On the outskirts of Amarillo stands one of the most unusual and most visited art installations in all of Texas. The Cadillac Ranch dates back to the late Route 66 era and is the creation of Stanley Marsh. It’s a very simple piece (or roadside attraction, should you prefer that term): ten 50’s-era Cadillac buried in the sand and left open to the elements as well as the graffiti artists.

 

After leaving Amarillo, my first big and exciting stop was Tucumcari, a motel town like almost no other. “Tucumcari Tonight” signs have flanked Route 66 and I-40 for years. It is most definitely possible to avoid the chains here.

 

A few more loops through small and sometimes almost-deserted towns and I made my way to Albuquerque.

 

It would have been nice to spend the night here; it seems like an interesting, vaguely nonconformist kind of place, and also appears to be a magnet for scruffy long-haired boys AND skaters. Hmmm…my two favorite flavors…

 

Alas, something (I later learned it was some kind of Balloon Expo) was going on in town and jacking up all the room rates. Since I’d now hit Mountain Time, I used the extra hour to get to Gallup, after touring the 66 strip (Central Avenue) a few times and looking around downtown and at a thrift store.

  

There are motel relics from the past everywhere in Albuquerque; I had to do some serious editing to cut down the number of pictures and move this page along. A few other biggies here included lunch at the Route 66 Diner, crossing the Rio Grande, and seeing highway signs which just read “US 66” rather than “Historic Route 66” or whatever. It made the dream just a touch more realistic.

 

About this time, I realized that I was getting sunburned. Not, mind you, the sunburn that comes from hanging the arm out the window. No, it was my INSIDE arm which was turning red. We’re talking serious sunshine here. I hate sunshine. So with my arm slowly getting redder and redder, I headed up Route 66 for Gallup NM.

 

Had dinner at Safeway (don’t ask) and then drove around taking pictures and seeing what was around. I closed out the night watching cable TV at the motel (such a bargain…).

This morning, I did the Route 66 tour and hit thrift stores, following breakfast at the Classen Grill, which was recommended by not one or two, but THREE people. It was good, but not the religious experience I expected. Busboys were cute though…

 

“Oklahoma City is mighty pretty…you’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico”…

I’ve moved into the real nitty gritty of Route 66 now. This is a really great part of the trip. I’m no longer worried about the itinerary or the nightlife or what time zone I’m in (except for tonight, when I missed “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill”). It’s now all about exploring a part of the country I’ve never seen and a road which has as much history as any Civil War battlefield.

 

On the way into Amarillo, I hit most of the old 66 loops in Oklahoma and Texas. I avoided a parade in Yukon and saw Garth Brooks Boulevard (this was more amusing than thrilling). I had lunch at Pop Hick’s, an institution in Clinton OK, and talked with a very friendly waitress who was most proud of the 66 tourists who stop in. In fact, everyone along the route seems proud of their place in history.

  

Clinton is also home to the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. I stopped, of course. Good museum. Good gift shop. Minimal free stuff.

Eventually, Oklahoma became Texas, and before long I was in Shamrock, home of the U-Drop-Inn, some boarded-up gas stations, and not much else. The interstate pretty much ruined Shamrock. The U-Drop is great though, a late 30’s modern/streamline gas station and restaurant. It’s a major Route 66 landmark and incidentally, it’s vacant and for lease…

  

With Shamrock covered, I began to contemplate food and sleep.

  

I DID see Amarillo. In fact, I spent the night there last night. It’s an interesting place, which reminds me a lot of Fresno or even Bakersfield: flat, linear, and just a bit behind the times. It’s a tremendously unpretentious place…depressed even. There are great buildings and cheesy motels to look at. Route 66 (Amarillo Blvd.) is a major thoroughfare which goes on forever. There are bars. I opted against, so as to get an early start this morning.

  

The morning brought a quickie tour of downtown, one Elvis souvenir shop, and an unsuccessful search for the very first Holiday Inn on Summer Avenue. I did find an original one, south of downtown, but THE original has either been demolished or remodeled beyond recognition.

 

And then I crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas. It didn’t do much for me either. The roads were bad (what IS that shit they’re paved with?), the scenery east of Little Rock was uninspiring, and the letters to the editor in the Little Rock paper frightened me. One of them suggested that a return to complete segregation was in order to fix all the world’s problems. Little Rock seemed a pretty inconsequential place. The scenery got better to the west, but I still shed no tears as I passed into Oklahoma…

What a strangely fascinating place Oklahoma City turned out to be. It’s actually a pretty big sprawling city with some fair attempts at culture and a street system which actually works, although the drivers remain a bit aggressive. Alas, good drivers can be aggressive, but these by and large aren’t good drivers.

