Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 66

E4 The Arizona Republic Sunday, July 22, 1990 i 1 Aura of Route 66 i A I nasn'i aiminisnea I (68 the fai among The Snow Cap Drive-In in Seligman has Route 66 memorabilia galore. k. -t r01d highway still symbolizes romance, adventure Seligman native Juan Delgadillo runs the Snow Cap Drive-In, site of a recent meeting of the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona. on the way out because the ladies would be on the mountain side of the road and they wouldn't see the drop." Moore is president of the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona, a group dedicated to preserving and publicizing the old road. Her hotel, now a saloon on the first floor and a museum above, is one of the association's tools.

Fifty years ago, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night in the Oatman Hotel. They have since become a town legend. "Gablc'd come here incognito and go upstairs in the hotel and gamble," said Anne Smith, who runs the Oatman General Store with her mother, Mary Dillingham "The old-timers liked to see him 'cause he was such a terrible poker player, but a nice guy. Lousy good old boy." Goodbye, fast lane Dillingham came to Oatman 20 years ago. Smith came from San Jose, a year later "to get out of the fast lane." They like Oatman, especially in the evenings when the "flatlandcrs" leave.

"Route 66 draws people," Dillingham said. "They say they-werc. here in a Modcl-T Ford when they were 10 years old and the road was dirt. They don't always remember it much, but they know they came through." Dillingham held up a button printed by the association. "It says, i Did It on Route she said with a grew up in the dust-bowl days when 66 was the artery from the Midwest to California, the promised land.

I loved the Lincoln Highway. Most people don't know Route 66 was called that." Everywhere, people were attracted to the car but in love with the road. Many had memories of Route 66, and hopes for what the road might become again. Old times in Oatman In Arizona, Route 66 is not all ghost road. The section from Seligman to the California border is one of the best-preserved segments of the entire highway.

On my way to meet Wallis in Flagstaff, I had driven east from Oatman, slopping to visit people who made a living on Route 66. Oatman may be the smallest town in the world that has a parking lot reserved for tour buses. The tortuous road from Kingman historic Route 66 coiled up through the mountains, past old mining camps in a rocky, empty landscape. Suddenly, I came upon a tiny town crowded with tourists and a herd of tame burros that wandered like celebrities though the street. "Usuaily buses come in from the -other direction," said Billic Jo Moore, owner of the Oatman Hotel.

"Wc had a bus from Oregon come up the road from Kingman, and the driver asked if there was another way out because his passengers were elderly women and they couldn't take the stress. I told him he wouldn't have to worry sly smile. "Some people say, 'Yeah, but I got off the Out of Oatman, Route 66 became Andy Dcvinc Avenue in Kingman, then shot northeast to open land where a few fat clouds hung like props in a broad, blue sky. I passed some tattered buildings in Hackberry and Valentine on my way to the Frontier Cafe in Truxton. Ray Barker, a founding member of the Route 66 association, ran the cafe and the adjoining motel from 1957 until his death in April.

His widow, Mildred, runs the place now. When I arrived, Mildred had run to the bank in Kingman, 42milcs away. Behind the counter was Jerry Hughes, who was waiting tables, and Marcic Durham, who looks after the rooms in the motel. Durham came to Truxton in 1955, before the interstate took away the traffic. Then, Route 66 had a reputation as a bloody and dangerous road.

"Hon, where there's more'n three cars, it's always dangerous," she said. "Trucks loaded in Oklahoma and all of 'cm needed to make L.A. by Tuesday. They'd get here Sunday, just a solid string of 'cm, bumper to bumper. And on June the 10th at midnight, you'd sec a mass of lights comin up over the hill there when the schools let out in California and everybody 'd leave on vacation.

