LUPTON TO FLAGSTAFF

Lepton to Flagstaff ROUTE 66 163 MILES ON THE MOTHER ROAD

TO THE SOUTH, THE SUMMER SKY blackens. The approaching thunderstorm slants shadows across an umarked two-lane thread of Route 66 near the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. Behind the trading post, a garage door opens, revealing a part of 66's historic past - a 1949 Nash sedan in perfect running condition. Out by the gas pumps, a German couple in black leather seeks to relive the route's glory days by riding the legendary highway from Chicago to Santa Monica on a rented Harley-Davidson. They prepare to outrun the storm toward Flagstaff. "On the eve of my biggest adventure, I must admit I'm a bit on the nervous side," I wrote, at age 17, to my parents in Carter's Bridge, Virginia, on September 4, 1952. I was about to drive across the country alone for my senior year at the Orme School in Mayer, Arizona. Soon I would pass Charleston, Cincinnati and St. Louis, where U.S. 50 met Route 66 west. This trip would begin six years of cross-country drives on what John Steinbeck called "America's Main Street."

Now, with photographer Terrence Moore, I explore 163 miles of Old Route 66 - the stretch between the Arizona-New Mexico state line and Flagstaff. Memories flood me - of Whiting Bros. gas stations and peanut butter crackers from vending machines; of trading posts selling moccasins, jewelry and petrified wood, offering free ice and the chance to see live mountain lions and rattlesnakes. The litany of eye-catching roadside advertising, including BurmaShave signs ("Does Your Husband Grunt and Grumble/Rant and Rave?/Shoot the Brute Some Burma-Shave"). And Flagstaff's honky tonk heaven, The Museum Club, which provided good times. That was the 1950s. But times would change and re-arrange and that was yesterday, Ron Dunivan sings on his "Route 66" CD. In 1965, four lanes of Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 across Arizona. Now, "Historic Route 66" markers invite travelers to revisit the old highway as it passes through Holbrook, Joseph City, Winslow and Flagstaff. Elsewhere, only "Frontage Road" signs indicate two lanes of 66's blacktop starting here, ending there, often disappearing without a trace. Unmarked perhaps, but hardly forgotten by those who still make a living along the "Mother Road" parallel to I-40. Moore and I discover that the salesmanship necessary today to attract the attention of traffic traveling 75 mph requires ingenuity and creativity. Nowhere is that spirit more alive than in Lupton, where Chief Juan Yellowhorse, 70, owns the Chief Yellowhorse Trading Post and "History's Oldest Village on Route 66" (Route 66 was built through a 1,000year-old village in 1927). Lupton, just north of I-40 on the original Route 66 at the Arizona-New Mexico border, remains popular with truckers stopping for gas and a bite to eat, and tourists looking for quality bargains in the shops. To assure the attention of travelers, the chief placed a row of white tepees on a spectacular rock formation high above his fort. Below, an alcove of ancient Anasazi ruins sits in a canyon. The chief's Hogan-shaped trading post ("Plastic OK") houses a large inventory of jewelry, rugs and pottery. A Navajo, Yellowhorse learned the value of roadside salesmanship from his mother in the 1930s, before the highway was paved (construction on Route 66 began in 1926 and finished in 1938). Yellowhorse and his brothers helped their mother sell blankets beside the highway. "The new cars with new tires would hold the gravel," he remembers, "but the old ones with the bald tires would spray gravel all over us when they went by." His mother used her enterprising skills by charging tourists to hear her boys sing a "Good Luck Song" in Navajo. "By the end of the summer, she had filled a 25-pound flour sack with enough nickels and dimes to buy us kids clothes

for school," he says, adding that the words to the "Good Luck Song" were actually from a Navajo ceremonial song. Meanwhile, Yellowhorse's father earned 50 cents a day as a stone polisher.

The chief keeps alive what many of us recall of Route 66, an invitation to the curious to view animals and reminders of the West. Visitors can see, up close, five buffalo, two goats, Anasazi ruins, petrified wood, old wagons and a prairie dog village. As we drive away, we notice one final sign: "Chief Yellowhorse Loves You."

