crippled and partially paralyzed, a far cry from the travel brochure health
established at the GO square in Santa Monica, the ruse extending from the
palm trees of Foothill Blvd., to the scrub and rocks of the California desert,
that’s desert as in deserted we learn

now shoots traffic through the split of the San Bernardino and San
Gabriel mountains, it sets you down to a sign at the foot of a random offramp that
reads "Historic Route 66,"

parallels its youthful descendant, but not keeping up, strapped down with its
baggage from the past, rusted rotting car hulks, abandoned blind eyed houses, a
fossilized hotel, quiet and carless on two lanes, she’s become a 2,000-mile
museum, opening in fits and starts, then bedded down at the on-ramp of her
youthful competitor, only to be aroused miles down the road, wild scrub hair,
rag around her head, made up again and again, limping off-ramp to on-ramp

nothing more than sunbathing skeletons, little to sell, just a
place to piss, just enough movement to slow an occasional truck or mobile
home. Like the uncomprehending stare of a sunning lizard, Route 66
looks a mile south to the problem, Interstate 40 like a vampire, sucking the tourists
by at 75-mph, too busy for indian relics and cactus candy, the new kid in
town’s Golden Arches cast giant shadows over the old roadway, Rush
Limbaugh has drowned out Wolfman Jack,

This death knell echoes to the center of Arizona, reverberations stopping in the northern

mountains, oh Oatman shows a pulse with burros and old old Olds’ in a wooden
town without sidewalks, Flagstaff hasn’t fallen into the Grand Canyon, but
standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona is ringside at an execution, the Tonto
drive-in’s speakers have been replaced by tumbleweeds, $16 pebble driveway
nights in an empty motel, the first Whiting Bros. pump is seen, dispensing dust
out the nozzle,

dinosaur life a million years keeps the tepees from collapsing, Holbrook straightens
its string tie, laughter emitting from Big-Hearted Roy’s Auto Sales and Cheap-O
Care, lightens the mood back onto the 40 into Taco Bell, Holiday Inn, Love’s
Travel Center hollow,

flattopped mesas strung north of the 40, a Stuckey’s is found alive 187 miles north
of Tucumcari, a good sign, Bowlin’s Flyin’ C Ranch, Mother’s face begins to
brighten in the windshield, personality reviving in a hundred curious curio shops, a
giant missile-silo crucifix in Groom, Texas beacons vulnerability and hypocrisy, its
Mt. Golgotha re-creation shows the three crosses with their backs turned to 66,

Like the pages of a daily reminder fanning back and feigning movement, towns and

lives fall back as we move to the Mississippi, the Pulse Bros. junkyard and Ireland
Days in Shamrock, Texas, Patti Page Blvd. in Claremore, Okla., Marshfield,
Missouri banners a Hubbel telescope replica, momentum and queasy optimism
chug like a locomotive through a western movie set, cardboard cutout sundown
shoots a final dull glare at us and the villagers under the Arch, around the river,

Normalcy returns, American freedumb hits us like a shotgun blast, "Drug Checkpoint

Ahead, Drug Dogs in use," official Gateway welcome, so what else is new as we
approach downtown, and rolling hill suburbs

How’d she look? Any sand left in that hour glass figure? Was it worth the dearth?

rescued in earthquake rubble, she still knows the exits and follows the arrow, the
trail now as spotty as Morse code through abandoned phone wire, but discernible to
the experienced eye, sadly directional.

Question mark looms overhead, How do the people, how does Route 66 survive?

tightness and dryness in the throat, "That’s the Way of the World," booming from
the driveway next door, rhythmic cliche for my getting to see the Cycle up close
and personal

Thoughts from a tired artifact, porched in St. Louis above a green lawn, beer in hand.