Southwest Sorrows: Making Memories on Old Route 66

We left Albuquerque yesterday morning with the aim of driving West across Old Route 66 to Holbrook, inspired in part by the 2006 Pixar movie Cars. Lightning McQueen is a NASCAR-type racer who awakens from being a self-centered jerk to thinking of others. The Tom Cruise films Rain Man and A Few Good Men come to mind. But the story beneath the story is his side adventure in a forgotten town on Route 66 called Radiator Springs.

Route 66 used to run from Chicago to the Santa Monica pier. It a a highway with a history, popularized by TV shows, films and all the memories that have been recorded in hearts and minds of those who have travelled it. The bloom is off the rose as they say. The towns which dotted this old highway once thrived commercially, creating wealth for many and sustainable incomes for many more. Then the superhighways came, and all these routes have been relegated to back roads.

The same probably happened everywhere, to a greater or lesser degree. Destinations are what it is all about on a superhighway. The places in between become a mist.

Christopher, here at Joe & Aggie's where I am writing this entry, says that Radiator Springs is based on the section of Route 66 from Gallup to the east and Winslow to the west. We're here in the WigWam at Holbrook, a town with a history.

But the trip left us with mixed feelings. The vastness of the high plains is incredible, but must have been exceedingly tiring for the families and early settlers who had to cross this land in Conestoga wagon trains less than two centuries ago. Barren desert stretches far as eye can see.

And we did not anticipate the poverty we saw along the way. Much of Old Route 66 crosses through reservation lands in New Mexico and Arizona. A sign asked us not to take pictures on the rez. I can see why. The dilapidated and abandoned homes, trailers, buildings could not have been a source of pride for these peoples.

We were also struck by the innumerable souvenir shops selling Indian Pottery and miscellaneous Native American goods which seemed the same in every one. We stopped at one near midday which appeared to have had no business yet. A woman turned on some music when we unexpectedly walked in.

The Navajo reservations cover 27-thousand square miles of territory here in the Southwest, about the size of West Virginia with a population of more than 300,000. But where are the jobs? What do the people do? Unemployment is an estimated 50 percent, I have heard. Poverty numbers are abstract, but the images vivid, and depressing.

The Petrified Forest National Park, encompassing the Painted Desert, is recommended to anyone passing through these parts. The petrified trees hail from the Triassic Period, whenever that was. There are no trees in site today, and many of the ones lying here look like large Tootsie Rolls that someone cut up into bit sized logs. The scenes in this park are amazing. The abundance of petroglyphs indicated to me that the natives here two thousand years ago were fascinated with the region as well.

My grandparents drove out west in the Fifties on this route and I remember Grandma being impressed with what they saw here. Kudos to Teddy Roosevelt for preserving these splendors by creating National Parks.

For the record, Gallup was also a depressing town. Hard to envision its former glory. Holbrook is cute, has some character, but feels lost in time.

VACATION PICTURE OF THE DAY