Bob Waldmire lives on the same street as his late father Ed's old
hotdog stand. Heading southwest, you'll find Bob's place, like Ed's Cozy
Dog, over to your right as you pull your car off the main drag. Just
down the road a piece - another 1,888 miles or so.
 Bob lives smack dab on Route 66. The one that winds from Chicago to Los
Angeles. The Mother Road. America's Main Street. The road that boasts
the once razed Cozy Dog, now reincarnated astride its original site in
Springfield, Illinois. A delightfully goofy sign transplanted from the
old locale adorns the new building.
 Way out west in Hackberry, Arizona, in front of Bob's
memorabilia-stuffed ex-filling station, the sign reads Old 66 Visitor
Center. Beyond unfolds an expanse of barren desert. Vegetarian Bob
serves no hotdogs. Once an itinerant hippie artist who lived out of his
van, he's busy stuffing a set of his illustrated, annotated Route 66
maps into envelopes to fill orders from Mother Road aficionados the
world over.
 In bursts a lanky German. "Bob! Remember me?" he cries, raising bottles
of personally imported Bavarian brew in each hand. "I came through here
a few years ago."  Gesturing backwards, he adds, "I want you to meet my
wife and daughter."
 Bob's hospitality is multiplied across the 2,448 miles of Route 66.
Inaugurated in 1926 and fully paved by 1937, Route 66 was mothballed in
1985 after completion of the efficient federal interstate highway
system. But there's plenty left of 66 to drive on. The best stretches
run lyrically through collective memories of community and camaraderie,
of upbeat times when nothing seemed impossible.
 Foreigners, Europeans mostly, are enchanted by a stretch of pavement
they believe captures the "real America" - far from abrasive Manhattan
cabbies and blinding Hollywood lights. Companies like Trek America play
on romantic notions to offer tours named after the famous road. Souvenir
shops and advertising agencies ply the symbol worldwide.
  Guide books report that Route 66 begins in Chicago. But today's
spiritual starting point lies a couple hours south in Funk's Grove, at
an old maple tree farm and syrup factory. Glaida Funk, 70, scampers out
to say hello as you pull up. She's happy to demonstrate how they make
the sweet sauce Americans customarily pour on their morning pancakes.
The process remains the same as ever, but business is different these
days. Most sales are via mail order. "There used to be so much traffic
that we just sold the syrup out of the house," she recalls. "Then it
just stopped."
 Much of Route 66 is Main Street gone Ghost town. Whole communities
shriveled up when the interstate bypassed them and, as Glaida remembers,
visitors stopped stopping. Abandoned diners advertise long digested
breakfast specials. Peer inside the decaying Cowboy Cafe in McLean,
Texas, and you'll spy dusty cups neatly stacked - as they've been for
days on end. A hand-written sign announces, "We're Closed. Come Back
Again."
 Rusty Route 66 is haunted by specters of the popular imagination. You
may bump into the Joad family from John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of
Wrath" (starring Henry Fonda in the movie) escaping their drought
plagued Oklahoma for the California promised land in the 1930s. In
homage to such refugees, Bob Dylan precursor Woody Guthrie wrote the
first song ever about Route 66. Auto carcasses, like the Model T out
back of Bob Waldmire's place, pointing west, offer proof that many real
life Joads never realized their California Dreams.
 Also roaming about are the free spirits of Sal Paradise and Dean
Moriarty, writer Jack Kerouac's post World War II bohemian anti-heroes
in "On the Road." If really paranormally inclined, you might get a
glimpse of rejuvenated actor Martin Milner and George Maharis cruising
in their sleek Corvette from the television series "Route 66" that aired
nearly four decades ago. In an old Arizona mining town, you can shack up
at the Oatman Hotel in the very room where Clark Gable and Carole
Lombard spent their wedding night on March 18, 1939. The bathroom is
down the hall.
 Many of Route 66's main characters are quite real and, like Bob and
Glaida, still hanging around the set. "It's a family," says Oklahoma
City artist Ken Turmel, who recently completed a Route 66 map
lithograph. "We're all neighbors. We don't all know each other, but
we're all connected."
 In Springfield, before you get to the Cozy Dog, you'll connect to the
big Route 66 sign outside Bill Shea's gas station. Make that his former
gas station. Bill, 76, stopped pumping 'tane in 1982, but he still wears
those general issue blue grease monkey jumpers with matching Marathon
cap. Along with his vintage 40 year-old Gulf siamese gas pump and
mechanical vending machines (candy bars went for 10 cents), he'll
proudly point out a replica of the Route 66 sign that hangs outside a
Reutlingen, Germany, discotheque.
 Only south in Oklahoma is Route 66 fully operative. Here the heinous
interstate is a toll road. Savvy locals take old 66 to avoid the
charges. Surplus antiquated gas stations are retooled into all sorts of
things - like the offices of Angel Wing Travel in the illustrious city
of Miami, Oklahoma.
 Oklahoma is a treasure trove of Route 66 lore. Oldtimers remember
Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw who frequented these parts over 60 years
ago. Akin to Brazil's Lampião, Pretty Boy was a skillful bank robber who
took care to shred whatever farm mortgages he found during a heist.
 Route 66's most popular nickname, Will Rogers Highway, eulogizes an
Oklahoman. An entire nation mourned when the versatile
cowboy-philosopher and performer (film star, comedian, social
commentator, writer, rope trickster) died in a 1935 plane crash. Visit
the imposing Will Rogers Memorial, a museum set on a grassy knoll
overlooking the town of Claremore - right on Route 66. While you're at
it, take in the new Route 66 Museum up ahead in Clinton.
 Crossing the border into Texas, you'll meet Hody Porterfield. Hody
lives in a teepee on a tiny private reservation outside The Big Texan
Steak Ranch in Amarillo. Once a Route 66 fixture, the Big Texan
restaurant moved close to Interstate 40 to survive, but the place
retains old 66's serendipity and hospitality. Scarf down the 72 ounce
steak, with trimmings, in an hour and it's on the house. A gringo, Hody
took Cree Indian nation citizenship 12 years ago. When in the mood,
he'll take up his bow and arrow, enter the cavernous eatery, and shoot a
few bull's eyes on the wall as astonished diners momentarily neglect
their slabs of beef.
 New characters embrace you around each bend, so by the time you drop in
on Bob Waldmire in Hackberry, you'll feel like a member of the Route 66
family. That'll make the confrontation in Amboy all the more
distasteful. At Roy's Cafe in the middle of California's Mojave Desert,
ask for 88 year-old Buster Burris, owner since 1940. A burly middle aged
guy with a deep tan will stride forward. "If you want to speak with him,
you've got to deal with me. I'm buying the place," he grunts behind a
walrus mustache. "And no photos unless you pay."
 Such crass commercialism means suicide on the Mother Road. On Route 66,
you may pick up a T-shirt or purchase a jug of maple syrup, but what
you're really buying is an enchanted ambiance. Break the spell, and the
whole adventure melts away like ice in the Amboy sun.
 Don't sweat it. The California Dreamland, Los Angeles, lies just ahead.
Stop for an old fashioned malted at the Fair Oaks Pharmacy on Route 66
in South Pasadena before catching the sunset at the road's endpoint in
Santa Monica. By then, the infectious Route 66 spirit will have
descended again upon you.