By midnight, they'd all be here." 'Wrecker never stopped' "I seen the wrecker make five trips i AURA, from page El papers and radio stations 'from Chicago to Los Angeles. But somewhere along the way, the trip had become more than a promotion. Wallis had slept and eaten in towns on the route, visiting barbers, peddlers, waitresses, gas pumpers and others who were the heart and soul of the old highway. To them, he had become an itinerant preacher of sorts, an articulate man who would recite again and again a gospel they loved to hear: the legend of 66, the highway John Steinbeck had called "the mother road, the road of flight." "Route 66 is America before it became generic," Wallis said as we sped out of Flagstaff into northwestern Arizona. "On the interstate, you have a cookie-cutter culture.

A Big Mac in Chicago is a Big Mac in Springfield is a Big Mac in St. Louis or Amarillo. "But when you're on the old road and you sec a cafe, you have no idea what you'll get. You may find a big case of food poisoning. Or you might find a plateful of ambrosia, a meal worth dying for.

You just don't know. The road is adventure. There's nothing about it that's predictable." I was riding with Wallis on a stretch where, for purposes of going from one place to another, Route 66 no longer exists. For more than 30 years, it was the great artery that channeled migrants, desperadoes and tourists across the country from Chicago to Santa Monica. In Arizona, it went from to Topock, flirting with the tracks of the Atchison, Topcka and jSanla Fe Railway.

Then came the age of intcrstatcs, land Route 66 was bypassed a few miles at a time by the mighty 1-40. Today, there are places in Arizona I where Route 66 is -a ghost road, a scries of fragments that dead-end or fade into paths that wind across the "countryside. Backtracking the cracks I "In areas like this, you've got to backtrack to find it," Wallis said as 'jpc stood on a deserted portion of 'Route 66. Since leaving Flagstaff, we had made our way off the interstate again and again to visit pieces of the lold road. Here, the "pavement under our feet was the color of rust and riddled with cracks.

In many of the creases, wildflowcrs grew. "That's WPA concrete up there," Wallis said, pointing to a line where road suddenly turned from red to whitc. "The arc different all Jalong because of the materials they used to pave it." lie stood on the side of the road land looked both ways. "In the old days, there was so jmuch traffic that you and I would have to dash to get to the other side," Ihe said. "Now it's this varicose old veteran.

I "But people arc getting off the big Toads to look for stretches like this. A -Belgian couple on their honeymoon. Yuppies from St. Louis in a Volvo Jwith two and a half kids and a basset Jiound in the back scat. They're Jetting off to find the old road." Earlier, wc had stopped at a general torc in Parks, a hub of activity in the forest.

As people gathered to look at Jhc car, an old man in overalls called J)ut from his van. "Did you win?" he asked Wallis. i Wallis told him he wasn't showing Jhc car but promoting a book. The Jnan nodded. He had seen Wallis on Jclcvision.

He got out of his van and eamc over to chat. "I'm from Missouri," he said. "I 1 a day with broke-down cars they couldn't fix at the garage. The wrecker never stopped. When the drivers got so tired they couldn't drive anymore, someone else would climb in and take their place." "Raymond drove the ambulance," said Hughes, who came to Truxton with her husband in 1966.

"They called it the meat wagon. In later years, they started to regulate all that, but back then you just loaded people into the wagon and went as fast as you could to the nearest hospital." When the interstate opened, the old road became safer. And the cafe still did business. When I sat in a booth, I sank into a niche in the scat left by countless customers before me. "Wc had enough locals that wc did OK," Durham said.

"Now we get a better customer. Sightseers. Used to be you'd gel the potty customers, fellas that wanted a drink of water and to use the restroom and how far is it to the next stop. These now wants to stop and eat. And visit." One man's story Many of the tourists who drive the road have heard the story of a Seligman man who has come to represent the history of Route 66 in Arizona.

Angel Delgadillo is 63. He was born in Seligman, to a family of nine children. He left Arizona long enough to go to barber college in California bu returned and has stayed to cut hair, trim mustaches and raise four children of his own. His barbershop adjoins the tiny office of the Seligman Chamber of Commerce. While I visited him there, men came looking for haircuts.

