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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just before Labor Day weekend of 1972, my best
pal and I made a trek to Tulsa, Okla., for Don Garlits' now legendary
PRA National Challenge. The race was the plum, but the trip over Route
66 proved to be almost as memorable. The nutty sideshow that paralleled
the highway really riveted our attention. In 2000, Jeff Burk persuaded
me to leave California for St. Louis and like 28 years ago, we went
via Route 66. The difference between recalled and contemporary reality
was shocking for both of us. Below are my comparative recollections
of both trips. For some demented reason, I decided to write, or attempt
to write, a poem about this. This is my first and unless, I completely
misunderstand my readers, it will be my last. There are a few literary
allusions, "Nebraska" is a Bruce Springsteen LP and "Burroughs" is
fabled St. Louis novelist, William S. Burroughs. Check it out and
pleasse don't hold it against me.
I
| Despite the dizziness from the interim 28 years of living and
existing, this hot memory with |
building speed always revives and stands up for me like a Route
66 sign awaiting
an oncoming car. THEN the target was Tulsa, we were poised in
North Hollywood, a ‘57 Ford Ranchero in the starting blocks,
stacked to the lid, for a run
down the mother of all roads, America’s Main Street in 1972
|
| A year of hippie abundance, barber shop doors quietly shut for
the final time, as we |
headed for 66 in a cloud of pot smoke which filtered a chorus
of chopping
blades and popping pull-tabs, reckless, long-haired, slouched
in war surplus,
|
| the magnetic pull of pool hall handles like "Big Daddy,"
"the Golden Greek," |
"the Snake, "the Mongoose," and "the Israeli
Rocket," smoke to life in rural
Oklahoma amidst snake and alligator farms, dime novel horse-shoe
court motels,
fields and cattle stopped by the highway, barbed wire fencing
and Burma
Shave.
|
II
|
Now three decades later, a Route 66 dream pops momentarily into
drive, Tod & Buz’s ‘58
|
Corvette revving toward the good life, Bobby Troup getting
his kicks on something
other than Julie London, grinning chrome-grilled convertibles
vacuuming up the
miles in a landscape of fresh WWII victory colors, guys with
Superman hair
and golden girlfriends waving from a postcard backdrop of Whiting
Bros. gas
stops, Sinclair’s Dinosaurs, and Stuckey’s pecan logs, cartoon
billboards
flagging us down with indian pottery, petrified wood, sandpaintings,
kachina
dolls, and meteorites. A gaggle of used car dealers are willing
to tote the note.
|
| A southwestern soundtrack hums with the sleek wash of string
and brass, sled smooth |
accoutrement for the accelerator that surges us through hillbilly
heaven, 1800
miles of swap meet consciousnessearly sunny morning life blossoms
in
Holbrook, Arizona as hoses spray the sidewalks, rinsing off
Saturday night into a
curb side stream, a lazy cigarette butt gliding along for the
ride, a new day
greeted with the bright gloss of wet concrete.
|
| Then inside the steamed Ford’s innards, lightly browned thumb
and fingers grip the |
ribbed wheel, laughing, overly loud conversation punctuated
by coke sniffles and
jacketed arms wiping the windows. "God almighty, we were
driving blind," and
then hacking hilariously at the irony. Light dandruff snowflakes
freckle Cline’s Corners, New Mexico and we wheel into a scene
like the Nebraska LP cover, looking from that summit past a
hundred flat miles to another jagged horizon
whose other side is unseen. A straight shot into tomorrow, optimistic
future lies dead ahead.
|
III
|
Jaundiced, brittle race papers are all that holds that past in
place now. That and nine-to-five-
|
bruised and boozed memory. Don Moody, "The Mongoose,"
"‘Da Grump,"
appear through the haze with tired grins and wooden poses with
checks in hand for
35 grand. Mini-skirted trophy queens, Garlits, and starch-collared
Navy personnel
fill in the winners circle gap between them, the anchor clankers
mustering every bit
of strength to mold facial sinew into a smile.
|
| North Hollywood had no time then for pictures, no time to stop,
hot to trot out of the |
lot, gas n’ go, four on the ‘flow, slashing through rain, turning
up the volume,
electric guitar alarm clock, tossing empties into the inky Texas
Panhandle
midnight, speed now with determined resolve, no looking back
to say
goodbye, gotta work on Wednesday, allow a day for a hangover,
our Route
66 dreams dropping pounds at 80 mph.
|
| 2000 makes it all seem like 2000 years ago. This February the
mouse’s hands stopped and |
the signpost up ahead said, "Leave California." Large
Motorsport Editor and I
would rerun Route 66, me leaving a stack of unpaid bills, final
notices, and
indigestion on the doorstep of a rent-a-shack in Encino, my
precious artifacts
shoe-horned into a rental truck a week before we put our Taurus
under a million
points of light, hunting for the past, illuminating the present,
bound for
St. Louis.
|
| So bad I hope to say, "Bud, it hasn’t changed a bit,"
looking foward with vapor clarity, |
there’s got to be more to indian life than casinos. Alligator
head ashtrays, the Dew-
Drop Inn, salt water taffy in the middle of the desert, a beer-drinking
cow
into a tavern in a canyon every day at 2 in Glenrio, Texas,
then out
the swinging doors past a purple, polished Packard glinting
in the sun,
the swan on the hood poised for flight over a wigwam motel,
you just don’t see shit
like that anymore,
but
|
| when the vapor bubble pops, will it reveal an Arizona Highways
backdrop littered with |
shards of a losing collision with the future, shards of existence
in the wake of the
corporate chainsaw. You know that stuff happens, rust will out,
age accumulating
to erosion, a lot like time-sanded mountains, empty caves, to
paraphrase
Burroughs, like pockmarks in boiling oatmeal.
Lamenting the latter to the letter.
|
New Interstate 15 parallels old Route 66
through the El Cajon Pass.
|
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