Thank you, Lon! Well, here is my next update.
[Warning: this is an awfully long post. Read at your own risk of drowsiness.]
Saturday was the best day I've had on
Route 66 so far -- although, not surprisingly, we got only as far as Tucumcari, New Mexico, which is less than 100 miles from Amarillo! Sigh. This is getting ridiculous.
I truly think we should be able to travel a greater distance today, though -- the towns in New Mexico seem to be spaced much further apart, and we will need to drive a lot on the interstate (unfortunately), because of impassable roads.
Anyhoo--
You've all seen Lon's message -- thank you, Lon! I'd been following his posts ever since we both joined the Thunderbird forum in the early Spring. My heart had bled for him when his T-Bird had been built this summer and he'd followed its progress as far as the railhead near his home, when suddenly Ford discovered that the cars were
overheating and they were all recalled! So poor Lon could see his car sitting at the railhead, and he even went and SAT in it, and then the little yellow thing was whisked back to Wixom. Oh, the torture of it all!
Anyway, I was a little nervous about meeting a total stranger, but what nice people Lon and his wife were! (You can tell just by checking out the pictures, posted as usual at
We followed them to 6th Street in Amarillo, which is the best-kept section of
Route 66, and parked in front of J&M restaurant, where of course we snapped a bunch of photos. We also collected quite a crowd of gawkers. I then took advantage of Lon's kindness and asked him to show us where the "Cadillac Ranch" was. This is when a bit of excitement transpired. First, as we pulled out onto the road, there was a screeching, scraping noise under the car that just about gave me a stroke. Apparently we had inadvertently driven over some kind of hump in the pavement, and I was convinced that the entire drivetrain was hanging by a thread. Too mortified to tell Lon and Shirley, however, we drove on in a state of panic. Then, as we were zipping along out of town to go see the Cadillacs, I discovered to my horror that my precious 35mm camera from the 1970s was no longer with me! Obviously in all the discombobulation I had left it back in town (you can actually see it sitting on the ground in one of the photos), so now I had to force Lon and Shirley to drive BACK into town to look for it with us as my panic grew to epic proportions! Luckily we found the camera at J&M's restaurant, still sitting meekly on the ground where I had left it. Thank God it was Texas. If this had been California, the camera would already have been stolen and sold for
parts.
The "Cadillac Ranch" was something created by an eccentric local millionaire who began burying his Cadillacs halfway in the mud, nose down, back in the 50s or 60s. Apparently these were not old Cadillacs at the time of burial -- perhaps they'd been driven only a year, but the guy just felt like buryin' 'em and buying a new one! They have since been covered with graffiti, but that lends an air of "pop art" to them.
I might add that there was a wind-chill factor of about 4 degrees out there, but Lon insisted on not wearing a jacket. Undoubtedly he is in bed sick today with a bad case of consumption.
At that point, we were going to
part ways, but then Lon started telling us about the Big Texan Steak Ranch, where if you eat a 72-ounce steak, and all the trimmings, in less than an hour you get the meal free. Urp. Of course, I had heard about this restaurant, because there had been about 500 billboards advertising it, and I asked Lon and Shirley if they could take us there as one last stop. I'm glad they did, because this place was like Disneyland! Inside the gargantuan restaurant were slot machines, an oversized Edith-Ann-style rocking chair, a rattlesnake, one of those big amusement park games where you shoot things as they waddle across, and of course the names of all the people who've eaten the steak. I decided that in my prime we could have polished off the steak dinner and then probably had dessert. Now I probably couldn't even finish the baked potato.
OK, by then as you might imagine it was getting towards noon and we really had to go. Shirley and I really had to stop talking about our stressful government jobs, and we had to move on. But I will always remember Lon and Shirley and be grateful, as well, that Tweety got to meet his cousin.
As we got gas for our mammoth 85-mile trip to our next stop, I finally had an opportunity to check out the car and determine whether I needed to start crying about any damage. Luckily, there seem to be no visible scars or any
parts hanging loose.
In Adrian, Texas, as we got closer to the border, we decided to stop at the Midpont Cafe, which, as you might guess, is midway on
Route 66 between Chicago and L.A. (The whole route, by the way, is somewhere between 2,200 and 2,440 miles.) This cafe -- in operation in one form or another since 1928 -- is absolutely adorable inside and stays true to its history. The food was also delicious; my burger was perfect, and I loved the homemade banana-blueberry pie. Anyway, when Joanne Harwell came over to take our order, she asked if I owned the Thunderbird, and then she said that **********, who as we all know is the president of the Vintage ******************************, had called to tell her we were coming! Now, mind you, I have never met or even e-mailed Tony, but he has seen my posts on the newsgroup. Still, he had no idea that I would be stopping at THAT particular place, and if we had decided to eat at the Big Texan Steak Ranch I would have passed the place on by! But Tony -- you were right! Fate brought us there, and we spent a good deal of time taking pictures, checking out the gift shop, looking at old photos in Fran's scrapbook (Fran is the owner), and shooting the breeze. Joanne talked to us about the "Thunder on 66" events for next year, and how she is working with Tony and others to make sure the streets around the cafe can accommodate all the 'Birds that will be making their way to her town. Apparently some Corvettes will also be joining the party there (I know Corvettes are cute, but I wonder -- should we snub them? Oh, and Fran loved the 'Bird so much, she got in it and threatened to drive away. A number of times she repeated an offer to trade me the cafe for the car. Running a cafe on
Route 66 sounds awfully tempting, and it could definitely get me away from my &^%$#@! government job! But I opted to keep the car.
After passing through some small towns, we finally made it to the Texas/New Mexico border. Now, when I say "towns," I use the word loosely. I don't mean small towns of 100 people. I mean towns of seemingly NO people. I mean, they'd be on the map, and the guidebook might even say the "town" would provide lots of "photo opportunities," but all that would be there would be two abandoned buildings, a clump of grass, and a couple of spiders.
Now that we're in New Mexico, the terrain is changing, mesas are always on the horizon, and the towns have that pueblo/Southwestern feel. Saturday night we spent in Tucumcari, and it was absolutely wonderful. The stretch of
Route 66 through town takes you back in time, and the Blue Swallow Motel, where we are staying, is a breathing pice of history. Built in the 30s, it has been restored to look exactly as it once did. Each room is accompanied by its own garage with gravel floor, which is where the T-Bird now sits. The rooms have old phones from the 40s, deco bathrooms, curved ceilings, and paper-thin walls (of course!). Outside you can hear the whistle of the train and the hum of the traffic, and the neon light of the motel sign vaguely illuminates the blinds on the window. I absolutely loved it!!!!
For dinner I had yet another slab of steak and some sopapillas at Del's, a packed Tex-Mex restaurant down the street (if I don't turn into a cow by the time this is over, it'll be a miracle).
OK, I've gone on much too long. Signing off until tonight--
-- Paula
P.S. No encounters with "THE LAW" today, but we did get the car up to 100 mph -- just for a brief moment. It still felt like we were crawling!
