Oklahoma to Texas

Near Canute, Oklahoma, T. caught sight of something unfamiliar in the fields beside the frontage road. “That’s cotton!” I said. Just as it had been the right time of year to see the fall leaves in Illinois and Missouri, so down here the cottonfields were ripe. They were beautiful in the chilly dawn. 

T. compared the frontage road to the interstate thusly: “Suppose you’re offered two coffee cups, and one is a shiny new cup from John Lewis, and the other’s an old, chipped cup used by your grandma.” We crossed back and forth over Interstate 40 many times, but it was worth it to stay on the original Portland concrete of Route 66. Canute showed signs (literally) of livelier days gone by.

There was another Route 66 museum in Elk City, this one “National.” We’d just been in the Oklahoma one in Clinton, but we did stop and talk to the woman in the gift shop. “How’d you get in [to the U.S.]?” she asked. “We’ve missed our Englanders!” Outside, T. took a picture of a family visiting from West Virginia. They were the first, but by no means the last, people we saw unselfconsciously wearing cowboy hats. For my part, my own Southernness (y’all, etc.) had been coming out ever since we’d been in Oklahoma.

 

“We’re from Hatfield and McCoy country,” the man from West Virginia said. “Mining country.” I said I’d been through it many times, which made me realize that must be how people in so many parts of the States feel. Normally, to me, West Virginia is just a turnpike, which you go over as quickly as possible. Now we were all taking the time to stop and see places like Elk City.

A bit further west, we took a short stretch of Route 66 south of I-40 so we could cross another endangered through-truss bridge, the Timber Creek Bridge from 1928.

Sayre had another great neon sign, as well as the Beckham County Courthouse, which appeared briefly in (you guessed it) The Grapes of Wrath.

I was impressed with the number of independent banks we kept seeing, including one called Happy State Bank! I think it was parked outside one of these to get cash that we finally noticed the license plate on our rental car spelled “kix,” as in “Get your kicks on Route 66.”

In the town of Erick, a mural paid tribute to its most famous son: Roger Miller, who sang “King Of The Road.” 

Erick was also home to the writer of “Purple People Eater.” Something in the water? 

 

The last town before Texas is Texola, and there are very few people there. In fact, we saw no one. The tiny Territorial Jail is there, as is the Tumbleweeds Grill and Country Store.

Alas, the Grill was closed that day. Behind its fence, a dog was too lazy to even get up, let alone welcome us, but the turkey hurried over to do so. “Your days are numbered, mate,” T. said cheerfully.

And so to Texas, with its farm roads, cattle ranches, and big everything. We kept seeing a hawk soaring overhead, and cotton bolls instead of fallen leaves.

Shamrock, Texas is on land where Kiowa and Comanche people once herded bison. There followed a town named by an Irishman, the paving of Route 66, and in 1936, the Art Deco Tower Conoco, which now houses the U Drop Inn.

We were pleased to find the U Drop Inn open, chiefly because we needed the bathroom. As soon as T. was in there, a woman named Hazel came racing out to tell me there was another restroom inside. Then she looked curiously at my earring: “Is that a bomb?”

 

I explained to her that I’d gotten it in Laos, and that it’s made of leftover debris from the bombings during the Vietnam war. We got to talking and she and her colleague, Patsy, made us very welcome in the gift shop-cum-museum. As usual, we were the only visitors there.

These women were two of the most delightful people we met on Route 66. I told Hazel that we were planning to take the dirt alignment between McLean (the last Texas town bypassed by I-40) and Alanreed. She didn’t even know about it, but did urge us to stop in Groom, which claims to have the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. “They’ve got the stations of the cross and everything. You have to see it.”

Patsy and Hazel

Between Shamrock and McLean stands a mostly-intact series of what there used to be tons of along Route 66: signs advertising Burma-Shave. Someone stole the “WEST”!

 According to Jessica Dunham's Route 66 Road Trip, McLean was once known as “Uplift City” because of its bra factory. The town was founded by Alfred Rowe, who later lost his life aboard the Titanic, and sadly McLean isn’t doing much better today. There are a few reminders of the good old Route 66 days though. Not to mention the “Devil’s Rope” (barbed wire) museum.

From McLean, we took pre-1932 Route 66, about eight miles on dirt, sand, and gravel. We were lucky to have a nice dry day to drive this.

Soon after Alanreed, we were forced onto I-40 for about a mile. I think it was only our third foray onto the interstate since we began the trip. It was worth it for a surprisingly nice view from the Donley County Safety Rest Area, which from its westbound location has a great view. Also, the bathrooms were tornado shelters.

Then there was another pre-’30s dirt alignment that led to the Jericho Gap. This was infamous in the old days as a place where, after a rain, the mud was so black and deep that motorists got stuck there for days. The same soil was great for agriculture. Today most of the old road is abandoned or private, but a short dogleg took us to Jericho. It is a complete ghost town, with only a cemetery to memorialize the residents who died of smallpox, influenza, war, or just old age.

Ruins of a tourist court/houses, Jericho

At Hazel’s urging, we did stop by the giant cross in Groom. I have to say it made a nice picture framed by the cottonfields.

At last, we approached the only big Texas city in the panhandle (and on Route 66): Amarillo. T. had been singing to show her the way there for days. Just outside Amarillo is a small “peace park” with some poignant signage in rainbow colors.