Soundtrack

 Driving along Route 40 in his green 1941 Buick convertible, Bobby
Troupe was a budding westbound songwriter. Discharged from the service
after World War II, he'd decided migrate from his native Pennsylvania to
Los Angeles, home of the music industry.
 Troupe's wife Cynthia leaned over from the passenger seat and said,
"Why don't you write a song about Route 40?"
 "That's silly," he responded. "Pretty soon we'll be on Route 66."
 Cynthia kept quiet for a time. Three days later, she leaned over again,
whispering: "Get your kicks on Route 66."
 "I wrote most of the song in the car," Troupe recalls.
 Once in L.A., he asked colleague Tommy Dorsey to get him a meeting with
Nat King Cole. Troupe played a few other songs for the pop star before
asking if he'd listen to something that wasn't quite yet finished. Go
ahead, said King Cole.
 Troupe ran through the piece: "If you ever plan to motor west/Travel my
way, take the highway that's the best/Get your kicks on Route 66!..."
 "He liked it so much that he sat down at the piano and started playing
along," says Troupe. "On March 16, 1946, Nat King Cole recorded it."
 Since then over 80 bands have followed suit, according to Route 66
Magazine. Cover bands include the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Bing
Crosby & the Andrew Sisters and the Cramps. "I made some money and
bought a house," deadpans the 79 year-old musician who lives in the Los
Angeles suburb of Encino.
 "The most amazing thing is that it spanned from 1946 to 1997," he says.
"And all fields. From Manhattan Transfer to Depeche Mode."
 Not to mention The Original Sins and League of Decency.

Viaje Bem
March 1998