BOOKSHELF

BOOKSHELF BY BUDGE RUFFNER

Route 66: The Highway and Its People, by Susan Croce Kelly. Photography by Quinta Scott. University of Oklahoma Press. 1988. 224 pages. Available from Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis, Phoenix, AZ 85009; telephone (602) 258-1000. $24.95, hardcover, plus $1.50 postage.

It was 2,200 miles long and two lanes wide. When the final strip of blacktop was laid down in 1932, U.S. Route 66 ran from the Lake Michigan shore in downtown Chicago to the edge of the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, California. For five decades the traffic that sped or stuttered along this "Main Street of America" mirrored the social, political, and cultural climate of the country.

The beginning of the 20th century had brought a new priority to national goals. Although World War I slowed the process of increasing mobility, booster organizations before and after that interruption actively promoted good roads. The automobile became a member of the American family, a tool of adventure, a means of escape from the small town's drabness or the city's stress. An open road crossing the heartland of America seemed a path to a new life better than any known before.

When America's cowboy humorist died in an Alaskan plane crash in 1935, Route 66 was informally designated the Will Rogers Highway. That appellation, like "America's Main Street," soon faded, and long after the interstate superhighways supplanted the broken blacktop and the fabled Burma Shave signs faded into folklore, Route 66 is the name we remember.

The most dramatic decade of old 66 was its first. When the final surface was laid in 1932, the country was in a bottomless depression. In much of the Midwest, drought added to the general despair. California, the promised land, loomed as the last clear hope for many farm families and small town merchants. Westward they went on retreaded tires and 17cent gasoline, faces gaunt and sunburned, eyes empty of joy. It was from his observation of this mass movement that John Steinbeck created his Pulitzer Prize novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Later, when travel meant pleasure rather than survival, Bobby Troup wrote the pop music classic, Route 66. Films and television programs followed, and Route 66 became as much an American symbol as The Great White Way or Hollywood and Vine.

No publisher has done a better job of bringing to readers the history of the four centuries of the American West than the University of Oklahoma Press. Route 66 is a worthy addition to that tradition. Susan Croce Kelly and Quinta Scott spent seven years traveling the route from end to end, interviewing and photographing the people and structures that gave old 66 its flavor.

The text is carefully researched and well written, and the 93 photographs (appropriately, black and white) provide convincing images of ordinary people and places lacking the glamour of those at either end of that 2,200mile-long line.

The character of Route 66 changed with the times. Depression, war, the restless '50s, then a growing epidemic of travel trailers and retirees' motor homes: all contributed to the saga of Route 66.

By 1984, only one American main street remained a part of the highway. When, on the outskirts of Williams, Arizona, the last concrete was poured to complete Interstate 40, U.S. 66 had played out its role as the romantic ribbon stretching from Chicago to the western sea.

Several segments of 66 have been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. Route 66 should win the honor with ease.

Day Hikes and Trail Rides in and around Phoenix, by Roger and Ethel Freeman. Gem Guides Book Co. 1988. 237 pages. $12.95, softcover, plus $1.00 postage. Arizona Trails Guide, published by Arizona State Parks. 1988. 271 pages. $7.50, three-ring binder format, plus $1.50 postage.

Both available from Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis, Phoenix, AZ 85009; telephone (602) 258-1000.

The ever-increasing popularity of trail hikes and rides makes these two new publications both needed and welcome. The Freeman Day Hikes and Trail Rides in and around Phoenix is detailed, comprehensive, and small enough to fit in a daypack. Arizona Trails Guide gives equally detailed but somewhat different information regarding 10 districts in Arizona. The loose-leaf binder format accommodates annual updates for up to 50 trails.

(RIGHT) "Not Fox," by Bill Schenck; oil on canvas, 65 by 45 inches. Although a devotee of the legends of the Old West, the artist is equally fascinated by those spun out in the New West. "That's what I try to portray in my work: the myths and marvels of modern day," he says. (BACK COVER) On Pine Creek, near Tonto Natural Bridge, a woodlandand-waterfall fairyland beckons the backcountry explorer tracing the 50-mile-long Highline Trail.