Decline of the Route 66 Towns

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A few wild storms slice the land.

The open country in east New Mexico must have seemed a fearsome land to those 1930’s migrants from Oklahoma—no water for a hundred miles, howling wind, and always the old jalopy might break down.  Under this sparsely vegetated land, blood-red earth spills from a wound where erosion left by a few wild storms, sliced it.  

I rode sixty-five miles to Tucumcari with no place for a cold soda or an ice cream bar—riding and riding with only bright sun in which to rest.  But living things seemed to know my plight, and flowers in their little colonies beckoned me as though to say it would be alright, that this condition was not always so and would not stay so.

Some of you stopped in Montoya, or a place like it, for gas and maybe a cold beer, lured by a sign painted on its wall, now nearly washed into antiquity.

Plaster gone from old rock walls
built in the thirties.

Adobe walls once strong,
melting away

This is Montoya, a town along what we now call Historic route 66, but to you it was The Mother Road, the way to Chicago, or the way to vacation.  You drove through here in the fifties after the war, enjoying that new kind of adventure called a car trip.  You might have stopped here or at dozen other now ghost towns in eastern New Mexico.  A child then, riding in the back seat of a ’49 Ford, stopping here while the man filled your parents’ tank.  You went inside and hankered you mom for a nickel candy bar, while the smell of cooking hamburger made you ask if you could eat here just this time.  “We’ll be to the campground soon,” your father said.

Two gasoline pumps in front, a screen door—
Peggy Sue’s Place,

Willie’s Eats, Wally’s Diner. 

Nickel phonograph records piled up like pies. 

Cars and trucks whizzing by on Route 66.

Inside the Cafe

Flies strike the screen

with little bumps

and drone away

the compressor chugs

for a time

then stops

on 66 traffic whizzes

trucks and fine streamlined cars

jalopies too

the waitress wipes the counter

with circular sweeps

where life whizzes by

Meet Richard, a modern nomad-traveler along Route 66 today.  

From my window at Motel 6 in Tucumcari, a huge sign lures travelers off  the desert for the night, as they speed along.I-40   This is about the only way  Tucumcari, once a major stop along Route 66, survives.  From 66 down to 6—it has declined about that much.

You can click on any picture to make it bigger.  And you can scroll through the pictures by using the arrow keys.  Press Escape to return.  

You can see my progress on an interactive map, prepared by Michael Angerman, at:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?spn=1.372738%2C2.458191&ll=34.19141194851035%2C-117.74940521972655&msa=0&z=9&mid=1Y_TZPvq1-LarAZNM9P1HzAy11K8 

Zoom and scroll to see where I’ve been.

 If any of this strikes a long-ago chord, please write and say so.