Hiller revisits America on the ‘dying Mother Road’
by JIMMY J. PACK JR.
It has been bothering me for years. When I took my first cross-country journey, it was in July of 2001. Two months later, on the 11th of September, the America I had traveled across changed. I’ve felt a painful need to get back on the road, the dying Mother Road, to see how my old America — an America so vulnerable to a destruction we hadn’t experienced since the Japanese destroyed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941 — had dealt with a terrifying blow from reality.
How has our country changed? Are we really a bi-colored nation with the conservative reds and the liberal blues tenuously united by the white stitching of an American flag? Or is there something less superficial and more philanthropic that brings Americans together to share peacefully in the harvest of our golden grains? The open road awaits, and I will find my answers over every state line I cross.
More Dead in Ohio
June 3, 2005. At 5 a.m. the sun barely starts the day; a slight neon burn of violet sizzles the eastern sky. I get in my midnight blue Toyota Scion and head west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. No one told me it would cost close to $20 to cross the state where already I pay too many taxes and get nothing in return, not even decent roads. The highway has more Jersey barriers on it than stripes on the pavement. The clouds are low and thick. I can barely read the names of the tunnels that puncture the sides of the Alleghenies. I just want out. Sixty hours later, and the Ohio border brings me the same sunshine that greeted Dorothy in the Land of Oz. Flat land is planted with verdant stripes of young wheat, corn and soybean — baby plants getting ready for adulthood and then human consumption.
I have to stay at the Winesburg Motel in Clyde, Ohio. It was one of my original stops en route to the west back in 2001. I wanted to stop here to see the spurned home of Sherwood Anderson, the man responsible for the novel, Winesburg, Ohio, and for inspiring the genius of writers like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.
It’s a fleabag. It’s the kind of room where you murder someone and not worry about evidence. There are mirrors screwed to the drop ceiling tiles, dark wood paneling favored by ‘70s porn directors and sheets I have to sleep in with a sleeping bag tied tight around me. The room smells of mildew eating away at the bottom of the thin industrial carpeting. The showers can only be used with flip-flops on my feet.
I don’t want to leave the room. Outside, things are worse. The Clyde Enterprise (a community newspaper that makes the Local look like the New York Times…. No, better!) reports knifings, women being abused by their lovers and the biggest drug bust the area has ever seen.
As the sun sets, I feel as if I’m trapped in a room at a whore-house. All three locks on my door are set, and the next time I open the door will be sun-up, when the folks around me are done with their business.
There is no Midwestern friendliness here, as there was during my last trip. People are guarded. When I stop into a local drugstore to purchase postcards, a woman rings me up without saying a word. I have to look at the register to see how much money I owe her. This is the customer service I expect at a Target, not a locally owned business.
Parts of Route 20 are torn up and lined with generic highway materials — Jersey barriers and thick galvanized metal. A Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, the new blood of small-town America pumped with a corporate heart. This is not the Clyde I remember and it’s a Clyde I’ll never return to.
I won’t bore you
My obsession with Chicago, Illinois will not run out of fuel. It’s the beginning of the Mother Road, and it’s a place I can write about and never tire of. It only takes me four hours to get there from Ohio and I stay for two days — energize myself with tender glazed ribs and crab Rangoon at Trader Vic’s in the basement of the Palmer House Hilton
The Hotel Burnham is not worth the $200+ a night. My room is smaller than my fleabag in Clyde, and the décor looks like a marquis from 1800 France designed it. I have to look for the doorman and the valet, and there’s no way I’m going to pay $10+ for a bagel and O.J.
Giant Attacks!
My first landmark back on the open road is the Gemini Giant, guardian of the Launching Pad Drive-In. The food is mediocre, but the preservation of the past is there. Old folks gather in a corner booth and laugh about their youth. Children come in and get fries and hot dogs. It’s a neighborhood joint and everyone who lives in Wilmington, Illinois knows the Launching Pad. The locals stare at me as if I were The Man With No Name. I’m no Clint Eastwood, and I don’t stay very long. No one wants me to be here.
And slowly the landmarks come — I stop at the restored Standard Oil gas station in Odell. The price for gas marked on the pumps — 23¢. If only.
I walk in and am greeted by a teenager. He watches me take photos of the place and says, “Hi there.”
“How are you doing?” I respond, putting the lens cap back on my camera.
“Not too bad. Where you from?”
“Philly. This is my second time out. This a summer job for you?”
“Yeah. I usually bail hay in the summer, but the guy I work for takes care of this place and asked me if I wanted to work it for the summer.”
”Better than bailing hay,” I say.
He shrugs. “I guess.”
I buy some t-shirts and a shot glass and say good-bye. He watches me pull out of the gravel driveway and waves. That Midwestern friendliness isn’t completely dead. He walks back into the gas station and waits for more Route 66ers. Nice to see there are some kids who find labor more rewarding. For him, it could be worse; he could be at Wal-Mart.
Ever Get Cozy with Hot Dog?
Funks Grove, Funks Grove, Illinois, home of real maple sirup. (According to Illinois farmer etymology, if syrup is spelled with an “i” instead of a “y” it means it’s 100% pure with no sugar added.) I stop in for some sirup and photos. A woman engages me and she knows I’m a Route 66er.
“We get a lot more Europeans than Americans here,” she says. And that sticks in my head as I drive the road towards a hotel in Springfield, Illinois.
*****
Why do more Europeans travel the Mother Road? I can’t sleep because I’m 15 floors above Springfield, Illinois, in a Hilton Hotel, and it’s digging in me as to why Europeans search the road and learn America while many people who call the U.S. home seldom travel any farther than 100 miles from their houses.
There are no places to eat here in Springfield after 10 p.m. that aren’t fast food chains, and the vending machine upstairs has chomped up all my change. I sip water and reluctantly order a Domino’s Crap-Special pizza, which keeps me awake all night. I should’ve had more at Dixie’s Trucker Home back in McLean, Illinois. The chili is meaty and substantial, and you can listen in to the tales of the road from truckers who’ve watched Americas interstates sprawl for the last 40 years.
*****
A Cozy Dog is a corn dog. It’s a hot dog deep-fried in batter on a stick and you can only get them at the Cozy Dog Drive-In here in Springfield. I’ve never been a corn dog fan, so I go for a chilidog — good choice. Construction workers and old folks eating lunch surround me. They stare at me with my cameras wrapped around my neck and peg me for a tourist. I’m invading their privacy so I hurry up, eat and take a few photos. Again I am made to feel the interloper. One of the owners of the Cozy Dog gives me a magnet and bumper sticker before I leave. She reminds me why it’s better to shop at locally owned businesses. Who needs a Big Mac when you can have a Cozy Dog? There is human warmth on the old road. I’ll have to stop here on my way back.
As I head towards Missouri, I stop in Litchfield, Illinois for an afternoon snack. The Ariston Café has been serving food to travelers since 1924. When I walk in the front door I’m drawn to the counter of carved wood and neon lights. A sign behind the register reads in English, French and German.
I order a slice of a creamy coconut dessert and a glass of milk. I run out to my car and grab my camera and start taking photos. The man who sat me tells me about a man who traveled Route 66 completely by wheelchair, a South American man who did it to raise money for a charity.
You don’t get quality food like this at a Friday’s. And when manager Nick Adams asks how you are doing, it’s not just out of politeness. The Ariston Café is an anchor to the past on Route 66. Is not just a preserved memory but a continual flow of time where the expected kindness of the past reminds travelers today of what it means to be decent, to be courteous, to be concerned — to be human.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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