>While
legislation for public
highways first appeared in 1916, with
revisions in 1921, it was not until
Congress enacted an even more
comprehensive version of the act in 1925
that the government executed its plan
for national highway
construction.Officially, the numerical designation 66 was assigned to the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route in the summer of 1926. With that designation came its acknowledgment as one of the nation's principal east-west arteries. From the outset, public road planners intended U.S. 66 to connect the main streets of rural and urban communities along its course for the most practical of reasons: most small towns had no prior access to a major national thoroughfare.
The Formative
Years
Well-known, the U-Drop-Inn, along the 66's Texas Panhandle, has an art deco style of architecture
The abbreviated route between Chicago and the Pacific coast traversed essentially flat prairie lands and enjoyed a more temperate climate than northern highways, which made it especially appealing to truckers.
Completion of this all-weather capability on the eve of World War II was particularly significant to the nation's war effort. The experience of a young Army captain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who found his command bogged down in spring mud near Ft. Riley, Kansas, while on a coast-to-coast maneuver, left an indelible impression. The War Department needed improved highways for rapid mobilization during wartime and to promote national defense during peacetime. At the outset of American involvement in World War II, the War Department singled out the West as ideal for military training bases in part because of its geographic isolation and especially because it offered consistently dry weather for air and field maneuvers.
Route 66 helped to facilitate the single greatest wartime manpower mobilization in the history of the nation. Between 1941 and 1945 the government invested approximately $70 billion in capital projects throughout California, a large portion of which were in the Los Angeles-San Diego area. This enormous capital outlay served to underwrite entirely new industries that created thousands of civilian jobs.
The
Postwar Years
After the war,
Americans were more
mobile than ever before. Thousands of
soldiers, sailors, and airmen who
received military training in
California, Arizona, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, and Texas abandoned the harsh
winters of Chicago, New York City, and
Boston for the "barbecue culture" of the
Southwest and the West. Again, for many,
Route 66 facilitated their relocation.
One such emigrant was Robert William
Troup, Jr., of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Bobby Troup, former pianist with the
Tommy Dorsey band and ex-Marine captain,
penned a lyrical road map of the now
famous cross-country road in which the
words, "get your kicks on Route 66"
became a catch phrase for countless
motorists who moved back and forth
between Chicago and the Pacific Coast.
The popular
recording was released in
1946 by Nat King Cole one week after
Troup's arrival in Los Angeles.
Store owners, motel managers, and gas
station attendants recognized early on
that even the poorest travelers required
food, automobile maintenance, and
adequate lodging. Just as New Deal work
relief programs provided employment with
the construction and the maintenance of
Route 66, the appearance of countless
tourist courts, garages, and diners
promised sustained economic growth after
the road's completion. If military use
of the highway during wartime ensured
the early success of roadside
businesses, the demands of the new
tourism industry in the postwar decades
gave rise to modern facilities that
guaranteed long-term prosperity.
Roadside Attractions
and
Necessities
The evolution of
tourist-targeted
facilities is well represented in the
roadside architecture along U. S.
Highway 66. For example, most Americans
who drove the route did not stay in
hotels.
The national outgrowth of the auto camp
and tourist home was the cabin camp
(sometimes called cottages) that offered
minimal comfort at affordable prices.
Many of these cottages are still in
operation. Eventually, auto camps and
cabin camps gave way to motor courts in
which all of the rooms were under a
single roof. Motor courts offered
additional amenities, such as adjoining
restaurants, souvenir shops, and
swimming pools. Among the more famous
still associated with Route 66 are the
El Vado and Zia Motor Lodge in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In the early years of Route 66,
service station prototypes were
developed regionally through
experimentation, and then were adopted
universally across the country.
Buildings were distinctive as gas
stations, yet clearly associated with a
particular petroleum company. Most
evolved from the simplest "filling
station" concept - a house with one or
two service pumps in front - and then
became more elaborate, with service bays
and tire outlets.
They preferred the
accommodations that emerged from
automobile travel - motels. Motels
evolved from earlier features of the
American roadside such as the auto camp
and the tourist home. The auto camp
developed as townspeople along Route 66
roped off spaces in which travelers
could camp for the night. Camp
supervisors - some of whom were employed
by the various states - provided water,
fuel wood, privies or flush toilets,
showers, and laundry facilities free of
charge.
