Route 66 Lives On, Only Now It’s Memory Lane

Even before the wheel there were tracks that begat highways that became arteries of human movement for all purposes. From strategic access and metropolitan evacuations to diaper deliveries.

The Appian Way. Paved before Christ and the conduit of Roman legions headed for Brindisi.

The Burma Road. World War II’s backdoor to China, and a 1,000-mile supply line that praised the Lord, passed the ammunition, climbed mountains and crossed jungles until the enemy was defeated.

The San Diego Freeway. Asphalt atherosclerosis and boulevard of a million curses that could bring blasphemy to the lips of a bishop.

And Route 66, a 2,448-mile reach from Chicago to Los Angeles, from 1926 until the last marker shield of its final yardage clattered down in 1984. A transcontinental diagonal that in life was an ordeal that often killed but was also a lifeline aiding and betting on America’s flight west through depressed times and wartimes. Route 66 meant new hopes, new homes and third chances.

Now, like Tombstone, Ariz., Route 66 represents a place and an era too tough to die, its harshness and privations forgotten because authors and balladeers prefer the romance and adventure of meandering, not its perils.

Besides, claim preservationists of John Steinbeck’s mother road that grew “The Grapes of Wrath,” you can’t kill America. Nor should our nation be in a hurry to forget those supposedly softer years when people gave everyone the time of day and you didn’t need a key to get into a service station washroom.

Contemporary saviors of Route 66 include those who rode it, those who wished they had, tourists by the millions, thousands who still live alongside it, museums that immortalize it and the House Resources Committee that last month approved legislation to provide $10 million to preserve its old diners and motor courts and Angel Delgadillo’s barbershop in Seligman, Ariz. Angel’s, revolving barber pole and all, remains a shrine to the $6 haircut, straight-razor shaves and a scalp massage with Pinaud Eau de Quinine hair tonic.

Delgadillo, 72, is semiretired. But he’ll still shave and cut the hair of anyone making the pilgrimage and pausing in Seligman to meet with one of Route 66’s principals: the barbershop and the barber.

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Of the highway’s original miles, almost 2,000 survive as frontage roads, business loops and redesignated local highways. Locally, there are, or were until recently, dozens of visible curiosities of Route 66.

The Belle-vue Restaurant once stood at Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Trader Vic’s in Beverly Hills and the defunct Wilson’s House of Suede & Leather on Santa Monica. Barney’s Beanery, the Eastman Kodak Building and the Formosa Cafe near a branch of Warner Bros.

The longest continuous remaining stretch of Route 66 is a 157-mile arc through northwest Arizona, from Topock on the Colorado River through gold mine country to Kingman, Hackberry, Peach Springs and dusty little Seligman. It is raw and beautifully restored, and most wisely decreed an Arizona historical monument.

Across California, Route 66 stretched 320 miles, from the Santa Monica Pier to Needles. Much now lies broken, buried or bypassed by the Pasadena Freeway, Interstate 40 from Needles and Interstate 15 from Barstow to San Bernardino. But like Los Angeles, the state remains rich in Route 66 lore and remnants.

Off Swarthout Canyon Road, off the divided highway through Cajon Pass, there’s a row of boulders and obviously cultivated spaces. This was a federal campsite in the ‘30s that shielded Okie migrants--such as Steinbeck’s gallant and fictional Joad family--from angry Californians trying to beat back the new arrivals, literally, and slashing tires off their Model Ts.

At Victorville, service stations stand rotted to their girders with rusted pumps showing gas prices of 23 cents a gallon. The main street through Oro Grande is a lonely lineup of long-dead stores. And a junkyard at Essex is stuffed with carcasses, some cars dating to the ‘20s that limped their last miles on Route 66 and rolled no farther.

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Endless information routes exist for starting new odysseys or remembering old journeys along America’s Main Street.

“The Route 66 Traveler’s Guide and Roadside Companion,” by Tom Snyder (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), addicted roadie and recovering psychologist, is the primary printed reference available from bookstores and Route 66 societies. It is in its third printing and in deference to the route’s global clientele has been translated into several languages.

