The Bridgeville Area Historical Society reverted to its Winter schedule the last Sunday in January with an entertaining presentation on historic Route 66. The speaker, Dick Gaetano, began his talk with an explanation of his lifelong fascination with that highway. In 1949 his family acquired their first automobile since pre-WWII days and christened it by driving to California and back, primarily on Route 66. Dick recounted memories of the excitement of the trip, including visiting the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon and crossing the desert with a Lister bag hanging in front of the car’s radiator. I recall Ed Weise’s family doing the same thing the previous summer in a brand-new Buick Roadmaster; I was enthralled with their stories of that adventure.
Dick is an old friend and a long-time supporter of the Historical Society, and currently a member of its Board of Directors. He is a legitimate historian, having taught high school history for a lifetime before retiring and initiating a second career as a hobbyist and joiner. At this time he is a dues paying member of forty-two different clubs and organizations with interests ranging from collecting coins and postcards to active support of local historical societies. He is one of a small group of history buffs that I am certain to encounter any time I attend a local celebration or reenactment.
After explaining the motivation for his interest in the subject, the speaker discussed the early development of Route 66. In 1925 the Joint Board on Interstate Highways was established, with the objective of developing a standardized system for numbering the rapidly increasing network of roads linking cities across our nation. Largely through the efforts of Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri, the Board cobbled together parts of the Lone Star Route (Chicago to St. Louis), the Ozark Trail (St. Louis to New Mexico), and the National Old Trails Road (New Mexico to Los Angeles) to produce Route 66, a link from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, 2448 miles long.
During the Depression, Route 66 was the conduit for Okies and Arkies escaping the Dust Bowl for the promised land, as was documented by John Steinbeck in his classic novel “Grapes of Wrath”; he dubbed it “The Mother Road”. Others called it “America’s Main Street” because it passed through over one hundred villages, towns, and cities. In 1945 singer/song writer Bobby Troup and his wife drove Route 66 to Los Angeles in search of work, and composed a song commemorating the highway en route. The next year Nat Cole recorded “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”; it immediately became a jazz classic. According to the speaker it has been recorded by 142 different artists. The fame of Route 66 increased proportionally.
The next major media event was the television series, “Route 66”. Starring Martin Milner and George Maharis, it was the tale of the adventures of two young men tooling around America in a 1960 Corvette. No one from my generation can hear the theme song Nelson Riddle wrote for the show without visualizing Buz and Tod in their ‘vette exiting the Fort Pitt Tunnel and seeing the magnificent Golden Triangle skyline. Despite the name of the show there were only three episodes actually filmed on Route 66. Nonetheless it brought the legendary highway even more fame.
My personal exposure to Route 66 dates back to the autumn of 1953. The United States Selective Service System had finally reached the bottom of the barrel – I was drafted into the US Army. Early in October I found myself in basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Route 66 skirts the northern edge of Fort Wood and is the only route to civilization in any direction. One weekend we lucked into a weekend pass and set out for the nearest major town, Springfield. By this time the Route was being upgraded from two lanes to four. The original highway was a classic “roller-coaster”, up and down the rolling Missouri hills. Adjacent to it was a conventional modern two-lane highway with cuts and fills providing a level route. I presume the old highway was also eventually replaced, providing a modern highway.
Many years later my wife and I were vacationing in Arizona, staying in a motel in Flagstaff prior to a day trip to the Grand Canyon. By now the lyrics of Bobby Troup’s song were firmly embedded in my memory. In it the Route “winds through St. Louis; Joplin, Missouri; Oklahoma City; Amarillo, Texas; and Gallup, New Mexico” before reaching “Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona” (which rhymes nicely). Obviously we had to locate Winona, somewhere between Flagstaff and the California border; I was greatly concerned when our efforts failed. Eventually we learned that a railroad stop on the Santa Fe Railroad sixteen miles east of Flagstaff was called “Winona” until 1959 when it was renamed “Darling” in honor of a Santa Fe locomotive engineer. We excuse Bobby’s out-of-sequence error and attribute it to poetic license.
In addition to an excellent slide show, Dick passed out a handout showing a map of the original route and the lyrics to Troup’s song. Elaine Salizzoni pointed out that the map only showed seven states although he had clearly reported that the route went through eight. Sure enough, the original route did go due west from Joplin to Galena, Kansas, then south into Oklahoma, a distance of thirteen miles in the Sunflower State. I think that is enough to warrant showing Kansas on the handout. Today the Interstate Highway System has obliterated most of the fabled highway; all that remains are tiny pieces of “Historic Route 66”.
Next month’s Historical Society program meeting will be at 1:30 pm on Sunday, February 25, in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department. Warren Merritt, an expert on the history of coal mining in southwestern Pennsylvania, will discuss the mines in and around Bridgeville.