Among the
most
outstanding examples of the evolution of
gas stations along Route 66 are
Soulsby's Shell station in Mount Olive,
Illinois; Bob Audettes' gas station
complex in Barton, New Mexico; and the
Tower Fina Station in Shamrock, Texas.
Route 66 and many points of interest
along the way were familiar landmarks by
the time a new generation of postwar
motorists hit the road in the 1960's. It
was during this period that the
television series, "Route 66", starring
Martin Milner and George Maharis drove
into the living rooms of America every
Thursday. By today's standards, the show
is rather unbelievable but in the
1960's, it brought Americans back to the
route looking for new
adventure.
Excessive truck use during
World War II
and the comeback of the automobile
industry immediately following the war
brought great pressure to bear on
America's highways. The national highway
system had deteriorated to an appalling
condition. Virtually all roads were
functionally obsolete and dangerous
because of narrow pavements and
antiquated structural features that
reduced carrying capacity.
Ironically, the public lobby for rapid
mobility and improved highways that
gained Route 66 its enormous popularity
in earlier decades also signaled its
demise beginning in the mid-1950's. Mass
federal sponsorship for an interstate
system of divided highways markedly
increased with Dwight D. Eisenhower's
second term in the 'White House. General
Eisenhower had returned from Germany
very impressed by the strategic value of
Hitler's Autobahn. "During World War
II," he recalled later, "I saw the
superlative system of German national
highways crossing that country and
offering the possibility, often lacking
in the United States, to drive with
speed and safety at the same time."
The congressional response to the
president's commitment was the passage
of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956,
which provided a comprehensive financial
umbrella to uderwrite the cost of the
national interstate and defense highway
system.
By 1970, nearly all segments of
original
Route 66 were replaced by a modern
four-lane highway.
In many respects, the physical remains
of Route 66 mirror the evolution of
highway development in the United States
from a rudimentary hodge-podge of state
and country roads to a federally
subsidized complex of uniform,
well-designed interstate expressways.
Various alignments of the legendary
road, many of which are still
detectable, illustrate the evolution of
road engineering from coexistence with
the surrounding landscape to domination
of it.
Route 66 symbolized the renewed
spirit of optimism that pervaded the
country after economic catastrophe and
global war. Often called, "The Main
Street of America", it linked a remote
and under-populated region with two
vital 20th century cities - Chicago and
Los Angeles.
January 13th, 1977 Charlie McLean
described the scene. "It was cold and
wet--typical weather for Chicago," said
Charlie, an Operations Engineer for the
Illinois Department of Transportation.
"When the interstates came, the American
Association of State Highway Officials
had determined that Route 66's
replacement in Illinois and part of
Missouri, because it was primarily a
north-south route, should have an odd
number. They assigned 55. In 1977 they
would show I-55 markings instead of
Route 66. "This meant that new signs
would go up and the old ones would come
down." The last old sign hung from a
light standard near the corner of
Michigan Avenue and Jackson Blvd...
Though standard in language and format,
the sign's message that day was
chilling. "END OF ROUTE 66," it said.
That evening... news traveled to homes
throughout America and the world, where
it was received like a death in the
family.
The outdated, poorly maintained
vestiges
of U.S. Highway 66 completely succumbed
to the interstate system in October 1984
when the final section of the original
road was replaced by Interstate 40 at
Williams, Arizona.
As the highway looks forward to its 75th
birthday in 2001, its contribution to
the nation must be evaluated in the
broader context of American social and
cultural history. The appearance of U.S.
Highway 66 on the American scene
coincided with unparalleled economic
strife and global instability, yet it
hastened the most comprehensive westward
movement and economic growth in United
States history. Like the early,
long-gone trails of the late century,
Route 66 helped to spirit a second and
perhaps more permanent mass relocation
of Americans. We only hope it does not
meet the fate of these once-famous
arteries.
