I woke up to a cloudy but dry day. After eating my third donut from the Donut Drive In, (not as good – donuts get stale after a while), I headed into Oklahoma City. It was rush hour and since everyone was speeding along, I decided to forgo audio and just drive in silence with my thoughts so as not to get distracted. Oklahoma had other plans. I was about a minute into the drive when I saw a giant (I mean ENORMOUS) sign off the interstate that said, “ RICK WARREN COURT CLERK”. It did not include the words Elect or Support. It also did not say Clerk of Courts which is the title I am used to for an elected official responsible for maintaining accurate court records and ensuring proper document filing. So my thoughts began to distract me. Is Rick running for election? Is he declaring he is a Court Clerk? Is he just reminding everyone? For which court does he clerk? Food court, tennis court, the court of public opinion? Why was Rick shouting this information at the public from the side of the interstate? By the time I reached my destination, I was no closer to the truth. Rick Warren, an Oklahoma City man of mystery. (As I sat down to write this post, I looked up Court Clerk. Court Clerk and Clerk of Courts are used interchangeably depending on the jurisdiction. He is a little less of a mystery, but not much).
The Milk Bottle Grocery was a grocery store and ice cream chain constructed in 1930. The milk bottle, designed to draw attention to the store, was added in 1948. It is very small and right on the side of the street amidst large stores of all kinds as well as a modern Braums chain ice cream and hamburger restaurant down the block. I wish it was still a little ice cream place, instead it is a nail salon.
Lucille’s Gas Station was built in Hydro, OK in 1929 by Carl Ditmore. The service station was renamed the Provine Station in the 1930s. In 1941, Carl and Lucille Harmons purchased the station and renamed it Lucille’s. The family worked and lived in the same building, with the station in the front and the living quarters in the back and upstairs. In 1971, the completion of I-40 limited direct access to Rt 66 but Lucille kept the station running until her death in August, 2000. She passed away in her home, which was also her business along the shoulder of Route 66 for 59 years.
The last stop I made in Oklahoma was in the small town of Sayre. The Beckham County Courthouse was built in 1911 and is one of the few courthouses in Oklahoma topped by a large dome. The courthouse appeared in the film The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel. Families headed to California (such as the Joads in the film) passed through Sayre on Route 66, and many viewed the city as the start of the west.
The next stop was my favorite of the day. I left Oklahoma and pointed the car toward Shamrock, Texas. I was headed to Tower Station & U-Drop Inn Cafe. The gas station restaurant was built in 1936 of brick and green glazed tile and represented the art-deco style that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. J.M. Tindall and R.C Lewis constructed the tower and building at a cost of $23,000. There are conflicting stories about the design. One states that the design was originally drawn by John Nunn, a friend of Tindall, who picked up a nail and scratched out plans in the dirt. Another story says the unique building was designed by architect J.C. Berry of Pampa, Texas. He supposedly took inspiration from an image of a nail stuck in the soil. However it came about, the design is iconic and appears in the film “Cars” as Ramons Automotive Body and Paint Shop. If you haven’t seen the movie “Cars”, you really should. I will be rewatching it when I get home.
As I was taking pictures of Tower Station, a sweet older woman came out of the gift shop (located in the middle of the picture above) and started telling me about the building. She invited me into the shop and showed me the picture of the Tower Station & U-Drop Inn Cafe with its representation in “Cars”. I talked with her for a while and then headed into the U-Drop Inn Cafe for lunch. She gave me her lunch recommendation, the pulled pork sandwich, (which I had) and asked me how it was when I was finished. I told her it was delicious and she seemed so pleased. She also said, “The President seems to be making everybody mad but we will get through it. We always do.” This was completely unsolicited. It must have been on her mind. She could not have been sweeter or prouder of the Station.
One of the U-Drop Inn Cafe’s most famous guests was Elvis Presley. There is a life size cut out of the King at the table where he ate. My mother’s younger sister, Suzi loved Elvis when she was growing up. My mother was not fond of Presley and used to tease Suzi by calling him “Elviris Peesly”. This drove Suzi crazy. Suzi got back at her by chasing her with worms. As I left the cafe, I gave Elviris a little smile, ready to move on to the next stop.
As I traveled on Rt 66 towards Groom, TX, I saw the Leaning Tower. There is no way you could miss it. Given the low vegetation of the Texas landscape, you can see it for quite a ways before you are upon it. Why is it leaning? It was not hit by a tornado, or shifted by an earthquake, but purposefully leaned as a marketing gimmick. Ralph Britten wanted to open a truck stop and restaurant off Rt 66 and he bought a water tower to attract new visitors. Using a bulldozer, he elevated two of the tower’s legs off the ground, dangling them in midair without support so the water tower tilted at an 80 degree angle. This trick helped his business tremendously. It caught the eye of every passing motorist for years, many terrified the tower was falling over. Unfortunately, Britten’s truck stop burnt down in a devastating fire in the mid 1980s. The leaning tower remains, part of the oddities of Route 66.
Amarillo, TX was my last stop of the day. As I was driving there, the winds began to pick up and tumbleweeds blew across the road. The winds got stronger and stronger and the tumbleweeds became more and more frequent. When I stopped to take a picture of the second to last thing I was to see, I was pelted with dust, tiny rocks, and tiny pieces of dried grass. I walked into a little shop to buy a can of spray paint and said to the cashier, “Man, it is windy out there”. She replied, “Yeah, this is spring in Texas”.
This second to the last thing was a giant cowboy. Created by Glenn Goode, this cowboy was positioned in front of a business in Sanger TX. Prior to his move to Amarillo in 2004, the cowboy was neglected and used for target practice (this is Texas remember) and that is where the nickname, “2nd Amendment Cowboy” comes from. Before the cowboy came to Amarillo, Goode repaired all the damage and restored him. And yes, those are two giant pistols at the cowboy’s feet.
The cowboy was 1 mile from the last stop of the day – Cadillac Ranch. This is one of the most famous sites on Route 66. In collaboration with The Ant Farm, a San Francisco art collective, eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 (he found the Roman Numeral III pretentious) funded the placement of ten Cadillacs half-buried in a dusty field in 1974. The cars were positioned nosed down and facing west, inclined at the same angle as the pyramids of Giza. Most of the cars were purchased from junkyards and averaged about $200. At first, the cars displayed their original paint colors – turquoise, banana yellow, gold, and sky blue, but the installation was barely complete when people started scratching or painting their names on the cars. Marsh encouraged this and now spray paint is sold out of a truck on site. The cars are periodically repainted various colors, sometimes for TV commercials, to honor a birthday or death, or to provide a fresh canvas for future visitors. The cars were briefly “restored” to their original colors by the hotel chain Hampton Inn in a series of Route 66 landmark restoration projects. The new paint jobs and even the plaque commemorating the project lasted less than 24 hours without fresh graffiti. Cadillac Ranch was originally located in a wheat field, but in 1997 the installation was moved 2 miles west, to a cow pasture along I-40, in order to place it further from the limits of growing Amarillo. Both sites belonged to Marsh.
I put the can of spray paint I purchased at the shop with the 2nd Amendment Cowboy to use here. I sprayed the initials of our family members in places where the ever increasing dusty winds would not blow the paint back in my face. JA, RA, PA, KM, KM, BM, you are all here. Or you were. You may be painted over by now.
Covered in dust, eyes and mouth gritty, and needing a shower, I headed to the hotel. The sites today were fewer and further apart, but nonetheless fascinating to see. Tomorrow I head to Albuquerque and end the Route 66 portion of my adventure. I will be sad to see the last of the giant oddities.
What’s In Between 