A Thousand Tiny Attractions

May 3, 2018. Springfield Missouri to Tulsa Oklahoma

A travel essay, like any essay, should have a unifying theme. And yet, unless it contains a visit to some great and consequential monument, a day on the road is a miscellany that requires ingenuity at least to distill down to a unifying theme. Route 66, in particular, revels in its own miscellany, cheerfully refusing to be consistent in anything. Of all our days on the road, this one may have been the most miscellaneous of all. So let miscellany be the unifying theme of the day, and of this essay. Miscellany, after all, has charms of its own.

Adding to the miscellany of the day is a storm system that passed over in the night and blessed the morning with some very miscellaneous weather, including ample periods of rain. Fortunately, the day’s planned route is not terribly long since this is a part of the route scattered with many miscellaneous attractions, and we had allowed time to stop and gawk at several of them. But since gawking in the rain is not much fun, we decided to make a leisurely morning and hope for the weather to clear.

There were three very loud Englishmen in the motel’s breakfast room. Apparently, from their bellowed conversation, they were doing Route 66 west to east. As a Canadian born in England, who has experienced the ugly American tourist in Europe, it was nice to see roles reversed and ugly English tourists being obnoxious in America.

I spent the early part of the morning pouring over the weather radar, looking for an opening so we could get to Joplin and wait out a long band of storms over lunch. I managed to time it more or less right. We drove on in drizzle rather than tempest.

We passed the celebrated Gay Parita Service Station in the rain but did not stop.

The Gay Parita features in many of the lists of can’t-miss attractions on Route 66, but I have come to see that such lists miss the point. Route 66 is not about a few big attractions but about a thousand tiny ones. And you can’t see every one of the thousand tiny attractions on Route 66, so why stop when it is raining, even for the slightly more noteworthy ones like this? It is, after all, just a souvenir shop in a renovated gas station with some old bric-a-brac on display. There’s nothing wrong with that, but, like regular service stations, if you miss this one, there is another just down the road.

Sure enough, just down the road we passed another celebrated service station of which I can no longer remember the significance.

And then another.

There are a lot of celebrated service stations on Route 66.

Why celebrate something so mundane as a service station? Because Route 66 is a road, I suppose, and because roads need service stations, and if you are going to celebrate the road, I guess you should celebrate the service stations. And if that sounds like I am being cynical or snarky about it, I’m not. I actually think old service stations are cool. I have a master’s degree in the history of technology, so this stuff interests me. But there are enough of them that I can get my celebrated service station kicks when it isn’t raining.

We find a marvelous authentic Mexican restaurant in Carthage, Missouri, called Habaneros Mexican Grill. I have fish salad which is wonderful. Anna finds her dish too bland, asks for hot sauce, and regrets it.

Our plan to wait out the next band of storms in the restaurant was foiled by fast service and the lunch rush. There was still a lineup at the door when we were finished, so we surrendered our table and drove on through a deluge to Braun’s – a curious local chain that combines a hamburger joint, ice cream shop, and mini grocery in one building. We passed several afterwards, apparently all built to the exact same plan. The ice cream is good. This is the first fast food chain of the trip that has not disappointed. We waited at Braun’s for the last band of rain to pass and headed out for the celebrated Rainbow bridge — a fitting monument, I suppose, to mark the end of a deluge.

The bridge is not exactly an inspiring sight, though it is pretty enough. It was built at a time when making local bridges pretty was still something that occurred to people. Today, if a bridge isn’t a mile long, no one cares what it looks like. Still, the distinction of the Rainbow Bridge is not that it is an engineering marvel but simply that it is the last of its particular kind that has not fallen down yet. Long may it stand.

We stopped at the welcome center in Baxter Springs, Kansas. There was a very old, very chatty man in charge. I bought a route 66 hat (a second one) and took a picture of Anna standing beside an antique gas pump. I have taken a lot of pictures of Anna standing beside antique gas pumps on this trip. Here is another.

The old man in the Baxter Springs welcome center told a story about someone complaining about a couple in their 90s living in sin. How much sin can they get up to, he asks, but good on them if they do. How many times a day does he tell this story? How many times does he laugh at its so-obvious punchline? The story, I suppose, never gets old as long as there are new people to tell it to. This is as it should be.

Another miscellaneous observation: Oklahoma is full of Historic Route 66 signs, just like every other state we have driven through. But while other states use them to direct you to the right turns, in Oklahoma, they serve to congratulate you for having found the right turn on your own. There are markers along the roadside after each turn but no direction signs at the junctions themselves. You need to rely on a well-trained GPS or a guidebook to find your way.

The weather having cleared up at last, we stopped in Catoosa, Oklahoma, to see the blue whale, another of the more noted of the thousand tiny attractions on Route 66. Anna has been looking forward to this one all day. I’m not sure why this particular bit of kitsch has taken her fancy. She is not sure why several other pieces of kitsch have taken my fancy. Such is the nature of miscellany, I suppose. Something for everyone and something to make everyone question the taste of their companions. I took a picture of Anna standing in the whale’s mouth. At least it is not an antique gas pump.

The whale seems to have been designed as a platform for swimming from, with water slides and steps up from the water. But notices forbid swimming (without explanation) and say that fishing is strictly catch and release. No one was fishing or swimming. Three kids were sitting on the tail of the whale. One was orating with childish bravado. Their presumptive parents were sitting on the shore at a picnic table, ignoring their presumptive offspring. Sometimes the function of miscellany is to offer a respite from one’s companions.

There is a ladder to the loft inside the whale. We did not go up, but we noticed a sign saying not to sign the inside of the whale upstairs. Sign the wooden picnic tables instead, it instructs. We resisted the temptation.

With kitsch like this, I suppose, it’s all about what takes your fancy. There is no rhyme or reason for choosing which of the thousand tiny attractions on Route 66 you should stop to visit. Whimsy is the only rule in this. And this, I think, is a very good thing, and the thing that makes Route 66 magical. It is a grand monument to silliness, miscellany, hucksterism, whimsy, and ordinary eccentricity and must be enjoyed and sampled in the same spirit. Whatever the guidebooks or the chamber of commerce may say, there are no must-see attractions on Route 66. There are only wanna-see attractions, and wanna-see is an expression of personal whimsy and ordinary eccentricity. See what you want to see and leave the rest. This is not merely the best rule but the only rule that you can actually manage to live by on Route 66 without driving yourself nuts.

This is as near as I can come to finding a unifying theme in the miscellany of the day. Sometimes a day on the road is just a day on the road. And that’s okay.