Memories of the Mother Road

Memories of the Mother Road

Get your kicks at the Autry

 

By David Littlejohn in the Wall Street Journal

Los Angeles

U.S. National Highway 66, the official, 2,440-mile-long Southwestern motor-vehicle route from Chicago to Los Angeles, began when federal officials strung together a number of existing trails. The popularity of "The Mother Road" or "The Main Street of America" grew (as did Southern California's) after its certification in 1926, and it experienced a tourist boom after the Depression and Dust Bowl migration west. But the construction of the Interstate Highway system, beginning in the mid-1950s, and a surge in airplane travel made the storied road largely irrelevant, and decades of decline followed. Now, it is experiencing something of a revival, thanks to local and federal funding for improved roadways; historical landmark designation; an influx of tourists looking for "the real America" away from the interstates; and a nostalgia for the old motor courts, cafés, curio shops and local museums of the 1940s to 1960s.

Its fame is due to a number of things: among them the heavy boosterism of politicians (mostly from Oklahoma) in 1925-26, when interstate highways were linked into a federally numbered grid; John Steinbeck's book "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), the John Ford adaptation and Woody Guthrie's ballad "Tom Joad," both of 1940; Bobby Troup's 1946 hit song "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66," for which he changed the name of the road to "Route"—pronounced root—because it fit the music better; a popular CBS television series called "Route 66," which ran from 1960 to 1964 (and had almost nothing to do with the highway); and Ed Ruscha's 1963 book of photographs, "Twentysix Gasoline Stations," all of which he took along Route 66 on a drive from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City the year before. Copies of the $3.50 first edition of 400 now sell for $25,000.

But one of the most significant contributors to Route 66's now-world-wide fame is of much more recent vintage: John Lasseter's 2006 Pixar movie "Cars," in which all the characters are computer-animated motor vehicles with eyes behind their windshields and a champion racing car finds itself stranded in Radiator Springs, a dying town on Route 66. Here he learns that what matters most is not to "make great time, but to have a great time." A German tourist, asked by a reporter why he had gone to Route 66 instead of Las Vegas or the Grand Canyon, replied "Cars."

The Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles's Griffith Park is trying to demonstrate all of this in a colorful, enlightening exhibition called "Route 66: The Road and the Romance." Taking a roughly circular, chronological route, the handsomely designed exhibition surrounds a gleaming 1960 Chevy Corvette convertible (the same model of car used in all 116 episodes of the "Route 66" TV series), a classic red Phillips 66 gas pump and, mounted above, a bright neon Western Motel sign.

The show opens with a 19th-century touring bicycle—a reminder that early cyclists were the first to establish a Good Roads Movement (in 1880). Early maps plot out paved roads for the burgeoning American automobile population: from 700 cars in 1895 to 1.7 million in 1915 and more than 7 million in 1920.

Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" is represented by his original manuscript of the first page of chapter 12, which is entirely devoted to Highway 66, the path taken by most Dust Bowl migrants to California in the 1930s: "66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side road, and the wagon tracks and the rutted country road. 66 is the mother road, the road of life."

Steinbeck's verbal image of miseries on the road is made visible by Dorothea Lange's 1938 photo of a refugee family on Route 66 in Oklahoma. There are powerful Dust Bowl era paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, Maynard Dixon and Alexandre Hogue. Three of Ruscha's 26 gasoline-station photos are on display, paired with Jeff Brouws's pictures of the identical sites, abandoned 30 years later.

A 1937 Martin guitar owned by Guthrie can be seen, as well as Troup's original lyrics and recordings—and a handmade collaged map, by his wife Cynthia, of the couple's 1945 trip, when they got their kicks on Route 66, perhaps in the highway's ubiquitous motels:

Now you go through St. Looey, Joplin, Missouri,

Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty,

You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico,

Flagstaff, Arizona, Don't forget Winona,

Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino ...

Displays remind us of the difficulties of African-American families on the road in the 1940s and '50s—barred from many motels and cafes, even from some towns after sundown—as opposed to the joy of whites. The actual "End of the Road" Route 66 souvenir stand from the Santa Monica Pier has been reinstalled here.

The beginning of the end is marked by a poster seducing travelers to fly rather than drive to the Grand Canyon and the Southwest (made possible with the end of the war and reduced fares); a slot machine shaped like a life-size John Wayne, to remind us of new and spectacular destination resorts like Las Vegas (100 miles north of Highway 66), after Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo opened there in 1946-47; and proclamations and maps celebrating the beginning of the new 47,000-mile Interstate Highway System in 1956, surrounding a large photo of its chief promoter, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The exhibit ends abruptly, with documents and wall-cards describing the highway's rebirth since the 1990s, and two life-size replicas of Mater, the good-hearted, rusted, buck-toothed, tow truck from "Cars"—which will mean nothing to anyone who hasn't seen the film. Although the Autry is running "Cars" twice on Sept. 14, it would have made more sense to show continuous clips (if this were possible) of the poignant, often accurate, occasionally beautiful Route 66-related scenes from the film.

"Route 66" was supervised by Jeffrey Richardson, the Autry's curator of Western history, with the valuable assistance of local critic Jim Farber, who spent five years researching, tracking down and borrowing many of the 200-plus objects here, and drove the route himself from Chicago to Los Angeles to be sure he hadn't missed anything essential.

Mr. Littlejohn writes about West Coast cultural events for the Journal.