A Sentimental Journey.

Meeting up with Roy Dunton is like discovering a mint-condition Victrola at a swap meet. Not a replica. Or a restoration. But the genuine article. Free for the taking.

All required to make Roy operate is a little push down memory lane. His mainspring is already wound up tight, and once his RPMs reach maximum, his fidelity off the record is that of an oldtime rinky tink player piano. He may get a few notes out of sequence, but he hits them all.

This morning he is up before dawn, into Kingman from his home at Bullhead City, to help celebrate the test drive of a vintage car over what likely is the most faithfully preserved vestige of Old Route 66. Somehow it seems supremely proper that the three of them should come together at a moment when the rest of the nation contends hourly with unrelenting, accelerating change. Things changed in Roy's day, of course, but not so fast.

The car is a 1937 straight six-cylinder Chevrolet two-door coupe returned to original condition by the owner, Moe Cave. The car has been in Moe's family since 1954. Little used before or since, the compact Chevy could be rolling out of the showroom with wide white sidewall tires and illuminated radio and burnished black paint job. "That," says Moe, "was Henry Ford's contribution to Chevrolet design. Mr. Ford had taught Americans to order any color car they wanted, so long as it was black."

The car is ready; so is the road. It cascades out of Kingman as both a broad main street and as a link of modern Interstate-40 for a few miles before the off ramp to Old 66. Now, as then, the old road undulates two lanes across Sacramento Wash, climbs the Black Mountains through Sitgreaves Pass and meanders along talus slopes to Topock and the Colorado River altogether about 50 miles. Halfway perches the only community of consequence, Oatman, a mere ghost of the 15,000-population boomtown that once counted a billion dollars in gold.

Car, ready; road, ready; so is the man. At 80 years of age, Roy is a bit heavy, but his hair is remarkably dark, his voice strong and resonant. Moe Cave works the gear lever through the three-speed transmission and the engine purrs and the big fat tires wallow across the cracks of the pavement and Roy says, "We didn't realize we were making history. We were too busy making enough to eat. Maybe that's the biggest mistake younger people think about the old days, that there were rich people and poor people. Why, by today's standards we were all poor, and even the man in town with the most money still had to scratch."

We pass the fifteen-thousandth identical greasewood bush, and Roy remembers "Here's where I hit a horse goin' too fast one night. Horse fairly destroyed the car that belonged to my uncle, who was teaching me to drive, and he just sat there on the passenger side of the front seat and said very quietly that, by the time I paid for the damages, I'd probably know how to drive on the open range."

Roy bought the garage in Goldroad, northeast of Oatman, in 1928, shortly after Route 66 was officially designated a national road. Goldroad's fortunes rose and fell with the price of gold, but paradoxically, now that the precious metal sells at more than $500 an ounce, Goldroad is gone: terraces of stone foundations, a few claims showing signs of renewed interest, and an old man remembering: "There was a 17-percent grade in front of the garage, and I cut it down to 15 percent. But the buses had to back up the hill for traction, and the Model T Fords sometimes backed up the hill to maintain a flow of fuel from the gravity tanks. Once Barney Oldfield came a-flying across the desert on one of his cross-country record races, and his rear-end ratio was too high for our hill. The men were all at work in the mines, so the women of Goldroad pushed Barney up the hill so he could go on with his race."

And... "During hard times the mine shut down, and I bought the whole town for $2000 in 1932. I sold off $78,000 worth of equipment and materials and then sold the town back to the company at a little profit and rent at a rate $2.50 a month, including water." And... "Yes, I worked on my share of wrecks. I was on call 24 hours a day. Right here's where a gasoline truck lost her brakes and jackknifed, and I had to cut her apart with a torch, with gasoline dribbling in a little creek down the drainage trench. Now what power on high kept me from blowing myself up?" And... "Right at 2 million ounces of gold came out of these mines. I never And... "Right at 2 million ounces of gold came out of these mines. I never thought gold would go above $20 an ounce, and for a long while the government pegged the price at $35, and it was actually against the law for American citizens to hold gold. At today's prices the gold from these mines would amount to a billion dollars, but then, dollars don't seem to buy much anymore.

