Get Your Kicks

At the end of a long highway stands a sign that reads “Santa Monica Pier”, welcoming visitors to the unique beauty of California’s beaches. Dotted with the stunning stretches of white sand, contrasted by the green and brown of rocky cliffs, the dramatic terrain is interrupted by precariously perched houses, scratching out a piece of sky and coastline to call their own.

This is Home.

Before the convenience of air travel became accessible to the average American, people traveled by train and automobile. There was nothing quite like piling into the family car and experiencing the sights and sounds of the road. On November 11, 1926 US Route 66 was established and would come to be known as the Mother Road, the Main Street of America. Covering 2,448 miles, Route 66 would take drivers from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California by way of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Route 66 played a crucial role in the great western migration of the depression era, a journey made by many and famously recalled in Steinbeck’s controversial but Pulitzer Prize winning work of fiction, The Grapes of Wrath.

I’ve traveled this way several times, though usually I was looking down from 30,000 feet. On a clear day, without the clouds to obscure my view I could see the patchy surface of the American Southwest intersected by the small hills that are the Rockies, with the Colorado River just a gray ribbon lacing through the barely marked Grand Canyon as I made my six hour flights from Los Angeles to Columbus and back to LA. From the air the world is ethereal, like a patchwork quilt of stripes, plaids, calicos, and polka dots. A rainbow of land that passes by with little notice as I plug in my headphones to drown out the crying infant who is unable to pop his ears and pull my scarf up over my mouth to guard from the spewing sickness of the coughing woman crammed into the seat behind me. Airplane travel, though quick, lacks the tangible beauty of the uniquely American scenery which can only be experienced on the road.

The road stretched out ahead, the sandy shores of the Pacific coast fading into the distance; we inched our way, my little family and I, mile by mile towards the growing heat of the California desert. My Jeep loaded up with all the belongings we could fit, Tetris style, strapped to the flatbed trailer pulled behind our one ton dually, we set out on our own version of the great migration, only we traveled the road in reverse. As we descended into the Mojave, the heat of the day began to bake against the windows making them warm to the touch even with the A/C on full blast. Dust swirled up behind the speeding tires and I watched in the side-view mirror from the passenger seat as it curled and collected against the piles of volcanic rock spotting the side of the two lane road.

Route 66 had its heyday during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Farming families from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas fled their failing farms, heading west in search of agricultural jobs in California. Littered with small towns the route helped create the mom-and-pop businesses that have become synonymous with what we look upon with a nostalgic eye, “Americana”. Service stations, diners, and motor courts divided the stretches of two lane highway welcoming the weary travelers between one kitschy motel and another. In 1938, Route 66 became the first highway to be completely paved which created a safer driving surface for much of the road. Several sections were dangerous and more than one of them would be nicknamed “Bloody 66”, warranting the gradual realignment of sections in an attempt to remove these dangerous curves. Some of which still remain, carving their way through the hills and canyons.

As we passed through Needles, California the day’s heat began to peak to over 100˚F and the sun cast sparkling prisms on the crystal blue of the expansive Colorado River stretching out beneath the white bridge that joins the two sides of the sharply cut canyon.

As we neared the center of the bridge, my heart pounded in my ears and my throat ached with anxious excitement and a twinge of fear of this giant step we were taking. And then we saw it, a small green sign at the middle section of the bridge marked the border and we crossed into the carbon copied terrain of the western side of Arizona. There was no fanfare on the other side. No significant cheering other than our own voices echoing off the metal enclosure of the truck. And yet, the moment felt as immense as the expansive blue beneath us, carving a path from the confines of the mountains out into the freedom of the sea.

The hum of the diesel engine singing as we cut our way through the orange and yellow flanked desert canyon, we heeded the sign that notified drivers of the lack of fuel until Kingman, Arizona and pulled off the road into a service station with fuel pumps harkening back to the days of 8-tracks and full-service stations. The station was littered with family caravans and SUV’s which were struggling to pull speed and pontoon boats, packed and overflowing with scantily clad frat boys and sorority girls.