"Away from the superslab, you can still
order a piece of pie from the person who
baked it, still get change from the shop
owner, still take a moment to care and
to be cared about, a long way from
home."(c) Tom Snyder, Founder, Route 66
Association; preface from the book,
"Route 66 The Mother Road" by Michael
Wallis, St. Martin's Press. U.S.
Route 66 is unquestionably the most
famous "back road" in America, and from
this "Mother Road" or "Main Street of
America" as it is affectionately known,
we can all learn both large and small
lessons in American culture.
Route 66 history, in brief: U.S. Route
66 is in fact already vanished
"history."
The original U.S. Route 66 went from
Chicago to Los Angeles and covered
approximately 2,400 miles. The span
included Illinois, Missouri, Kansas (a
very small segment), Oklahoma, Texas,
New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Some major cities en route were (east to
west): Springfield (Illinois and
Missouri), St. Louis, Joplin, Oklahoma
City, Amarillo, Tucumcari, Albuquerque,
Gallup, Holbrook, Flagstaff, Barstow and
Santa Monica, but a listing of great
cities and towns along Route 66 could go
on for paragraphs!
Moreover, the allure of Route 66 had
little to do with its destination cities
and towns. Along the way were
quintessential old cafes, gas stations,
motels, roadhouses and other highway
icons that reflected American mobility,
character and culture. Route 66 was in
fact one of the first continuous
roadways connecting the Midwest to the
"Promised Land" of California.
Cyrus Avery got it all started. Born in
Pennsylvania in 1871, Avery graduated
from William Jewell College in Liberty,
Missouri. By 1921 he was elected as
president of the Associated Highways
Association of America. In 1924 Avery
sat on related governing highway boards
and eventually became the highway
specialist consultant to the U.S.
Highway System. A year later, work began
on numbering existing main routes using
a reasonably logical scheme. Of course
many fine U.S. routes were established,
but Route 66 always had a certain extra
special charm about it. As Avery himself
stated, "...we assure you that U.S.
Route 66 will be a road....that the U.S.
will be proud of..."
So who exactly IS proud of Route 66?
Millions of us. Those notables having a
love of the old road included John
Steinbeck, Will Rogers, Woody Guthrie,
world class photographer Dorthea Lange,
and even Mickey Mantle, to name a small
sampling.
I think you'll find the old U.S. route
system fascinating. I (as aka, Edward
Sarkis Balian) have published past
articles (Shutterbug, January, 1991),
done TV interviews, and recently
directed a 25 minute cable television
video, "Along the Way..." using my black
and white still photo-essay portfolio as
the basis for the production. My wife
Judith and I continue to travel all
existing U.S. routes, with over 100,000
miles already logged. And the
experiences of American culture and
photography will stay with us for the
rest of our lives. In fact, it was my
photo shoots that had originally led us
to explore these back roads. In this
way, photography has given more to me
than I will ever be able to give back.
I only relate these personal
anecdotes to you for one reason, if you
haven't yet experienced Route 66 or
other American back roads, give it
strong consideration on your next
outing. Time is short as these highways
and their resident cultures are
disappearing quickly.
A great side trip on the way to Gallup (or from Gallup as a base) is the Zuni Indian Reservation to the south. If you have the time, this is very interesting and still GENUINE Indian territory. If you have any interest at all in Native American culture, this is well worth the trip. And BUY SOMETHING while down there---help support these wonderful people!
You MUST STOP and visit (or stay overnight) at the El Rancho Hotel, built in 1936. I've stayed in many of the rooms here---the Jane Wyman room was my favorite, if memory serves. Many Hollywood stars stayed at the El Rancho during their western movie shoots----the history there is superb. Make sure you take a slow walk along the balcony and view all the autographed pictures of the stars. And ask to see the "secret room" not on the register……..Neat!
The souvenir/gift shop is very nice as well. And have a meal (dinner is best) at the attached restaurant. Read the menu for some good entertainment.
If you happen to hit the El Rancho during the Christmas season, you're in for a supreme treat: the lobby Christmas tree, going to the ceiling. Beautiful!
If nothing else, get a good book (or write one!) sitting down in the lobby, preferably in front of the massive stone fireplace. For God's sake, writing the above passages makes me want to start packing right now………….
