Route 66

[Floyd R. Turbo]

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Route 66 ran right through my old stomping grounds.

Remember this?

[Floyd R. Turbo]

3. Of course!

[Paladin]

2. Terrific show, unforgettable theme music.

The series showed up for a while on our oldies channel, holding up nicely. Surprisingly dark in tone, for the time.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

4. Infected me with wanderlust!

[Paladin]

7. They did an episode of the show in Austin, TX when I was growing up there.

The whole freaking town watched it, the night it was on (it was the one where the George Maharis character had an accident while working construction and ended up blind). That was back when Austin was a really nice place to live---as opposed to the out-of-control high tech/hipster traffic jam it is, now. (Don't get me started.....)

[Floyd R. Turbo]

8. Cool!

[panader0]

5. Chuck Berry:

[Floyd R. Turbo]

6. Nice! 👍🏻

[Still Blue in PDX]

9. Pretty sure I only watched the show once, and they were driving across the Oregon City Bridge.

I wonder if other people alone in their houses watching late night TV get all excited and shout, "Whoa, dude! That's our bridge," or whatever, when some random piece of personal history pops up while they are clicking through channels.

I was equally thrilled and despondent to have that historic moment and no one with whom to share it.

[hunter]

10. I could write the story of my life along Route 66.

Santa Monica to Chicago. My wife and I have made the trip a few times following the old highway as closely as possible. We've lived in Southern California, New Mexico, and Illinois within walking distance of the highway.

My San Francisco great grandparents had a small second home on Route 66 Santa Monica Blvd., Southern California, long before that was any big deal, a place from which my great grandfather could pursue his grand schemes of 20th century dairy, movie, and aeronautical business. Unfortunately for the family wealth my great grandfather knew exactly what the future looked like with factory farms, movies, and aircraft, but he leveraged everything he had and bet on all the wrong players. And then his daughters, my grandma included, fled stuffy San Francisco and went wild in Hollywood, making Route 66 in Santa Monica their home base.

I once had a girlfriend who lived in Santa Monica. I'd been doing some field work out in the desert not far from Route 66 and I was at least two weeks desert filthy when I decided to visit her on a break. I drove to her house "Radar Love" style.

But when I got there I thought maybe we were not that close that I should presume to wake her up before sunrise, so I decided to park on the street and sleep in my car. The Santa Monica Police saw me as some worthless homeless guy and woke me up by throwing me out of my car and smashing my face against the pavement. I was totally Clarke Kent about it so then they realized maybe I was something different, and white, so they picked me up, brushed me off, and were somewhat apologetic, a kinder gentler version of asshole.