Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best.

Get your kicks on Route 66!

“Route 66”, Bobby Troup

I want to tell you, Missouri loves its Route 66! But interestingly, although signs everywhere direct you to either the road, or an attraction on the road, it simply does not seem heavily traveled. And the few cars I saw had Missouri plates. Locals, it felt like.

I woke up in Collinsville, Illinois, but did not see the world’s largest ketchup bottle – but it’s there! Instead I hit the highway eager to see some of the attractions along the mother road….like the Wagon Wheel Motel. This is reputed to be the first motel of any kind, anywhere along the entire length of route 66. It’s in Cuba, Missouri, A stone tourist court as many of the early motels were. This place is over 80 years old and is the oldest continuously operating motel on the route. And right next-door, there is barbecue!I saw the billboards for Missouri Hick Bar-B-Q maybe 50 miles or more further back back along the interstate. I had not intended to stop here but I was at the Wagon Wheel Motel anyway. It was……OK. The surprise was when I went to the restroom before hitting the road… The restrooms are marked “His’n” and “Her’n”, and this is what His’n looks like! I have to tell you, it took me aback, but it is a working flush toilet on a municipal system. If this is not to your liking, just around the corner they have normally-appointed restrooms. Cuba, Missouri, also bills itself as a town of murals – and it is that. I couldn’t count them all! They’re on almost every building it seems, around every corner. It was raining quite hard at this point in my day, so I only captured a few of them but you get the idea. By the way in the last picture, I have not done a good job of capturing what that is about. The Frisco is a rail road and the 6 men pictured in a passenger car are what they call Gold Star Boys – six residents of Cuba who were killed in WW II. I do not know the history of the Civil War fighting in this area but several of the murals depict incidents in this neighbourhood including the two or three that I could show you here. Seeing these murals and having an interest in the Civil War makes me want to learn more about this lesser publicized theatre of fighting.This is the interstate, I-44 heading west towards Springfield, Missouri. The reason I’m showing you this is that little strip of highway on the left, behind the two trucks. That’s the Mother Road. That’s Route 66. in Rolla, Missouri, on the campus of Missouri Science & Technology University, is something called “Stubby Stonehenge”. It is a faithful re-creation of most of the final installation of the original Stonehenge, but only about half the size. Professors from several faculty, including astronomy, helped set this up so that even it’s relationship to the sun mirrors that of the original Stonehenge in England. The big difference here is the way the stones were created.

For instance, while the ancient Egyptians, as one example, used low pressure water to mine for gold among other pursuits, these stones were cut using water jets at 15,000 PSI! What took the Druids years and years and years to create – centuries, really – took the scientists at Missouri S & T about a month!“It winds from Chicago to L.A., more than 2,000 miles all the way….”

What you are looking at is College Street, in Springfield Missouri. It’s a small, narrow, fairly nondescript city street. You can see right here, there’s not much to it. But what you’re looking at is the beginning of Route 66 – not it’s starting point, but where, in the 1920s, the highway was numbered. This is the birthplace of the Mother Road, the original strip. Springfield is just now starting to put things together to establish this strip, and an adjacent park. Some housing is being restored; it seems like a slow process. Not much has really happened along here yet, but here’s another reason – Red’s Giant Hamburger Restaurant. Oh, the restaurant is long, long gone. But when it was created in the 1920s, it was the first drive-through restaurant in the world. Red goofed on his sign; it’s supposed to say “hamburger” but he misjudged the size of the letters. And having made the mistake, he just left it. This is a re-creation of the original sign that stood on the spot with the original restaurant. We are OFF of Route 66 for this gentrified neighbourhood called Chesterfield something or other; really a nice area in South West Springfield. I just came to see what is billed as the world’s biggest fork. Remember the gavel the other day? Here is another “worlds biggest”. I do like the way the fork appears to be tucking into a bed of salad greens… skilful artistry. And I have one more thing to show you. But first, I have to borrow a pair of images from the Internet: You do recognize this, right? If you are old enough, in the late 1950s and into the 60s, these were your guarantee of quality along the highways snd byways of America. This was Holiday Inn – standardized, comfortably similar wherever you landed. Not the first hotel chain by a long shot, but the first motor hotel, or motel, chain setting the trend for the future. But don’t be fooled by the sign; it’s not exactly original. This happened to come up in the latest bulletin of my match cover club. A number of collectors have an infinite variety of Holiday Inn match covers but someone in the hobby was pointing out there may be one more. In about an hour after reading that, I stumbled upon this:I had checked into my hotel in Springfield, & was headed out for supper. I turned one corner, went about three blocks, and found this – the sign on which the Holiday Inn sign could be based. No one says for sure; it may be, it may not. Rest Haven Court opened in 1947 here in Springfield, Missouri. Holiday Inn opened a few years later in Memphis, Tennessee. I don’t know…the similarities are too close not to draw that conclusion.

Hard day; rain did not help. I did not get as far as I wanted to, and as a result, Oklahoma will have to do without me for one more day. I think there’s a lot to see in Joplin, Missouri, just 90 minutes down the road.