Two Roads Diverge: Route 66, “Route 66,” and the Mediation of American Ruin

Abstract

I explore Route 66 as both a material environment and constellation of media texts, highlighting how contemporary exigencies having inspired the creation of simulations and simulacra of the road. Simulations include reproductions of historical sites and experiences, such as refurbished gas stations and nostalgic performances; simulacra include the construction of conflated geographies that obscure the meaning of “the real” altogether, as seen in the Route 66 Casino Hotel and the movie Cars. Ultimately the question of “real” assumes a central focus in this piece, as it frequently does in research inspired by an omnitopian framework, as today's Route 66 entrepreneurs create, sell, and enact images of the “Mother Road” to tourists, travelers, and even academics who sometimes prefer inauthenticity to any number of supposedly real histories of the highway.

Keywords:

• Authenticity
• nostalgia
• omnitopia
• roadside
• Route 66
• simulacra
• simulation

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge Greg Dickinson and Donovan Conley for organizing this special issue, which grew from a fascinating and productive panel at the National Communication Association's 2007 annual conference. The author also appreciates Matthew Spangler and David Terry, along with the anonymous reviewers, for their thoughtful comments on a previous version of this essay. Finally, the author thanks SJSU's Office of Undergraduate Studies for providing essential support to this project.

Notes

1. While this essay concentrates on processes of how Route 66 communicates a set of values, I share Nodelman's (2007) inquiry into why: “Why has 66 turned out to be more interesting to so many as a downgraded, abandoned, or disappeared highway than it was as a functioning strip of pavement?” (p. 172).

2. Route 66ers struggle mightily with notions of authenticity. Who is a real Mother Road advocate and who is merely a collector of souvenirs? At least some of this distinction may be traced to the construction of Route 66 found in Michael Wallis's (1992) Route 66: The Mother Road, the most significant work on the subject published in a generation: To Eyerman and Löfgren (1995), Michael Wallis “develops a classical polarization between the tourist and the real traveller, a rhetorical pastiche on superficial and genuine experience of past and present” (p. 59).

3. Scholars that have followed MacCannell's more tolerant analyses of modern tourism include Redfoot's (1984) rebuke to the “cultured despisers” who “denigrate the reality experiences of the tourist” (p. 304), Wang's (1999) proposal that authenticity ought not be defined by outside “experts” but according to the perspectives of tourists themselves, and Cole's (2007) claim that rebukes of tourist commodification by privileged outsiders reflect little of the advantages perceived by locals. See Caton and Santos (2007) for an application of this perspective to the Route 66 tourist.

4. Responding to Jorge Luis Borges's fable depicting the laying of a map upon an empire, Jean Baudrillard (2006/1994) states, “It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself” (p. 1, emphasis in original).

5. Ned and Michelle Leuchtner have accomplished a similar goal, rebuilding Cool Springs Camp in Arizona's Sitgreaves Pass atop the ruins of the original, which burned in 1966.

6. Not to a desired affect. Williams (2007) recalls that footrace organizer C. C. Pyle failed to properly advertise Route 66 in his promotional materials and even appeared to denigrate the highway as a safe pathway for his runners. Even worse, “Pyle besmirched the good name of Highway 66 by inviting a barrage of negative publicity associated with the race, such as being egged and operating games of chance” (p. 217).

7. Childers and Bradbury (1996) recall: “During the latter years of Route 66, some souvenir shops and roadside stands hawked Southwestern kitsch such as cheap turquoise and silver jewelry and rubber hatchets, but in the beginning many of the operations were as indigenous to the countryside as the hills over which the highway passed” (p. 24).

8. This is, I should add, one omnitopian sensibility among several. Other articulations of omnitopia include Dung Kai Cheung's The Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (English excerpt in Cheung, 1998) and Robert Redeker's (2003) Inhuman: Internet, School, and Humanity.

9. POPS does sell at least one entirely local product, Round Barn Root Beer, in tribute to the famed Round Barn also located in Arcadia.

10. Shapiro (2007) notes, “The popularity of reproductions and simulacra demonstrates the cultural and architectural significance of various recent past styles and structures. However, while copies thrive, ‘originals’ often sit vacant or are slated for demolition to make way for the construction of an imitation of something else” (p. 11).

11. As this essay was nearing its final draft, Bob Waldmire was nearing the end of his own journey, living in a converted school bus and dying of cancer. On November 22, well-wishers gathered at Springfield, Illinois's Cozy Dog Drive-In to celebrate Bob's life and purchase samples of his artwork. Like many students of Route 66, I feel fortunate to have met the man once, back in 1996 when he was running the International Bioregional Old Route 66 Visitor Center in Hackberry, Arizona. Our visit forged an indelible memory for me. Of course, it is the nature of the road that Waldmire will exist for most people as a reproduced signature on his myriad and stunningly detailed postcard images of Route 66's places and people, an ephemeral souvenir sold at nearly every stop along the highway. That said, he chose not live on as the namesake for the bus in the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. The producers were forced to select “Fillmore” to signify their aging hippy character instead of “Waldmire” because Waldmire, a vegetarian, didn't want to help sell hamburgers through the movie's tie-ins with fast food restaurants (Schmadeke, 2009).

12. Steinhauer (2009) notes that Route 66 never actually terminated at the Santa Monica Pier; its final stop was the less photogenic intersection of Olympic and Lincoln Boulevards. No matter, local boosters added an “End of the trail” Route 66 shield to the pier when celebrating the road's 83rd anniversary in 2009. What about those purists who reject the creation of a fake endpoint as a means merely to give tourists something to photograph when they reach the Pacific coast? Steinhauer quotes Route 66 Preservation Foundation chair James M. Conkle: “It's a myth … but it is a myth added to all the other myths of Route 66.”

13. While an extraordinary example of the theme, I should note that other Route 66 sites like the town of Lexington's Memory Lane and the Towanda Walking Trail attempt similar modes of conflation, gathering parts of the whole into a singular locale subject to the pedestrian viewer's gaze.

14. On May 20, 2008, fire gutted the Rock Cafe, which opened in 1939. The destruction of a small diner merited regional news coverage, but the Rock's near-destruction remains unknown to most folks living more than a hundred miles from Stroud, Oklahoma. Even so, Route 66 roadies worldwide poured out their concerns and support to owner Dawn Welch, encouraging her to rebuild. The Rock Cafe reopened a year later.

15. Fotsch (2001) reminds us how General Motors knew this particularly well.