"Be with you soon!" he'd say, and the men would disappear into a back room to play pool and wait. Delgadillo smiled when I offered to talk while he worked. "If they want me to cut their hair, they'll wait," he said. "If they just want a haircut, they'll go somewhere else." I-40's intrusion In September 1978, Seligman was bypassed by 1-40. Delgadillo remembers it well.

"Before, there were 10,000 automobiles going by here every 24 hours," he said. "Then wc got bypassed. And not to get dramatic about it, but it was like they put a big gate at each end of town. So wc said, 'What can wc do? How can wc. recoup 70 percent of our tourism There was talk of trying to attract industry to the town, but Delgadillo had another idea, lit was raised on Route 66.

He had watched caravans of farmers make their way along the road toward a new life in California. He and his brothers had made shadows in the glare of Okie headlights and laughed at the strange things they saw. "I remember the dust-bowlcrs, and I know they were poor, so poor," he said. "But we were kids. Wc made fun of them.

We'd say, 'Oh, here comes a rich Okie, he's got two But they were struggling. I know that, since I've raised children of my own, and I know how I would have hated to be in their shoes." Delgadillo knew the power of memory and myth. And he knew that the key to Scligman's survival ran right down the center of the town. "Me and my brother Juan, we kept saying to people, 'Route he said. "It's right there, all we have to do is let people know about it." Three years ago, the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona met for the first time in Scligman's Copper Cart restaurant.

Only a handful of merchants were at that gathering, but today the association has nearly 900 members worldwide. A family reunion It was at a recent meeting of the association in Seligman that my ride in Michael Wallis' red Corvette came to an end. The meeting was held on picnic tables at the Snow Cap Drive-In on Route 66. It had all the trappings of a family reunion. Angel Delgadillo was there with his brothers Juan and Joe.

Their sister, Mary, with gray hair pinned up under a Route 66 visor, sold raffle tickets for a copy of Route 66: The Mother Road. Bobbie Jo Moore came from Oatman, others from across Arizona. They sang songs and listened to the gospel of Wallis. "If Route 66 is anything," he told them, "it's people making a buck. It's people selling haircuts.

Magnets for the refrigerator, a plate of enchiladas, a room for the night. That's what it always has been. People need to get off that lifeless interstate, that highway without an ounce of adventure in its soul, and get back to the sections of Route 66 that remain. It's that simple." Maybe. But I left Seligman thinking that it was something more.

Route 66 may be a commercial phenomenon, but it also has the power to stir up memories you don't even know you have, images of another time and another way of life. As Wallis and I had approached Seligman a few hours earlier, we had taken an exit off 1-40 that put us on a hill where wc could look down and see the interstate and the old road side by side. The interstate was black and thick with traffic. Route 66 was homely and deserted. As wc started down the last few miles to town, sunflowers began to appear, invading the edges of the pavement.

Before long, they were as tall as children and so thick that their leaves formed a lacy green fence on cither side of the car. Behind us, wc heard the sound of a train on the tracks south of the road. Wallis slowed and waited for a ycllow-and-black Santa Fe engine to catch up, pulling a line of cars that went back as far as wc could sec. Wc kept pace with the train as wc moved toward Seligman. The tracks ran so close that wc could sec the features of the men in the engine.

They watched us, and waved and sounded the whistle. The moment was perfect: I wanted to shout like a child. And I realized that this was as fine a symbol of Route 66 as anything I'd seen: A sleek, black train racing a red car along a road littered with flowers and old dreams, both of them hurtling toward a tiny town on the horizon that would be glad to see them. ,1 fe i '4 (I If 4f I i 7 i -if 4 i -A, 1 I Photos by Don EmpleThe Arteona Republic Sections of Route 66 are hardly used anymore since Interstate 40 bypassed the road and most of its towns..