Get hip to this timely tip
If you’re reading this message sometime close to when it was sent, I am currently racing along scenic Interstate 40, somewhere between central Arizona and Central Mexico, skirting the south edge of Navajo Nation. When I say “scenic” Interstate 40, no sarcasm is intended. I doubt there is a more steadily breathtaking 12-hour stretch of highway anywhere in the country.
It was just over a year ago that I did this drive for the first time. It felt like my only option at the time; my new car could handle the journey, airports were greatly to be feared, and a motel stop (particularly in Arizona, which would be the midway point no matter how you slice it) seemed like a date with disease. So I decided that, while my only option was outrageous, it remained the only one there was. I would drive the 12-hours from my home in Los Angeles to my family in New Mexico. I would drive it alone, and I would drive it straight through, stopping only for gas and coffee.
An idea this crazy could only be borne of some sort of necessity. But that first drive surprised me: I kind of…loved it? For me, the “freedom” of the open road means a freedom from having to do anything but stay awake and drive, to entertain myself with saved-up podcast episodes, audiobooks, stand-up specials, audio-described sitcoms, and showtunes. When I get tired, I sing. When I need coffee, or gas, or a bathroom break, I stop. I get to decide and no one else has any say in the matter. I wouldn’t want to live my whole life like that. It wouldn’t be fun if there was nothing different waiting for me on the other end. But for 12 hours at a stretch, a few times a year, it’s pretty excellent.
At the end of that first trip, I wasn’t exactly eager to jump back in the car and do it all again. But a couple weeks later, I got another surprise: the drive back west was still beautiful, but somehow looked totally new, a benefit of the change in daylight and the differences between East-and West-faces of the mesas and mountains along the way.
Nearly all of my childhood Christmases began and and ended with a road trip to New Mexico. Me, my parents, and a minivan: We took three days to drive over a thousand miles. Day One: Mile after mile of the flat, harvested farmlands that make up central Illinois; the St Louis Arch was the shining beacon that told you this leg was soon ending. Day Two: on the way to Oklahoma City or Tulsa the golden crags of the Ozarks gave way too soon to a much less scenic stretch of I-40. Day 3: nothing but the bleak, yellow endlessness of the Texas panhandle, maybe a pit stop in appropriately-named Amarillo…until, lo and behold, we crossed the border into the Land of Enchantment and the vistas became vistas again.
The value of scenery to a road trip should not be understated.
The stretch of I-40 I’m (probably) currently racing down follows along old Route 66. Careful readers may have noticed that my life (and much of my family history) follows along that famous old road; I used to work next to a sign in downtown Chicago that marked its beginning; I also used to work near the part of Santa Monica Boulevard that forms its end. But while a road might have a start and an end, our walk (or drive) along it is a back and forth. The more times traveled, the more life lived. Or something like that.
One of the cassettes that entertained me and my parents on our holiday road-trips was Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable, which features, appropriately enough, her rendition of the famous song, “Route 66.”
It winds from Chicago to LA
She’d belt out
More than 2000 miles all the way
She’d hit a point in the song where she named cities that were beyond our journey:
Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona…
Kingman, Barstow
Little did I know back then, that she was naming all the cities where I would eventually stop for gas.
For much of today’s drive, much of the scenery in question IS Route 66. You just look out the window and this older, slower road is right there in clear view. I often think about getting off an driving on that long-romanticized road. But what would be the point? It would get me to the same places, but take more time.
I know very well why I’m tempted by all those “Historic Route 66” exit signs. It’s this idea that I’ll pull onto the old highway and be a part of living history. In a way, that’s true. But the history I’d find there would be a far cry from the road in its heyday. Most of the Old Route’s attractions don’t exist anymore; even if they did exist, that fantasy — cruising past them, maybe stopping in at a rambling roadhouse beneath a pristine neon sign — would be a kind of Disneyfied version of history. The kind where we get to do the fun parts and still keep all our good, modern stuff. Where we can pop back over to I-40 whenever we get bored.
This trip, when I the lyrics to the old Route 66 song start playing in my head, I have a new thought: at the time the song was written, fact that there was a road at all was reason enough to compose a whole song. The implications of that are pretty wild.
It winds from Chicago to LA
More than 2000 miles all the way
Raise your hands if, in the 21st century, that sales pitch knocks your socks off.
Anybody?
You don’t need me to remind you how hard it is to be grateful to be alive in modernity. But when we romanticize the roads of the past, we forget that the national speed limit used to be 55 miles per hour. We forget that once upon time seat belts weren’t mandatory, and crashes meant near-certain death.
So I’ll admit it: this holiday season, for more reasons that one, I’m grateful for my pre-owned Nissan with onboard computer. I’m grateful for giant, well-lit gas stations. I’m grateful for cheap, effective face masks. I’m grateful for Bluetooth. And I’m grateful for Interstate 40, with its scenic views of snow capped mountains, ruddy mesas, and Historic Route 66.
In case you missed it:
This essay I wrote about phone calls to my dad was published by Litro Mag online: https://www.litromagazine.com/usa/2021/11/nothing-else-on-my-end/