And... "Everybody looked to me to keep the cars going. Some had 16 cylinders, tires were a headache, and sometimes I wondered if any automotive engineer expected any car to go up a long hill without overheating. Those tourists and people changing homes would chug across the mountain, radiator steaming, water bag flapping, kids and wife yelling, and well. we just had to help them move on, or else the town would fill up with strangers!"

And... "I did a lot of work on the road. In slow spells I'd work for cash with the highway department. Floods would come down out of the hills and cut the road, and there's still a couple of Greyhound buses down that wash, carried off and buried and nobody's seen a trace of them since."

And... "Easterners especially would be terrified in the mountains. They'd hug the inside lanes out of fear of the drop-offs, and there were instances where women would get out of their car and let the man drive on and hike on into Goldroad. More than once they'd all walk in, and hire me and my wife, Thelma, to go out and bring in the car."

And... "Then, too, I ran a towing service. Would bring in cars that broke down; I do think I hold the record for changing 11 sets of transmission bands on Model T Fords in one day. I'd sometimes push the buses and trucks up the hills, and I'd hook onto cars whose drivers were too scared to go on themselves. One time, before I unhooked from a car heading for Los Angeles, I asked for my $2.50, which was the agreed on price, and the owner says, 'What if I decide that I don't want to pay you?' and I say, 'Okay with me, and you can claim your car at my garage when you're ready to pay.'"

And... "Understand, Goldroad was not what you call a well-behaved town. Mostly miners, mostly bachelors, maybe 1500 in all. A priest in Kingman thought we ought to have at least one church to go along with the saloons and gambling houses and other enterprises, and the good father asked a Goldroad landowner to donate a piece of ground, and he asked me to finance the building of the sanctuary. We made what we thought was a fair offer: we'd make our donations, and the padre would come out and preach every Sunday, then we'd take up a collection and split it three ways. For some reason, Goldroad never did get its church."

Ever a challenge, Old Route 66 remains a motoring adventure today. Breathtaking dips. Windrows of gravel. Spiraling flat curves. Corduroy shoulders. High crown. Patched asphaltum. Braided cable drooping between hewn cedar posts. Grade of the roadbed prisoner of the honest contours of the land. But the relic Chevrolet responds as if built for the road... which it was.

Roy Dunton rubs a steady hand along a satin, sensuous ebony curve of the car's long, slender hood. Dunton's hand has set fire to dynamite fuses, has squeezed the trigger of a hunting rifle, has chipped uncounted tons of ice for sale at the garage for three cents a pound, has put pressure on arteries while wounds were closed, has hefted gold ore worth a fortune, has guided a tractor straightening some of the steep curves of Old U.S. 66.

"This car," Roy says, burnishing the hood with that accomplished hand, "I bought one almost as good right in front of my garage in Goldroad for eight dollars cash. Actually, it was eight dollars cash and a secondhand suitcase. The car got itself stuck in a little dip in the road, and the driver says, 'All I care about is getting to Los Angeles. How much is the bus fare?' I said 'about eight dollars' and he said, 'I'll sell you the car for that,

and can you let me have an old suit-

case?'"

The Grapes of Wrath days, Roy will never forget. "The whole country appeared to be on the move. They were good people, but desperate. They were willing to work and because of that they were a threat to any man or boy that held a job; so they weren't always welcome. They were cash poor, but they had things I swear I saw a jalopy of a touring car cut down so a cow could ride in the back and they bartered as they went. Ed Egerton filled up his junkyard with stuff people would hock for 50 cents worth of gasoline, on the promise they'd reclaim their belongings once they reached California, where all they had to do was lay down under the trees and oranges would fall in their mouths, and they'd all get rich, and they never did."

(Above) Even after his death, the camp established by Ed Egerton near Goldroad, Arizona, provides a haven for a few retired residents, along Old Route 66.

(Left) Moe Cave's rebuilt 1937 Chevy becomes a veritable time machine, voyaging into the past on Old Route 66.

Photos by Alan Benoit (Following panel, pages 40-41) The OatmanGoldroad section of Old US 66, a land of golden boom and bust, echoes strongly of yesterday and what was and is no more.

Ray Manley