The historic district of Amarillo, which I had no idea of when I came through here on interstate trips, is all on the National Register of Historic Places. You can wander into any building and see something neat. 

Amarillo's oldest restaurant

We happened into Lile’s art gallery. Lile, who described himself as an 81-year-old teenager, makes art out of the spray paint that builds up on the Cadillac Ranch (an art installation outside Amarillo). We had an hour’s free parking and I thought we’d spend it all talking to him. When T. explained her hearing difficulty, Lile said, “You read lips, I know. I didn’t realize how much I read lips until we started wearing masks!” 

 

He told us about his friend Bob Waldmire, the legendary hippie artist of Route 66 whose work is in the Pontiac, Illinois museum (and many other places), and who died too soon at the age of 64. Lile also gave us more stuff than we bought from him. Postcards of where we had to go on our westbound journey, an article he wrote, a bottle of water for free (I’d left mine in the motel). But it wasn’t just Lile. Everyone in this enclave of Texas seemed super friendly. Some random man we passed on the street said, “hey, how y’all doing? Have a great evening!”

 

Apparently in Amarillo, one place you have to go is the Big Texan.

The Big Texan used to greet visitors on Amarillo Boulevard, which is Route 66 into the city. When the route was bypassed, the savvy owners moved him out to the frontage road of the interstate, so the place is just as popular as ever. T. thought the steak was great. I’m not sure about the serenading cowboys, but they did their best to adapt “Take Me Home, Country Roads” for us: “West Virginia, or maybe London!”

 

From the Route 66 Inn, I heard trains whistling evocatively. This would become familiar over the coming days. 

On the outskirts of Amarillo, we had to visit the Cadillac Ranch from which Lile peels layers of graffiti and makes them into jewelry.

I'm saying nothing!

This work of art by the Ant Farm Collective was never on Route 66. It did used to be somewhere else, which I remember flying past in 1987, and then was moved to its current location in 1997. Now a nearby RV park/gift shop tries to make money from it. It’s adorned with the Big Texan’s twin, the “2^nd Amendment Cowboy.” Bizarrely, his label attributes a gun rights quotation to George Washington. (It’s one of those many misattributions that float around on the Internet.)

 

Between the 2^nd Amendment Cowboy and the fact that people had spray painted everything near the Cadillac Ranch, including corn plants and dog poop, I was in one of my “what is wrong with people?” moods. Then the road opened up to emptiness, and my perspective changed, once again. We saw more billboards of note: “Barricades Unlimited” (“You’d only need one, wouldn’t you?” T. said) and “Shoot Full Auto.” Crazy, right? Yet if for some reason I found myself living way out here, with nobody around, I can’t be certain I wouldn’t force myself to get a gun (and learn how to use it). I just don’t know.

 

T. was feeling thoughtful too. “Old-time travelers must have thought this was a great road, after all the turns in Missouri and Illinois.” Then she mused, “I wouldn’t think these people could feel any further away from Washington. And not just distance.” 

I thought, once more, of Mrs. L. She seemed to think that she, and more importantly her great-grandchildren, were being told they should feel bad just for being who they are. I don't think she is being told that, but it's not a feeling anybody likes.

 

I imagined what it must have been like for people who lived their whole lives in some of these towns, now buried and forgotten (carefully tended graveyards in ghost towns). And if that seemed desolate to us, imagine how the indigenous people must feel.

 

“I kind of feel like I should be on a horse, not in a car,” T. said.

 

We were happy to get into Vega.

The 1920s Magnolia gas station on Main Street is on older Route 66 and has been beautifully restored. A short distance away is the Vega Motel.

This vintage motor court, three-sided with a garage next to each room, has been preserved too, though all that’s in there now appeared to be a hairdresser’s.

 

We crossed the street to the Hickory Inn Café.

It looked old from the outside, though inside it looked pretty new. The waitress said her boyfriend’s family had run it for only a few years. Everyone else there seemed to be part of the family (a man with a baby on his lap told us to “sit anywhere,” which is how all seating hosts had been greeting us since we got to “y’all” country). They also had homemade chocolate chip cookies in a Ziploc bag. Unlike those in Bourbon, Missouri, these lacked the infusion of cigarette smoke.

 

Adrian, Texas marks the geographic midpoint of Route 66. We’d already been warned that the Midpoint Café, at which we’d otherwise have stopped for pie, was closed on Tuesdays (“She can’t get any help,” Lile told us). But there was a Spanish-speaking couple there and we took turns taking pictures for each other.

As we approached Cap Rock, where old Route 66 took off down the escarpment towards New Mexico, we saw some trucks that appeared to be sweeping up dust in a field. What a futile task. Though something must grow around there; the “World’s Largest Pistachio” was advertised on the latest billboard.

 

We were surrounded by modern wind turbines, as well as these older windmills with blades. There must have been a lot of energy generated by them, but T. said, “I can’t see anyone converting them into houses in 100 years,” like the wooden kind.

 

We took the dead end of Route 66, knowing that we’d thereafter be forced onto I-40 for the longest stretch yet. T. being T., she did not bother to backtrack to the exit, but carefully entered the shoulder and then the interstate from the literal end of the road.

It’s miles to Glenrio, which straddles the Texas/New Mexico state line. But we got off the interstate as soon as we could, to drive those eighteen miles on the scenic, pre-1950s Route. Good dirt and gravel, past wooden-post bridges. We weren’t even sure when we'd reached our sixth state.