  

OKC was exciting for me because it signaled the beginning of the real meat of my Route 66 odyssey. I covered two versions within the city, one on 39th Street and one on 23rd Street. Some good sights and pictures will follow. Pretty much the next three days will be spent on (or in close proximity to) the “Mother Road”.

A question for the natives: what is it that makes the freeways and some of the surface streets in OKC look perpetually slick even when they aren’t? I’m not talking about heat mirages; the streets just look slick. A friend says it may be the recycled asphalt, which OKC was among the first place in the country to use. Sounds plausible, I guess…

  

I did do the gay thing here to some extent. It’s a very odd scene, most of which seems to cluster around a huge gay motel called the Habana Inn. Most of the bars are located within a block of the place and the actual motel seems to be a pretty fertile cruising ground as well. I saw several penises winking at m through open curtains. I opted against any invitations. I also sensed a pretty heavy slumming heterosexual presence as well as a large hustler factor.

Despite being a fairly large city, OKC suffers from the same “scene identity” problem as many Southern towns, and it’s exacerbated by the close proximity of all the bars. There are no bar “types”; you get the same fags everywhere. Plus, if you’re so inclined, you can pay an additional $5 cover to see these same fags at Angles, the mega-club. I was not so inclined.

One exception was Levi’s, about a mile away from the strip. This is the dive bar, and as such, I took to it immediately. The crowd looked pretty desperate and drunk, and was a little on the redneck side, but they were playing Van Halen. And there’s a cool patio.

No one serves Rolling Rock. I hate that.

One bar featured “foam night”. which meant that the dance floor was covered in bubble bath. I didn’t get it. It might have looked more normal if this were a bigger city, and the crowd were trendier (and drugged), and the music was a little trippier. But I doubt it.

  

 

The drive from Atlanta to Memphis could only be described as unpleasant. It didn’t help that I was cranky and irritable from lack of sleep, but as a special bonus, the roads were from hell and the drivers were pretty damned close to completely incompetent. Repeat these rules after me:

• We do not pass on the right, even when there are three lanes in our direction.
• It is unwise to tailgate when going 80MPH.
• The right lane is the slow lane. The left lane is the fast lane. We do not shift into the left lane and then slow down. This is not good.

A wreck forced me to make a 30-mile detour around Birmingham through some (admittedly pretty) country roads. Alabama has, in general, now replaced Ohio as my most unpleasant state so far. US 78 between Birmingham and Memphis should have been a freeway thirty years ago. And Birmingham itself is smoky, smelly, and generally ugly in a way even I was unable to appreciate.

The road through Mississippi was pretty good. I have no other real observations on the place, except to note that Tuplelo, birthplace of Elvis, is not readily apparent from the freeway which goes “through” it.

Memphis, my ultimate destination for the night, was seedy and fairly endearing in a decayed sort of way. Of course, the “Elvis factor” was in evidence everywhere, and I even stayed in a motel on Elvis Presley Boulevard, not far from Graceland. After the day’s drive, I didn’t poke around much, particularly after taking almost an hour finding a room. By the way, the drivers here are particularly inept…

Wednesday was my day to roam around and see the city. Highlights included lunch at Krystal (the southern version of White Castle), Little Five Points, a decent thrift store on Memorial Drive, a little time downtown, and my own special brand of aimless driving. Aimless driving is particularly interesting in Atlanta, which has a street pattern not far removed from the country roads and horse paths of 150 years ago. Alas, I was unable to contact the queen of darkness and most sensational drag queen in the world, Lily White. Next time…

 

I checked into the Cheshire Motor Inn for my initially unplanned second night and promptly napped through my planned dinner rendezvous with Dan and Tony. Fortunately, they waited, and we ate at a surprisingly good Mexican place, Nuevo Laredo. Then I got sucked into “Voyager”…

 

The nightlife consisted almost exclusively of the Eagle. Just so happens it was “Eagles Nest Key Club” night. Yer humble host is now a member of said club, and membership DOES have its privileges. The biggest privilege is admittance to a most active back room. This back room made up for all the debauchery I’ve missed through the rest of the trip. Lotsa nastiness, including this long-haired “stud boy” who kept attracting couples, both members of which were quick to bend over for him. I was also pleased to see that latex was used in each instance of felonious anal probing.

Checked out the Heretic; it was full of brain-dead disco-bunnies and gym/circuit boys. At Backstreet, where I was planning to look up an old friend, an attempt was made to charge me a $10 cover. I declined, while erupting in fits of laughter at the very thought of shelling out ten bucks to walk into the dump on an off night.

I went to sleep too late. I slept badly. I came to regret this the next day.