The National Historic Route 66 Federation (P.O. Box 423, Tujunga, CA 91043) has its own Internet site: https://www.national66.com. So does the California Historic Route 66 Assn.: https://www.wemweb.com/chr66a/index.html. For maps showing what still exists of the length of Route 66, send $17.95 to Ghost Town Press, 13100 E. Old Highway 66, Arcadia, OK 73007.

And should you be in their neighborhoods, there are Route 66 museums in Victorville; Clinton, Okla.; and Williams and Hackberry, both in Arizona. Most sell the words and music of the late Bobby Troup, who in 1946 got his kicks on Route 66 and wrote its anthem. Two generations of musicians, from Nat King Cole to the Rolling Stones and Van Morrison, have since sung of going through Saint Looey and Joplin, Missouri. And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty.

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I have twice driven Route 66. Once for real, grinding from Chicago to the West Coast in 1963, with all my worldlies and a cat crammed into a Volvo B-18. The other was in 1992, to remember when and research what remains. Driving, of course, a daffodil-yellow Corvette, the only car that fit the replay because it followed in the tire tracks of Corvette pilgrims Tod and Buz, those two drifters of television’s “Route 66.”

Again, so much is not there.

Red’s Giant Hamburg--the sign painter ran out of room for the ers--in Springfield, Mo., where condiments included chili powder in Copenhagen tins. Gone. Two towns, Bagdad and Siberia, Calif. Disappeared. The Roller Rink Restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga. Demolished. Arkey’s Barbecue in Fontana. An adult bookstore.

Yet so much clings on.

You can still eat buffalo burgers in Newberry Springs at the Bagdad Cafe, although that wasn’t the original name, just a title that stuck when the 1988 cult movie of the same name was filmed there. Arizona’s Oatman Hotel has survived, and for a donation you can see the scruffy room where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their 1939 honeymoon. Stucco tepees with un-native air conditioning are still available at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Ariz.

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And it seems there will always be Angel Delgadillo and his barbershop. He was born yards from Route 66 when it was dirt in summer, mud in winter. He has seen the road filled by Dust Bowl refugees and young soldiers, railroaders and the big bands that hired his two brothers.

Then it all stopped. Something essential died. Littletown USA was stilled. Delgadillo says it was just like the day John F. Kennedy was killed.

“Seligman was bypassed by Interstate 40 on Sept. 22, 1978, at 3 p.m. in the afternoon,” he remembers. “About 75% of the economy disappeared. We lost four filling stations, two motels, two restaurants. I was angry, disillusioned, sad. I stayed disgusted for years.”

Then it all came back. Tourists returned to Route 66 and Seligman. They had questions about the road. They wanted to hear Delgadillo’s memories, sit in the barber chair his father bought for $75 in 1926, see his photographs, forage his gift shop of Route 66 T-shirts, Route 66 bumper stickers and shards of asphalt in plastic bags for anyone who might want to own a piece of the road.

“They [tourists] were looking for America,” he says. “I decided then that if we could preserve Route 66 and promote its history, we could preserve Seligman and other bypassed towns.”

He founded the Historic Route 66 Assn. of Arizona and became guru and keeper of the route. Two years ago Delgadillo wanted to retire, but the tourist traffic wouldn’t let him. Souvenir sales are up 25% a year, visitors increase 15% a year, and Delgadillo is keeping count of his major media interviews. Two hundred to date.

He easily recognizes the lure of Route 66.

It has to do with days when any traveler could stop and ask for a glass of water without buying gas. A piece of homemade apple pie was usually a quarter of the pie. Hot? Sit on Delgadillo’s porch and have a 10-cent root beer from the icebox while your car cooled off.

Delgadillo’s gospel: “That’s what was lost when Route 66 went away. That’s why people are coming back. To find out what it’s like to be treated right.”

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Times automotive writer Paul Dean can be reached at [email protected].