Friday, May 31, 2013

Route 66 - part eleven



This is Oklahoma City’s Union Bus Station in the Thirties. 

Worse for wear, but surprisingly still in use, here it is today.


So many bus terminals are now architecturally dismal, lacking the flair and optimism of the Thirties. They are minimally maintained for the transient poor, hopeful students and odd Canadians.

Onto the interstate and out of town.



To the west of Oklahoma City, old Route 66 runs next to the I-40 or, more properly, the upstart I-40 runs next to what remains of Route 66.


Clinton is said to have one of the best Route 66 museums. It’s just luck that, when I arrive, a Corvette with a couple from Rhode Island is out front. 


'Route 66’ - as mentioned in this series' first posting - centered on two guys and a Corvette.  Nowadays something of a cult, the TV show never had particularly high audience figures. In the third season, its best year, it only reached 27th place in the Nielsen ratings. The next season would be the last. That hasn’t stopped Corvettes, generally driven by irritatingly affluent retirees, becoming a regular sight along the old road.

The museum is a satisfying evocation of all those things that either I was too young to enjoy or just too Canadian.


Across Route 66 from the museum is the Tradewinds Inn where Elvis stayed at least four times while travelling from Memphis to the west coast. His room supposedly has much of the same furniture. 



TripAdvisor ranks it at #7 of 7 hotels in Clinton. The reviews are fascinating, as in the owner ‘should feel lucky ANYONE would spend the night in this dump.’

Into the Texas Panhandle and Shamrock. It has a restored gas station and simply glorious art deco U Drop Inn (‘Steaks and Coffee Our Specialty’ in the old days).




In the tumbleweed town of McLean, I spot another Route 66 Corvette and something else. Just to the right, admittedly a reproduction, but a Burma Shave sign. 


Burma Shave signs - hundreds - were once an effective advertising gimmick for shaving cream. Signs were spaced so passing motorists could easily read the corny verses with the punchline. 

CATTLE CROSSING
  PLEASE DRIVE SLOW
THAT OLD BULL
IS SOME COW'S BEAU
BURMA SHAVE

SHE PUT A BULLET
THRU HIS HAT
BUT HE'S HAD CLOSER
SHAVES THAN THAT
BURMA SHAVE

WITHIN THIS VALE
OF TOIL
AND SIN
YOUR HEAD GROWS BOLD
BUT NOT YOUR CHIN - USE
BURMA SHAVE







The Rattlesnakes sign in the background advertised a long defunct reptile display.

A more modern use of roadside marketing near Amarillo. 


I’ve been collecting billboards and signs:

'Do some time' - Old Missouri Penitentiary tours

Bowling and Cocktails

Simple Cremation $795 Complete

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul

(Later: I wondered if the last was a billboard sponsored by the ‘Tea Party.’ It may have been, but the quote is George Bernard Shaw’s)

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Route 66 - part ten



Later, wandering around Oklahoma’s splendid capitol, I come across a painting.


‘A Storm Passing’ portrays what, after all, is as much part of Oklahoma as oil. I wonder if there are paintings of hurricanes in Louisiana’s capitol?

As we’re talking about oil, glancing out a window, I see this.


I hurry out to the parking lot for a better view.


 I’m told it no longer pumps, but there are operating derricks nearby.


I’ve long wanted to attend a minor league game in the States, not so much for the game as the atmosphere. Finally manage it in Oklahoma City’s comfortable little stadium.


The Oklahoma Redhawks are the Houston Astros Triple-A affiliate. Players so close you can easily hear their banter and slap of the ball in a mitt.


The Redhawks mascot is Ruby as in ‘ruby red’. According to her ‘biography,’ her favourite cartoon character is Tweety Bird. Aw!


Not a huge crowd, but enthusiastic.


Hot dog, a Mustang Pale Ale and the home team wins. Satisfaction.

By the way, must mention that, as I walked up to the ticket office, a kind man offered spares. Retract all my rude comments about bible bashers.

Route 66 - part nine



Only two months since the Boston Marathon explosions, I visit Oklahoma City’s Memorial. It commemorates 168 victims of the 1995 bombing. The statement above was written by one of the recovery teams.


Smaller chairs indicate nineteen children who died. If you click on the picture, you can see names.


Appropriately sombre, but quite beautiful.

Route 66 - part eight



In 1952, Route 66 - the picture above is on the interstate in eastern Oklahoma - was dedicated as the ‘Will Rogers Highway.’ Why am I writing this on a bus on the I-44? Because Will Rogers was from Oklahoma.

Confess to meeting plenty of people I don’t like, but I’m intolerant and generally difficult. In Claremore, a museum is devoted to the famous humourist who once said, ‘I never met a man I didn’t like.’ Rogers was part Indian, a cowboy, movie and Broadway star, writer, speaker, comedian, and, in the Thirties, world figure. He’s buried here.


I admit - particularly here in the Bible Belt - to being taken with a Rogers’ quote on one of the museum’s walls: ‘There's no argument that carries the hatred a religious belief does'. It makes me see Rogers in a new light. He was a Methodist, but not a regular churchgoer.


Just down the road is another of Route 66’s restored delights.

The Blue Whale - you perhaps can see some girls fishing near his tail - is on a quiet roadside pond. He became a little shabby, but’s now looking much more presentable.

Couldn’t resist.


The bus passes Tulsa. Boring from the highway, so no pictures. 

‘Twenty-four hours from Tulsa’ was a Burt Bacharach, Hal David hit for Gene Pitney. ‘I was only 24 hours from Tulsa … only one day away from your arms.’ 