From Gallup, follow "66" and see some of the most pristine and genuine of all Route-66 in the Nation. But beware, not all of it is "pretty," some of it is nostalgic, the landscape is beautiful at times, and some of what you'll see is just plain sad----but it's all part of the Americana Experience. BE CAREFUL at what you take photos of; some of these folks can take serious offense. Use cautious judgment---if in doubt about shooting a picture or portrait, don't do it. And respect all "keep out" type signs along the way.
There are more excellent side trips off "66" as you proceed east from Gallup. In particular, consider Acoma (Sky City); beautiful—stunning, in fact! At Cubero and Laguna you'll be seeing some of the best of the best of "old, old 66." Rustic scenes that are hard to describe await you. Just go there and take your time to enjoy it. Lots of history here……….
As we poke along the old highway toward Albuquerque, it's a great time for mind wandering or talking with companions. Either way, this is a part of "66" that will get you into an intra-perspective mood. As the Rio Grande river approaches, you're now coming into the largest city for miles in any direction.Coming into the "Big Q" (as I call it) on Central Avenue, you'll notice lots of great architecture downtown, great old motels (The El Vado from 1937) and the famous, art deco-style, Lobo Movie Theatre. Take your time and really enjoy these superb old Albuquerque buildings. In Old Town Park, there are great restaurants and a superb, historic church. An evening dinner there is great fun and atmosphere. Next month, we'll take the very old (1926-38) alignment from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Until then----remember to SLOW DOWN and you will Get Your Kicks!!
---Sky Silverton
EDITOR'S NOTE: "The Grapes of Wrath" chronicled the flight of America's dispossessed to California in the 1930s, and became a literary classic. In the 60th year of John Steinbeck's novel, Associated Press correspondent Kelly Kurt and photographer J. Pat Carter traveled the route of the migrants, looking back from this era of affluence at those worst of times and finding more than a few echoes of the past.
Of all the cars on old U.S. Route 66, the rusting four-door parked at a Tucumcari, N.M., gas pump is clearly going somewhere. There's an overstuffed bag strapped to the trunk lid and a weary-faced man stooped at one tire. A 4-year-old boy bounces on the back seat and whines. The boy is tired, explains his mother.
They're headed west.
Driving toward Arizona, looking to make a better life for a disabled adult son there, she says.
Gave up their home in Michigan to save for the trip. Resurrected their '85 Cadillac from the dead.
"We are displaced," Retta Dixon says calmly, her eyes shifting to the road. "But we have a tent and we're going to find a place to camp."
It was 60 years earlier that another family in an overloaded rattletrap defined this stretch of Highway 66 as the road of the displaced.
John Steinbeck called this fictional family the Joads, and their brutal trek west on the pages of "The Grapes of Wrath" came to represent the experience of those Great Depression migrants scorned as "Okies."
Much has changed on the migrant path. But from Oklahoma to California, even where SUVs outnumber the jalopies, Ma Joad's words still echo in the American faith that something better lies just a hard push ahead.
"Why, we're the people," she said, "we go on."
Sixty years later, a sprawling Cadillac noses onto the road of the Joads and heads west, into a blinding afternoon sun.
The same everywhere, anytime
To retrace the Joad trail in these best of times is to be reminded of those worst of times. It is to reflect that within living memory, an American family could lose its farm or business in a heartbeat and be cast penniless into the night, and that without the social safety nets we now take for granted, one fall took you straight to the bottom.
The trail begins in Sallisaw, hometown of the fictional Joads and starting point of the novel.
Here, in the eastern Oklahoma hills off Interstate 40, past the glitter of fast food, the library and two barbershops with striped poles, a quiet street is given over to a game of catch.
"I don't plan on going anywhere," 16-year-old Todd McGowan says, thumping his glove against his thigh.
"Same with me," adds McGowan's neighbor Buddy Gardenhire. "I'm pretty proud of who I am. It's each for their own in that."
These are the hardscrabble hills, where people knew Pretty Boy Floyd's folks and many call him a Robin Hood. Here people still resent Steinbeck for portraying their people as dust-blown and destitute, but a Grapes of Wrath Festival is held every October.
