“A window to what America used to be like before global warming, oil crisis, IT, marketing, mass media, Gulf war, road rage, DWI, Amber alerts, information highway………”

Images of Old Route 66 make their way across the Atlantic. They will show up in magazines or movies and ever since I was a little girl, I knew this was a place I wanted to go and see for myself. I felt the same way about New Orleans and I went there and lived there, till Katrina hit. Now we live in Albuquerque, on the corner of Eubank and Central, the Historic Route 66.

 I love Central, I love the atmosphere, all the 50s and 60s places, it is like you stepped into a time-machine. But “doing” the Mother  Road lay dormant for a while. We were too busy recouperating from Katrina and getting settled in. But it is impossible to not notice where you are and how close Route 66 is to you all the time. Because I homeschool my son, we walk and bus a lot and you get so much more time to notice and soak in all the signs and places.

So there ya go: There were days off, there was a very modest budget and the vague plans became more efined. I spent most of summer planning and researching and to my amazement found that there are dozens and dozens of fora and bulletin boards and groups dedicated to Route 66. It is a whole cult of Route 66 afficionados and travelers. By car, vintage or regular, by Harley, natives and foreigners from as far as Australia do the Mother Road. A  dad and his grown up son. A recently retired couple. A group of girlfriends. They are all making their dream come true.

Information and experiences get exchanged and I have seen the most breath taking photos coming by. What exactly is it that draws people to the Mother Road, I don’t know yet, but I am about to find out. My guess right now is that it is a feeling of nostalgia for an era that at least seems less rushed, less complicated, more laid back and friendly. Like paintings from Rcokwell.

It is a longing for a time when you did not know that watching a nuclear test blast through sooted glasses would kill you eventually. It was before we knew that exhaust fumes were slowly killing our earth. In a time when kids could still play outside by themselves and come home safely at diner time. When the wildest we saw on TV was Elvis jerking his hips a foot to the left and a foot to the right.

Food came from farms to the stores as it was harvested. Not genetically manipuleted, not hydrolized, sterilized, de tastesized, colorized, preserved, conserved and plasticized. Just plain old mottled apples with the occasional worm in them.

The only guns where those to shoot the occasional rabbit for a stew, not to shoot your high schol mates or innocent little girls. Sure, even then there were signs of changes to come, but all and all, they were peaceful times. And I think this feeling of quality time was soaked into those pictures and movies that crossed the Atlantic and installed themselves into the little girl that I was then and made me decide, back then, that one day…..

I want my child to experience this feeling while the Mother Road is still there, at least partially. I want him to feel the sweetness of the Lucy Ball era, of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Of cruising in your car and not feeling guilty about it. Of the kind waitress at the small diner, rather than the cranky, indifferent school kid at the junk food restaurant, pale faced from lack of sleep and chewing gum.

 I want him to see how progress and nature can blend together to perfection, one complementing the other. How the Mother Road gets embraced in the loving arms of Mother Earth.