Route 66: Film Used in "the Automobile and American Life" Class and Text Narrative

Text from the 2nd edition of The Automobile and American Life on Route 66:

Of all the highways with U.S. number designations, one, Route 66, truly stands out in American culture.²⁸Spanning from Chicago to Santa Monica, the “Mother Road,” was immortalized in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Its road food, typified by the fare served by the Big Texan restaurant outside of Amarillo, and roadside architecture, like the Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, has given Route 66 a mystique without equal. Route 66 was the idea of Cyrus Steven Avery, a businessman from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who became president of the Associated Highways Association in 1921 and State Highway Commissioner in 1923. He perceptively understood that highways meant business and tourism, and that the better the highways the better the business. To this day, with the rise of nostalgia about the “Mother Road,” Route 66 is all about tourism. A journey down Route 66 takes one to a different time in American life, before McDonald’ s and fast food, before the homogeneity found on the interstate confronted travelers.²⁹

            Nostalgia for the open road of the past, however, should not blind us to its historical realities. For one thing, Route 66 was known as “bloody” 66, because it was so dangerous and so many died on that road. And, as Steinbeck so astutely described, it was a road not only leading to the opportunities awaiting the beleaguered upon reaching California, but also a place where opportunism, exploitation, and disappointment occurred. With dilapidated cars and worn out tires, fear was at the hearts of drivers and passengers alike, who out of a sense of survival became one with their rides: 

            Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses; for a change of tone, a variation of the rhythm that may mean – a week here? That rattle – that’s tappets. Don’t hurt a bit. Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as the car moves along – can’t hear that – just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn’t getting’ someplace. Maybe a bearing’s startin’ to go. Jesus, if it’s a bearing, what’ll we do?  Money’s goin’ fast.³⁰