This year's festival featured a car show, a tractor pull, Indian tacos and arts and crafts, but not a single copy of "The Grapes of Wrath" was in sight. "It made Oklahoma look bad," snaps an elderly woman. She hasn't read the book. Nor has Gardenhire. But he wants to correct the impression it left on the outside world.
"Anybody can make a future in Sallisaw, just like you can in New York City," says the 19-year-old. He himself has worked framing houses and trimming trees. "If a man wants to get out and work, there's work," he says.
"If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book," John Steinbeck wrote in his journal. "But I am assailed by my own ignorance and inability."
He was 36, an Irish-German Californian, a college dropout who had been a laborer, then a journalist documenting the plight of the migrants. He was also an established author who had written a half-dozen novels, among them "Of Mice and Men."
When "The Grapes of Wrath" was published in April 1939, schools and libraries banned it, preachers railed against it and Oklahoma Congressman Lyle Boren denounced it as "a lie, a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind."
John Steinbeck, whose novel invented the term for 66, "The Mother Road". It won Steinbeck the Pulitzer Prize and worldwide acclaim. It spurred congressional investigations into California labor practices. It created a stir that lasted long after the wartime buildup brought the migrants jobs and World War II sent them into battle.
The migrants from whom Steinbeck drew his fiction came out of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri -- a great tide of more than one million people that flowed westward through the 1930s in search of work and shelter.
Arthur Hayes, a sharecropper in eastern Oklahoma, was among the last to leave for California, in 1941.
"We had three crop failures in a row, and then we had a good rain that made one pretty good crop. And I stayed with it two more years. So we had one good year out of six. That's five crop failures," he says. "If you don't make a crop, why, you don't survive."
Hayes drove a 1929 Model A Ford that "hammered and rattled and smoked." Ma, Pa, Rose of Sharon and the other Joads piled into an overloaded Hudson and headed west.
Past Checotah, Henryetta, Okemah. The Joads drove through Castle, and a few miles farther to Boley, where a rusting water tower still broadcasts the name in thick black letters.
Through the busy sprawl of Oklahoma City, onto old U.S. Route 66, west onto the rolling prairie where the scent of grass hangs in the air, down the streets of forgotten prairie towns, the ghosts are those of people in flight.
Gas stations stand with vacant windows.
Motel signs flake in the sun.
Store fronts sit boarded.
In rural western Oklahoma, today's flight is rural to urban.
Along the interstate in the middle of golden grasslands looms a fortress of walls and wire.
Many in Sayre, Okla., thought the jobs at the new private prison might revitalize the town, says Jack Dungan, a convenience store owner on Route 66.
But the road tugs at his 16-year-old son, Chris, and the other youth with city-sized ambitions.
"We lose most of them," Dungan says.
At the edge of Sayre, 287 miles out of Sallisaw along 66, pickup trucks flank a diner. Inside, a waitress named Misty circulates with a coffee pot. Grease hangs heavy in the air, along with sluggish flies.
An old rancher named Bear Mills sits in a booth. Smoke rises from his cigarette and circles his stained cowboy hat. He takes a deep drag.
"It was so damn dry then you didn't raise much of anything," he says, leaning his wiry frame across the Formica tabletop, eyes burning with memories of the mid-1930s.
The drought came to western Oklahoma and then the wind, and the term "Dust Bowl" was coined. The dust covered the crops, choked the livestock and blew so black it tricked the chickens into roosting at midday.
Landowners like himself could get by, Mills says. But tenant farmers -- confronted with low yields, mechanization and eviction by profit-seeking landlords -- tied their mattresses to their cars and trucks, loaded them with family and drove west. "I admired them," he says. "They were going someplace where they could get something to do."
They came from this place of dust. And they trekked from the east where there was no dust but plenty of hard times. They drove because the unseen Promised Land a half-continent away had to be better than what they had left.
Steinbeck drove himself to tell it because he knew what disappointments awaited them in California.
"There are about 5,000 families starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving," he wrote of migrant camps in 1938. Three times, he tried to tell their story. But he wasn't satisfied until "The Grapes of Wrath," in which he strove "to rip a reader's nerves to rags."
