Route 66: For the love of the road
Route 66: For the love of the road
By Steve Lackmeyer
Published: June 24, 2007
Michael Wallis is a rock star among Route 66 fanatics.
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Notes from the road:
For years, Wallis was among a chorus of voices urging Oklahoma to promote its Route 66 legacy and realize a potential tourism bonanza. State and local leaders finally heeded that advice, posting historic Route 66 markers all along the state's corridor.
In Miami, the city is preparing to spend millions rebuilding its Main Street with plans to showcase its history as a part of the highway. Tulsa residents approved spending $15 million as part of the city's Vision 2025 plan to create a string of attractions and markers along its 26 miles. All along the route, local leaders and business owners are discussing how to entice both domestic and foreign Route 66 tourists to spend more time and money in Oklahoma.
"I'm no great visionary; it just makes common sense,” Wallis said. "This puts vehicular traffic in Oklahoma. They're going to stop at places along the way and not just zoom along that monotonous slab of concrete, the turnpike, the interstate ... they want to see things, experience this America they've dreamed about on this classic road trip for so long.”
Wallis repeatedly uses "concrete slab” to refer to Oklahoma's turnpikes, which were among the earliest threats to Route 66. He compares driving the Turner Turnpike to driving on an airport runway, with the only stops consisting of McDonalds and adjoining gasoline stations.
But Wallis never suggests that the Route 66 business owner has ever been defeated by the "concrete slabs.” Instead, he argues that years of experience and survival have made business owners along the old highway experts at getting travelers to pull off the turnpikes and interstate highways.
"You have to have a gimmick,” Wallis said. "You have to have a good piece of berry pie or something in your town or establishment that will make them stop.”
Notes from the road:
The flow of customers seems endless at Dawn Welch's Rock Cafe in Stroud. Welch has become a celebrity, thanks to last year's hit animated movie "Cars.” Wallis, an adviser on the Route 66 tribute movie, voiced the sheriff's character, while the role of town booster "Sally” was inspired by Welch's determination to make her restaurant and town standouts on the Route 66 map.
Whenever Wallis makes a stop at the Rock Cafe, he calls ahead. Beverly Thomas, the cafe's manager, appreciates the warning, because they always have to make an Oatmeal Pie (a "poor man's pecan pie”) for Wallis to bring back home.
"She's a good little business woman ... Dawn really knows how to run that business and get people in there,” Wallis said. "And when I say gimmick, I don't mean gimmicky; I don't mean it in a negative sense. I mean it in a smart business sense”
Wallis calls Welch's Rock Cafe an example of a classic Route 66 success story, calling her business "authentic, genuine and unpredictable.”
Notes from the road:
Every inch of the restroom in the ancient Rock Cafe is covered with graffiti. Seemingly all of it is free of any obscenities or hatred — just good natured greetings and sign-offs by travelers leaving their mark. At Waylan's KuKu in Miami, one sees the last surviving restaurant of a burger chain that boasted 200 locations. The restaurant is designed to resemble a kuku clock, and its owner is on the job throughout the day. Children delight at carrying off meals in boxes designed to look like classic cars from the 1950s.
"That unpredictable factor is what separates it from what is very predictable: that super-slab a few miles over,” Wallis said. "It's my least favorite ride from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, where you are literally separated from the ecology of the land and you might as well be riding on a runway.”
While Route 66 brought commerce to towns along the highway, Wallis argues the damage wrought by the interstates went beyond depriving roadside cafes and gas stations of customers.
"We always talk about how the interstates bypassed so many towns along Route 66,” Wallis said. "They also slashed through cities ... they slashed through St. Louis, through Tulsa. We created instant ghettos.”
Notes from the road:
Esther Murray recalls when Red Fork boomed with motels, cafes and gas stations when its main corridor, Southwest Boulevard, doubled as Route 66. She also remembers how construction of Interstate 244 tore her neighborhood apart, leaving in its wake blight that continues today.
Surviving Red Fork businesses are hoping a Route 66 revival will reverse the ravages of time and restore Southwest Boulevard as a vibrant commercial corridor.
Wallis cautions against overly romanticizing Route 66's history. The same cafes and motels that catered to middle-class vacationers after World War II turned away Nat King Cole who immortalized the road in the song "Get Your Kicks on Route 66.”
Some of the people and places featured in Wallis' 1990 book are gone now. Lucille Hamons was the attraction at the odd two-story service station near Weatherford. She's since passed away. Pop Hicks Restaurant in Clinton burned to the ground a few years ago. The Metro Diner in Tulsa was torn down last year to accommodate expansion of the University of Tulsa.
But Wallis believes new attractions like POPS, an iconic gas station, cafe and tribute to the soda pop era opening next month in Arcadia, will help maintain the allure of the mother road.
"It is much more than '57 Chevys, cheeseburgers and James Dean,” Wallis said. "That's a great element in the road and that's fine and dandy. But it's still a road for today. It's still a Main Street in Arcadia ... new businesses are always appearing, and not all of them are retro diners and girls in poodle skirts.”
Notes from the road:
As the sun sets at the Route 66 Motel in Afton, Koichi Kaneko and Toshie Kawaharazuka snap more than a dozen photos of the motel sign. The Tokyo couple are spending the month touring Route 66 in a Chevrolet.
Back at the Rock Cafe, Hawaiians James Brown and Trujillo excitedly share stories of their motorcycle tour of the highway. Each saved $10,000 over two years to ship their Harley Davison motorcycles to the mainland and leisurely cruise Route 66.
"You haven't experienced Route 66 without stopping here for lunch,” Brown says as he bites into a steak sandwich (Trujillo is more daring: she ordered the alligator sandwich).
"Route 66 has been a dream for me since childhood,” Trujillo said. "I watched the (Route 66) show as a child. And hearing the stories from grandparents, who drove it, I just really wanted to experience it for myself.”
The couple later greeted their newest acquaintances: 11 Norwegians they met earlier that day who also are cruising Route 66 in three rented cars.
They are led by Trond Jorgensen, who made the trek last year with vintage cars shipped overseas just to travel the highway. The highway — and last week's unveiling of a 1957 Plymouth Belevedere unearthed in Tulsa after a half century underground — lured Jorgensen and his friends to make a return trip. They spent four nights at downtown Tulsa's Crowne Plaza Hotel.
"Route 66 brought us to Stroud,” Tor Gylterund said. "We're planning to go to Arizona, and we want to see the Grand Canyon.”
The Norwegians aren't planning to stay in Oklahoma much longer. They enjoyed seeing singer Fabian at a mayor's "Sock Hop” during the Belevedere festivities, but were disappointed by what they said was a "dead” downtown Tulsa.
Brown and Trujillo predicted their journey through Oklahoma would last through this weekend. They were happy to encounter hundreds of other motorcyclists at Miami's "Buffalo Run” last week and were weighing whether they might fit in this weekend's National Route 66 Festival in Clinton.
The festival features familiar faces from the road: Wallis is there, signing books, kicking in ideas on how to promote the highway. Laurel Kane, who operates the Afton Station, is recovering from some health issues but couldn't stay away. And Marty Doepke, manager of POPS in Arcardia, is manning a booth promoting what he hopes will be the next big Route 66 attraction.
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