Pitney’s death in 2006 led to an amusing exchange of opinions in the Guardian concerning exactly how far twenty-four hours from Tulsa would be. I thought the best answer came from the UK:

‘Since the song talks about what he got up to at a motel, let's assume Gene was driving. If he didn't take any breaks and he kept up an average 45mph, here are some major places he could have been in: Las Vegas; Jacksonville; Chicago; Winnipeg; Salt Lake City (though I don't know how much dancing in restaurants would be allowed in the latter).’ 


Am greeted in Oklahoma City by a violent thunderstorm.




Last week, a tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb killed twenty-four.

Have dinner with a ‘tornado watch in effect’ and ‘severe weather danger’ warnings for tomorrow.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Route 66 - part seven



Miami, Oklahoma, is pronounced my-am-uh and named after an Indian tribe. It is, as you can plainly see, a Christian, with a capital ‘C,’ community.


Of more interest is Miami’s stunning Coleman Theatre. As an aside, in a country that usually spells ‘theatre’ as ‘theater,’ I’ve found a lot of theatres that actually do claim to be theatres. Perhaps to seem posher. In the same building, you can also see there's a visitors' center, not centre.

The 1929 showplace is Spanish Mission Revival with a Louis XV interior (don’t ask, I didn’t design it). Will Rogers (of whom more later) appeared here. It fell into disuse, but, credit to a small town with umpteen churches to support, was restored. 



Along with the more general revival of Route 66, the theatre’s original Wurlitzer, which had ended up in Texas organ collection, was bought and reinstalled in the 1990s.


The Coleman Theatre restoration leads to some thoughts: Route 66 is consummately American in that the government declared it dead, but average people said, ‘to hell with government’ and brought it back to life.

In April, Mark Mardell, a BBC commentator I much admire, said, ‘There will be many Americans who agree that their country has an endless appetite to pick itself up, dust itself down and reinvent itself.’
____________________

Oklahoma is the place to briefly discuss dust storms, ‘Okies’ and John Steinbeck’s ‘Mother Road,’ the name by which Route 66 is arguably best known.

‘The Mother Road’ was really ‘the mother road’ - uncapitalized - in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath: ‘66 is the mother road, the road of flight.’ Steinbeck was describing the exodus of impoverished Okies motoring to California in the calamitous mid-Thirties.


The dustbowl was caused by drought and poor farming techniques. Soil clouds could be a mile high and hundreds of miles in extent. Until researching Route 66, I’d never heard of a sometimes fatal illness called ‘dust pneumonia.’

‘My son, You got that dust pneumony an' you ain't got long, not long.’ (Dust Pneumonia Blues words and music by Woody Guthrie)

However, as Mardell suggests, the Okies, Oklahoma and the country did dust themselves down and reinvent themselves.

Route 66 - part six


Through Missouri and into Kansas.


One of Route 66’s, indeed, America’s, most famous attractions is Meramec Caverns, a splendid example of highway hucksterism. 


Signs for the caves were - and still are - on scores of roadside billboards and barn roofs. The caverns also claim to be where the first bumper (fender) signs (tied, not stuck, on bumpers) originated in the Thirties. Until they fell off, the free bumper signs promoted the caverns across the United States and, no doubt, into Canada.

This one - a sticker - is probably from the Sixties or Seventies.




The caverns were Jesse James’ hideout and reasonably impressive. Not easy to take decent pictures with a little point-and-shoot in caves 70 feet (21 metres) high.


There’s a light show while Kate Smith (a recording - she’s dead) sings ‘God Bless America.’ It climaxes with the U.S. flag projected on stalagmites or stalactites, well, rock. Sorry, missed the flag, but, you saw one in the Memorial Day parade. 

By the way, those bumper stickers? I wander around the parking lot looking.


In a bumper sticker loving country (‘I support motherhood/our troops/frozen custard,’ ‘Impeach X, Y or Z’) not one. Turns out you now have to buy them. $1.99, thank you very much and have a nice day. And you can hardly read it.


Quick stop at a traditional diner by the side of I-44. In the Thirties, they were mass-produced and a familiar sight. Even updated, I love ‘em.



On a strict schedule, I must pass on the Route 66 Vacuum Museum in St. James. Having just bought a new vacuum to replace my ancient Hoover, I’m quite interested in vacuums. 


The brochure somewhat defensively states, ‘… as long as there are vacuum cleaners, there will be people who are curious, interested and, yes, even love vacuums.’ The museum houses 588 of them. 

Through the Ozarks and past Joplin, Missouri, where once Koronado Courts, featuring homey cottages with attached garages, welcomed tired motorists.


This is 'tornado alley.' Last week, Joplin marked two years since a tornado killed 161 people. Notice a few piles of downed trees still to be carted away.

Route 66 does a quick, thirteen mile jog through Kansas, bringing me to the little town of Baxter Springs.


Which reminds me that, until now, I never knew the name for Phillips 66 gas came from Route 66. Near today’s service station is a delightful ‘cottage style’ station, now the town visitors’ centre.



I make three Baxter Springs discoveries. 

a) In 1876, Jesse James robbed a town bank. 

b) A teenage Mickey Mantle was on a local baseball team called the ‘Whiz Kids’ in the 1940s. Soon, he was a step or two up with the New York Yankees. 

c) Baxter Springs, with 4,200 residents, has 16 well attended churches. Not only is this ‘tornado alley,’ it’s also the ‘bible belt.’ No Episcopal churches. A wobbly Anglican, I might have difficulties here.