The exodus crossed 180 miles of Texas through Shamrock, Amarillo, Glenrio under the dangling stars of the vast sky; then 350 miles across New Mexico through Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Gallup, and on to the Arizona deserts. They journeyed in fragile, faltering cars, some of which died on the road.
"You wanted to help them, but you didn't dare," Hayes says. "You couldn't afford to help, so you just left them sitting alongside the road."
Sixty years later, 85-year-old Garnette Franklin can still see them rolling to her husband's service station in Holbrook, Ariz.
If she said a word to the ragtag stragglers, she can't remember. But the faces she can't forget.
"They were hopeless people. They were gray. Their clothes were gray. Their hair was gray. Their cars. They were all gray."
In the Hualapai Indian Reservation, Cheryle Beecher recalls the words the elders used to describe them: hygu mija -- starving white people.
Salvation came in tourism.
In New Mexico, three days into our journey, the canyon rocks glow gold in the morning sunlight. The boulders bear down like teeth along Interstate 40, where cars fly self-importantly above the landscape. The towns of the migrant route sit on the old road, bypassed. Outside of Gallup, Interstate 40 sprouts a town.
A Laundromat, a hair salon, restaurants, fax machines, movie theater and U.S. Post Office all share the great big roof called the Giant Travel Center. There's parking for at least 300 trucks.
The highway pulses with the high life of the longest peacetime boom in American history -- fast cars, SUVs with holders for 32-ounce cups, motor homes as big as buses heading to sunny retirement spots.
The Joads pushed 35 mph. These cars push 80.
Buffalo burgers!, the road signs scream. Moccasins! Cold beer! A free 72-ounce steak in Amarillo -- if you can eat it in an hour. Photos with real Navajos! 35 miles, 20 miles, just ahead.
"Yesterday I had my picture taken six times," says JoAnn Hubbard, the real Navajo at the Chief's Trading Post, a roadside curio shop. "It doesn't bother me. If they want me to dress in the Indian way, I do."
And sometimes there are small signs -- barely noticeable rectangles on the side roads that serve the mighty interstate, or on the main streets of the little towns. Historic Route 66, they read.
Steinbeck's "mother road" lies in scattered fragments these days.
Sometimes it's a trendy thoroughfare through urban centers and storefronts appealing to nostalgia: 66 Antique Mall. Salon 66. Route 66 Roadhouse. In a Texas pasture, 66 is a bridge to nowhere. In the little towns, it's an abandoned main street.
In 1978, I-40 opened a mile away and traffic on 66 stopped.
Salvation came in tourism. They pour in from all over the United States and from Europe and Japan. They photograph Angel Delgadillo, Seligman's man-about-town, in his old-time barber's chair, rummage through his Route 66 memorabilia, climb into his brother's clown-car jalopy for a free trip honking and lurching down 66.
Bums then, bugs now.
And finally, after four days on the road, almost 1,200 miles from Sallisaw, the Colorado River brims blue. California!
"Are you from Oklahoma?" an inspector at the border asks us.
In 1936, Los Angeles police officers stopped migrant families and turned them back. It was called the Bum Blockade. Today's inspectors run the agricultural inspection station. They are on the lookout for a different kind of migrant: Gypsy moths, Japanese beetles, any critter that might threaten California agriculture.
"You have a nice day now," the inspector says.
The migrant road crawled forward, through the Mojave Desert, through a beige landscape of rocks and brush. Today the Interstate offers a safer, more comfortable ride, and only a few cars pierce the silence and barrenness of old 66.
The migrants drove up past Tehachapi and down the winding grade, and then -- a breathtaking stop to stare into the great valley below. Green grids in all directions. Citrus, apricots, figs, grapes, almonds, walnuts, asparagus, cotton, onions. "I never knowed they was anything like her," Pa Joad sighed.
Over lunch at the senior center in Lamont, on the valley floor, Bobbie Harp describes making the same journey as the Joads when she was a child and her parents' reaction when they reached the valley.
"They thought they had come to the land of milk and honey," she says. "They found out real quick it wasn't easy here either."