After the leg crossing and dancing in line, we finally made it through the maze of chattering, primping and flirting, barely legal drinkers and got our opportunity in the restrooms. Sweaty bodies lined the narrow hallway leading back into the mini-mart, their contradicting perfumes a suffocating thickness in the still air as it mixed with the scent of spray tans and bubble gum. The scent wafted out into the cool air of the mini-mart, mixing with the clanging cymbal sound of shallow voices whining about calories and beer. Summer break was here for them, their adventure would take them to the river and ours was taking us into the unknown.

The heat climbed to nearly 120˚F as we traveled the black-top. Leaving California behind us and heading towards Kingman, the road curved sharply and I thought about how scary it would have been to travel in the dark with dim headlights in the 1930s when the roads were still gravel and dirt. The hairpin curve required finesse and a slow speed as we maneuvered another steep hill, the weight of the trailer pushing against the hitch and I was grateful to not be driving. The rest of the way to Kingman the road was mostly flat, just slight swells that would go virtually unnoticed when driving over them broke up the monotony of the straight shot through the dry, treeless basin. The dust whirled up in tiny tornadoes, hurling sand and pebbles against the truck as they crossed the road, oblivious to the industry that cropped up sporadically in the barren moonscape, halted somewhere between a city and rubble.

On the lonely stretch of flat highway, just as we noticed a sign in the middle of the desert, announcing that the Ford Proving Grounds were just a mile up the road, a sudden high pitched whirree startled me out of my hypnotic state from watching the dust devils tango their way between the tumbleweeds. My head spun around to my left and my eyes met my husband's with a worried look.

We pulled up an off-ramp that suddenly appeared like the hand of God Himself placed it there, and limped the truck in second gear over the small overpass and towards a service road we hadn’t noticed until now. Yucca, Arizona stood as an oasis along the side of the road like a mirage reflecting in the heat of the scalding sun overhead. We pulled into the dirt parking lot of a convenience store and I shuttled the kids out into the shade and put my 15 pound cat into her soft carrier before walking over to the porch of the store to find cold beverages for us all. My husband braved the sun and walked back to the junkyard next to the store to see if they had an idler pulley, or could get one. He shot me a text a few minutes later to tell me it wasn’t a junkyard. The truck would be fixed in about an hour.

A grease-covered young man, seated on a front seat pulled out of a minivan from the 1980’s under an awning, turned out to be our guardian angel. Yucca Truck Services specialized in power stroke diesel repairs and just happened to have the part we needed. The young man’s father was on his way back from the part supplier, half an hour away in Kingman with the bearings. The kids, our cat "Bonnie Parker '' and I sat on an old back seat from a station wagon, enjoying the ice cold beverages the kind woman in Micro Mart had offered us free of charge, as the young mechanic worked with my husband to replace the pulley. An hour later he charged us for the parts only and offered us well-wishes for a trip without any more surprises.

World War II brought another migration west via Route 66. The war brought war-related industries to California and those in search of work loaded up their family cars and made the journey through the plains of Oklahoma and Texas, then watched the Petrified Forest of New Mexico and the Painted Desert in Arizona speed by outside their dusty windows before making their way to that beautiful stretch of coastline, dotted with white sandy beaches in California. By the 1950s, migration turned to tourism as Route 66 became a destination all its own. The sharp upturn to road travel as a vacation in and of itself, rather than a means to a predetermined end point, gave rise to a burgeoning trade in roadside attractions. The road as a destination birthed teepee-shaped motels in Holbrook, Arizona, frozen custard stands and Indian curio shops marked by giant arrows sticking out of the desert, a blaze with neon lights; and billboards sticking out of the ground, interrupting the calico rock formations, vaguely shaped like the front end of giant Cadillacs.

Over the years Route 66 got diverted and realigned to direct the growing traffic around or through city centers, either to increase travel tourism or to avoid further congestion to every day traffic in growing metropolis areas. As 1956 neared its end and wider, faster, more direct new interstate systems sprang up around America’s Main Street, Route 66 became less traveled, becoming virtually obsolete in its shadow. Soon these sections would fall into disrepair and the tiny towns and mom-and-pop businesses lost their luster and closed their doors for good, turning into kitschy pieces of Americana, looked down upon from passenger windows, passing by on the new Interstate 40, sometimes only a couple steps away.

