The Mother Road

When I was a child, my Dad took us on road trips to South Carolina every 6 or 7 years. My Dad was born and raised in South Carolina and missed down-home (his words) terribly. We would load up the family station wagon and point the car toward that small South Carolina town. My parents would switch off driving duties. We would drive straight through the night on first day out. If you needed a bathroom, you would have to hold it until the car needed gas. If you just couldn’t wait, my Dad would top off the tank so we could go further before he had to stop again.

My first memory of these trips was in 1962 when I was about to enter 6th grade. We drove straight through to Santa Rosa, California and spent the night with my Aunt. After a one-day visit, we headed south to Historic Route 66 (the Mother Road). One of the original federal routes, US 66 was established on November 11, 1926 and eventually ran from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California. Route 66 was made famous by the book Grapes of Wrath and a Bobby Troup song:

If you ever plan to motor west

Travel my way, the highway that's the best.

Get your kicks on Route 66!

I don’t remember crossing Death Valley…so we must have travelled at night. Cars in 1962 didn’t have air-conditioning so just like the dust bowl refugees, we travelled at night.

I remember that there were many motels, diners and neon lights along the Route 66. I remember the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona. It really tickled my 11-year-old mind. I also remember seeing the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert. It was very hot in the Painted Desert and we eventually found a restaurant with air-conditioning and waited for dark to drive on.

We followed Route 66 into Oklahoma and then cut to the southeast. I love the fact that I can remember driving on old Route 66. The next time we journeyed to South Carolina, there was very little of the original Route 66 and it bypassed all those little towns, motels and diners.

This is part of a larger history that I am working on for my family. Flickr doesn't have a lot of older Photos to Illustrate a story like this. I enjoyed this assignment.