place, the United States constitution was barely three years old and our very first president was only halfway through his first term. The Ohio River was the nation’s border. England was still very much a military presence in North America and would officially be at war with the US in another twenty years. In 1791, there were plenty who thought England just might be picking up the pieces of her old colonies once the US collapsed.

After Winkler describes what he calls “The Strategic Situation”, he moves on to describe the opposing forces. The leaders of the two armies were certainly different but all were among the best of their time. St Clair, Butler, and Darke are just a few of the proven officers leading the Americans. On the Indian side, an equally qualified group of leaders surrounded chiefs such as Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and Buckongahelas and the hated renegade Simon Girty. Also present were some out-of-uniform British officers. At the level of individual combatants, however, different meant unequal.

Recruiting had not gone well and continuing supply problems made it worse. Delays in supplies resulted in expiring enlistments and lack of supplies hampered training. In a sad “For want of a nail the shoe was lost…” style example, a shortage of paper led to a shortage of musket cartridges for training and target practice. As hard as it is to believe, some new recruits marched out of Camp Washington without ever having fired their guns. By contrast, fighting was part of every Indian’s life. Winkler quotes an officer who wrote, “…war is their principal study, in this they have arrived at considerable perfection.”

I hesitate to use the word “scholarly” but it really is appropriate for portions of the book. In particular, some of this early background information reads like a textbook and can be rather dry going. But there’s lots of good information being conveyed and the payoff occurs when the battle begins. Winkler can report the action without the need to repeatedly explain why one side did this and the other that. And report the action he does and it is brutal. Though the two armies were roughly equal in size, approximately 1700 soldiers and militia versus 1400 Indians, most of the experience and all of the surprise was with the Indians.

Two types of illustrations augment Winkler’s battle descriptions. Color-coded diagrams show three stages of the battle and artist Peter Dennis has produced three “snapshots” to help visualize the scene. The one used for the cover shows Captain Henry Carberry shouting at the demoralized soldiers to charge the encircling Indians simply in order to escape. Numerous photographs and drawings illustrate other sections of the book.

More US soldiers died that day than in any battle prior to the Civil War. This battle was the greatest victory American Indians ever achieved over US forces. The loss nearly eliminated all United States military capabilities and had the potential for destroying the young nation. In fact, a proposed investigation into supply chain corruption was abandoned to avoid that very risk. With the passage of time, this clearly significant battle has been largely forgotten by non-historians. How much success Winkler’s book has in reviving the memory is yet to be seen but it seems to contain all of the details needed for filling in the blanks.

Wabash 1791: St Clair’s Defeat, John F Winkler, Osprey Publishing, November 2011, paperback, 9.6 x 7.1 inches, 96 pages, ISBN 978-1849086769
Available through Amazon.

I’ve seen other accounts of St Clair’s Defeat. Allen Eckert’s fairly short one in That Dark and Bloody River is a pretty easy read. Eckert writes in the style of a novel with the factual base of a text book. In my youth, as I was first learning of the battle that occurred just about fifteen miles from where I grew up, I formed the impression that St Clair was a bumbling idiot and was almost single-handedly responsible for the disaster. As I learned more about the supply and equipment problems, my view softened. Eckert blames St Clair for not aborting the campaign in light of the huge recruiting and supply issues but little else. Winkler hardly blames him even for that. That could just be the result of Winkler’s even-handed reporting where he presents facts and holds back opinions.

As I read Wabash 1791 with the internet at my fingertips, I learned of a 1896 Harper’s Magazine article on the subject written by Theodore Roosevelt. This was just over a hundred years after the battle. A slightly edited version was included in volume 5 of Roosevelt’s Winning of the West published in 1905. Roosevelt doesn’t think much of St Clair and describes him as possessing “none of the qualities of leadership save courage.” Perhaps he was a bumbling idiot after all. ‘Tis a puzzlement.

Thumbnails of scans of the Roosevelt article appear in the archives section of the Harper’s website. Accessing full-sized readable copies requires a subscription. However, there is another section of the website, apparently sponsored by Balvenie Scotch whiskey, which contains articles written by folks such as Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and… Theodore Roosevelt. Maybe they’re all Balvenie drinkers. The 1896 Roosevelt article is available there. A far-from-full bottle of The Balvenie sits in my liquor cabinet and I poured myself a wee dram to drink a toast in thanks for the article. You can read the article here but you’ll have to supply your own whiskey.

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