No hallelujahs. No Promised Land. The constant refrain was, "Know of any jobs?" They said it in the squatter camps. They asked it along the canal in Lamont where Mrs. Harp's family slept for a while.
Hayes, the migrant from Oklahoma, still considers himself lucky. His brother-in-law had a job waiting for him on a ranch when he arrived. It paid 25 cents an hour. But off a dusty farm road, Steinbeck found a haven amid the green fields of toil.
The Arvin Federal Camp, or Weedpatch camp as it was known, still stands at the edge of town. Here, Steinbeck described a place where migrants could find shelter, sanitary facilities and, above all, dignity.
It still offers all that.
Sixty years later, behind the camp gate and the wood-frame buildings of Steinbeck's time, laughter bubbles through the screen door of a tiny cabin at the end of a row of identical cabins.
Yolanda Gomez, 31, smoothes her hair and steps out to the porch. Six months out of the year, for 14 years, she has been coming here from Texas, following the crops in the tracks of the migrants before her. "It gets to be that time of year. You look forward to it," she says.
The camp, now called the Sunset Labor Camp, is home to about 500 migrant workers and their families. Most are the children of Mexican immigrants, camp manager Rigoberto Martinez says.
The Gomezes and their five children have a clean, tidy cabin. The father drives a truck, hauling grapes, tomatoes and potatoes. He is working toward a long-haul trucking job and a permanent family home. Mrs. Gomez's dreams for her children are simple: "Out of the fields."
Steinbeck wrote of migrants working for starvation wages, and any complaints being denounced as communist talk. Today migrant field workers typically make $5.75 an hour plus bonuses -- enough to feel middle-class.
"We go to Disneyland. Doesn't everybody?" Mrs. Gomez says. "And when we can't do that, we go to Chuck E Cheese's."
Words of the Joads echo still
Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. As recently as 1990, a Broadway stage version of the novel won a Tony for best play. A year after finishing "The Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck wrote of the enemies it had made him, of the fame it had brought him and said "that part of my life that made the 'Grapes' is over."
But in the book, his Joads lived on. "Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one, and then E Then it don' matter," Tom Joad said. "Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where -- wherever you look."
On a fall day in the fields of Lamont, the harvest is nearing completion.
And in the Gomez cabin, a family is packing for the next move.
ANECDOTES AND PERSONAL
EXPERIENCES
Where is
America's Highway?
by Sky Silverton
Technically,
the road no longer exists. Certain
sections have been renumbered; other
stretches are abandoned; still other
pieces have been paved over by
interstate, so don't pick up a current
day road map and try to find it! But
yes, it IS still there for us to
explore----sort of. 
Route 66 was
free; and particularly west-bound, it
was a road of dreams, adventure and
challenge. In a way, it was America,
herself. So Where is Route 66? As
mentioned earlier, the road no longer
exists, per se. However, you can still
locate pieces of it, under differing
numbers. Using a Route 66 road guide
(available in larger book stores), you
can easily trace parts of the old road;
occasionally you may even wander off to
an abandoned stretch of old 66, where
the rustic scenery can get really
interesting!
From Gallup to Albuquerque, New Mexico
by Sky Silverton
On the way to Gallup, you will be right along side the Santa Fe rail road line. In this stretch, you'll find about the best of the old time rail lines. Playing tag with the trains is great fun, too. Be on the lookout for the two Amtrak passenger trains (one east and one west) that you will see most days.
As you pull into Gallup you'll see some of the most authentic of rustic old "66," but some of it is pretty sad. Suffice to say that Gallup's Main Street will never be known as competition for Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. On the west side of town, check out the old log cabin style motel rooms----what a riot. Ortega's souvenir shops abound as well---see my suggestion from last month's chapter and get yourself a "lucky" Kachina doll.THE GRAPES OF WRATH
revisited
Road of the Joads still paved with struggle, hope 60 years later
By Kelly Kurt
The Associated Press
Tuesday January 4, 2000
Watching the Okies roll down their main street, children in Seligman, Ariz., made cruel jokes. How do you tell a rich Okie from a poor Okie? A rich Okie has TWO mattresses tied to his car. Four decades later it was Seligman's turn to experience a sudden reversal of fortune.