At about the halfway mark of our own migration, we could see the sky dotted by silhouettes slanting towards the East. We pulled off onto an old section of Route 66 that ran parallel to I40 just west of Amarillo, Texas. The pockmarked asphalt crunched under the tires as we navigated the path between green on our right and the bustling I40 on our left.

Our ten-year-old daughter started to shove her brother against the back of the truck seat in an attempt to see out his window. Our cat, Bonnie, yowled in opposition of her hairless bipedal sister’s sudden invasion of her warm spot in the middle where the sun baked the seat just right. In the middle of a field, surrounded by the growing green of bean plants, stood an interactive art exhibit, Cadillac Ranch. Anticipating this creative side trip, we had squirreled away several cans of spray paint into a bag hidden under the seat of the truck.

In 1974, an art group called The Ant Farm took ten Cadillacs, one for each evolution of the car line from 1949 to 1963, and buried them nose-first into the ground, leaving the back half of each vehicle sticking out of the dirt. They leaned the cars at an angle, corresponding to the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The original location of the exhibit was in a wheat field, however in 1997 the installation was moved two miles to the west, where it remains to this day. Through the decades, the cars have been repainted a solid color for varying reasons. One time, they were painted white for a commercial, and another they were painted pink for the birthday of the owner’s wife. All ten Cadillacs were painted flat black in mourning for the passing of Ant Farm artist Doug Michaels. Participation in painting the cars is not only permitted but encouraged. A sign on the fence post at the gated entrance to the field distinctly states State of Texas Property Graffiti Painting of Anything on This Side of Fence Is Illegal. In true rebellious form, the fence on all sides as well as every sign, is coated in brightly colored tangles of spray paint. Only the state’s warning sign is left unscarred.

In the fading light of the summer sun we joined the fun had by countless pioneers in a modern-day wagon train and painted our own marks on the decaying metal, held together by several inches of white-wash and spray paint, of the ten Cadillacs buried nose down in the dirt.

We watched as the kids ran from car to car, begging us to use the black and white paint cans to cover the layers of intricate lacing and colliding patterns of letters and symbols marking the presence of previous modern-day vagabonds, so that they could mark the freshly solid canvas with their own brandings. On the roof of the very first car in the row, we painted a large red square and emblazoned it with Gussler Four Cali to Ohio ’09 in bright white and on the underside of the very last car in the row, on a large white square my husband painted Gussler Family move to Ohio ’09 in bright green, at oir son's insistence. Every car in between was painted on all sides by one of us, leaving our mark as we prepared to leave the last of the “west” behind us.

As we turned back on to the highway, the bright lights of Amarillo flashing overhead in the dimming twilight, the pangs of leaving Home behind and the anxiety of the unknown that loomed before us collided in a cacophony of emotions I felt deep in my bones. The life I had worked so hard to single-handedly hold together for 6 years, I was now choosing to release from my vice grip. Although no longer on my own, the fear of the loneliness I might feel, the sense of belonging that I may not have, nagged at me like the steady beats of tires over the breaks and cracks in the highway.

Just east of Amarillo, where the concrete jungle returns to the green and brown spotted landscape of cattle farms and fields of beans and wheat, I40 veers north. Here it follows the path of Old Route 66, barely visible just to the right, towards the plains of Oklahoma with the expansive skies and endless stretches of wheat blowing in the weighted winds and burdened clouds of her notorious storms. It was here, in this open, lonely place that my heart was overcome with the bitter sweetness that comes with being in that sort of place where you are neither here nor there, a location that is between the past and the future where Home is no longer where it once was, and where it will be is an adventure you still have not completed.

