The Parallel Lives

On November 11, 1926, one hundred years ago next week, officials opened U. S. Highway 66, the highway that connected Chicago to Los Angeles; the Midwest and the Great Lakes to sunshine, to beaches, to the Pacific Ocean, to the Santa Monica Pier.

Its distance: 2448 miles, across two-thirds of the North American continent. It first headed south out of Chicago, crossed Illinois, Missouri, a corner of Kansas, before turning due west and crossing Oklahoma, upper Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California.

Officials for the Bureau of Public Roads advertised Route 66, as “the shortest, best, and most scenic route from Chicago through St. Louis to Los Angeles.” Indeed, it patched together an existing set of local, state, and national roads, though only about 800 miles were paved in 1926.

Fifty-eight years and four months later, on June 26, 1985, federal officials decommissioned Route 66, because the Interstate Highway system, with four lanes, had supplanted Route 66.

In the eighteenth-century, oxen pulled Conestoga wagons or prairie schooners, and stage coaches along a series of trails: the Oregon, the California, the Santa Fe, the Overland.

After the Central Pacific met the Union Pacific at Promontory Point, in Utah, on May 10, 1869, the Conestoga wagon and stage coaches were phased out. With the arrival of the automobile, early in the twentieth century, travel by train, diminished.

Each improvement in transportation replaced what came before.

During that more than half a century of use, Route 66 inserted itself into popular culture.

In 1939, the California writer John Steinbeck wrote a masterpiece about a family, the Joad’s, who lost their home and land during the Drought and the Great Depression in Oklahoma and traveled by converted Hudson on what Steinbeck called “the Mother road,” to California.

For the Joad’s and thousands of others who were depressed and desperate, it was “the road of flight, a way to escape the deadly fate of drought, hunger, and joblessness.”

Yet, when the Joad’s arrived in California, they were oppressed and exploited, poorly paid victims of the land owners, who cut their laborers’ wages in half one day.

Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1940, and the movie director John Ford converted the book into a movie that starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Ford won the Academy Award for best director that same year.

In 1946, Nat King Cole sang, “If you ever plan to motor west, travel my way, take the highway that is best, get your kicks on Route 66. Now you go through St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri, and Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty.”

On October 7, 1960, a black and white television show appeared on CBS, entitled, “Route 66.” After 116 episodes, over four years, it went off the evening line up on March 20, 1964.

Two characters were mainstays for each episode: Ted Stiles, played by Martin Milner, and Buz Murdoch, played by George Maharis.During the fourth season, George Maharis bowed out due to health issues, and Glenn Corbett replaced him, playing the part of Linc Case.

The two guys sported short haircuts, shirts, and ties. This was before the days of long hair. The two also drove a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette convertible in each episode.

What is odd is that not all of the locations the two guys visited were on Route 66.

U.S. Highway 66, or Route 66, turns 100 years old next week. It served its purpose then, to allow people a chance to escape to a better life, even though that was not a sure thing. “Get your kicks on Route 66.”