By 1984, Arizona joined the rest of the states along the route and saw its final stretch of Route 66 decommissioned with the completion of I40. Stretches of the old road were disposed of in a variety of ways. Many of the cities that had sprung up as a result of the heavy tourism along Route 66 turned these sections into their “business loop” attached to I40, ensuring that their cities wouldn’t be bypassed and become a ghost town left as a scar, frozen in time in the shadow of the freeway. Other sections became state roads, local roads and private drives. Most were abandoned completely, left to be reclaimed by nature as the briefly state-of-the-art, once necessary stops and gimmicky roadside attractions lost their appeal and their once bright paint flecked off and mirrored the overgrown landscape.

Today it is impossible to traverse Route 66 uninterrupted, all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica (or from Santa Monica to Chicago), however it is possible with much careful planning to drive what remains of the original route and alternate routes. The 9-foot-wide “sidewalk highway” form of the original Route 66 still exists in some areas, preserved and drivable between Springfield, Missouri and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

1987 and 1989 saw the founding of the first Route 66 Associations in Arizona and Missouri respectively and were dedicated to the preservation of the uniquely American history of the road. Restorations of businesses and service stations, repaving and sign replacements have been among the goals to reignite the tourism drive and education lost under the convenience and speed that air travel has provided. The nostalgia of the adventures that awaited the soul searchers and the wanderers on the vast open spaces of roads like Route 66 have been immortalized in literature by the likes of authors like Kerouac and fueled the blazes of wanderlust and bygone eras for generations, and yet the vagabond soul has morphed into being someplace rather than going somewhere. The beauty of the journey falls flat when the joy of the adventure is sucked out of it, as we sit like sardines in a giant aluminum tube, as the world shrinks away, 30,000 feet below.

The early morning and late night hours are my favorite on the highway. As we trek along the nearly deserted sections of narrow modern interstates, I allow my mind to wander. I imagine how much or how little the scenery has changed since the first migration along this path. As we travel it in reverse, the dreamy beaches of the West Coast growing farther behind us and the wheat and corn fields bending heavily in the expansive Midwest sky as far as we can see ahead, I contemplate the competing emotions nagging at my soul and wonder if those who fled the dying farms that now flourish before me would question why we seem to be undoing all that they aimed to achieve. The otherworldly paradise of California, with her seaside cliffs, her oppressively hot deserts and her lush pine forests that shade the mountains, harbored a longing of hope and new beginnings and here we were, leaving it all behind for the unknown in a small town in Ohio. Many who traveled west decades before, had no or little choice in their move. Perhaps it was merely a frantic move of the chess pieces, made under the pressures of a failing economy and the threat of starving children. In any case it was a journey made with a lot of hope and very little options. However, it was a conscious choice that we made our eastern migration. The hope is the same. A fresh start for our newly blended family. But with hope often comes the distinctly bitter taste of fear.

Wanderlust infects me, heart and soul and I question if this journey east, beside the remnants of the long forgotten Route 66, where families and individuals fed an adventurer’s insatiable curiosity, will for once quell the drive within me to just keep moving. Home, as I had always known it to be, no longer echoed with the comforting white noise of waves on the shore and the thick sweetness of the salty ocean air that filled my lungs. Where and what it would be was unknown to me as I sat in the passenger seat of a one ton dually, my children fast asleep with a 15 pound cat I named after a notorious outlaw of the 1930s, audibly snoring between them as the milky stardust of our solar system blanketed the indigo night overhead. As the twinkling yellow of St. Louis, now merely a speck of light in the darkness behind us, disappears completely and our journey enters into Illinois, we depart from Route 66’s once beloved path and head east, leaving my heart to continue into the nostalgic realm of the road while my body travels onward.

In the white noise of the tires, scratching their way over the concrete and asphalt surfaces of the interstate, my innermost being runs along the forgotten byway. Even when my feet are firmly planted, and I can feel the stillness of the world as it spins around me; the only place I find comfort is in going, continually moving forward. And still I try to stay put. Don’t look back, just another step forward. My vagabond heart will always betray me, propelling me into the unknown and leading me down this same stretch of road, watching the forgotten and untraveled sections of the abandoned Route 66 as it weaves along the highway beside me. Like a familiar friend my heart leaps in the comfort of adventure and nostalgia.

I am Home.