Driving west across part of the Navajo reservation, we encounter more trading posts, more jewelry, Route 66 nostalgia items and delicious fry bread. Moore and I continue to search stretches of the twolane highway for signs indicating that U.S. 66 ever existed there. We see none.

Farther west on I-40, just beyond the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park, high atop a rocky outcrop, a replica of a giant dinosaur with a young woman mannequin clenched in its jaws rises up to greet the traffic below. Nearby, an old car anchored in the rocks is flanked by two pretty women mannequins waving down to 1-40. The dinosaur, the car and mannequins help Charles Stewart, 63, an Air Force veteran and retired government worker, bring business from the interstate to Stewart's Petrified Wood and Meteorites, owned by his wife, Gazell. Pioneering on vacant highdesert land, the Stewarts have built a family business selling polished petrified wood, meteorites and jewelry. To attract more attention to the business from the highway, Stewart constructed a large flying dinosaur. Why a dinosaur? Stewart points out that this area qualifies as a land of dinosaur bones. Next up, he's thinking about building an ostrich and possibly acquiring two live ostriches to keep it company. Stewart smiles, adding, "Seems the crazier things are, the more people like them." Jerry Seinfeld recently proved his point. Attracted by Stewart's unique roadside advertising, Seinfeld left I-40 in a dust storm to see what the Stewart business was all about. The comedian ended up buying some petrified wood.

The Geronimo Trading Post, which advertises "The Largest Piece of Petrified Wood in the World," continues a 50-plus-year business tradition in eastern Arizona.

(BELOW LEFT) Renovation of Winslow's La Posada Hotel, originally built in 1927, is under way with at least 20 guest rooms restored to their former elegance, according to owner Alan Affelat.

(BELOW) All along Route 66, bright neon signs direct hungry and weary travelers to roadside establishments.

"My father drove us out in that Ford on Sundays looking for petrified wood," says Elinor Lewis, whose family has owned Holbrook's Wigwam Motel ("Have You Slept in a Wigwam Lately?") since it opened in 1950. She points to a rusted 1937 Ford sedan, explaining its swaybacked roof served as weighty proof of her father's weekend treasure hunts. Her father was responsible for the initial construction of the motel. Renovated in 1988 to encompass 15 concrete wigwams with comfortable, modern rooms, the landmark stands as a reminder that Historic Route 66 markers mean a main street fiercely independent of the fast-food franchises and motels lining the interstate. In Winslow, this same spirit materializes in the enthusiasm townspeople bring to Route 66 and Winslow's big annual events held in September and October, including the Cruis'n Car Club Show, The West's Best All-Indian Pow Wow and The West's Best Rodeo. Last year, the town dedicated a corner park that includes a bronze statue of a young man and his guitar, and a window mural of a girl in a red truck, commemorating the Eagles' 1970s hit, "Take It Easy." The song contains the line, Well, I'm standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and it's such a fine sight to see The restoration of the La Posada Hotel exemplifies Winslow's revival efforts. Once advertised as "The Most Beautiful Hotel on the Most Scenic Approach to the Grand Canyon," the La Posada was owned and managed by the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad. Adjacent to the Winslow Railroad Depot, the hotel opened in 1930 and counted among its guests Charles Lindbergh, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes and a host of movie stars, including John Wayne. To date, 20 of the hotel's 74 rooms have been beautifully restored with more (THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT) Once a trading post and taxidermy, which opened in 1931, The Museum Club bar now offers live music nightly. Although the Downtown Diner has undergone several name changes in its 40-plus years, it still serves traditional fare. (OPPOSITE PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT) A silent sentinel, the Sierra Vista Motel sign stands unlit during the motel's renovation. The Santa Fe Railroad shaped northern Arizona's history and economy. Mother-daughter team Jean Satore and Sharon Jones faithfully serve the clientele of the Grand Canyon Cafe in Flagstaff. on the way and a restaurant planned. As this grand hotel of the last century enters a new one, its past becomes its future. In the darkness of Winslow, as Mexican rock 'n' roll echoes from Arrowhead Liquors, Moore and I admire the nighttime neon, signature of a bygone era on a bygone highway. As freight trains rumble through the night on the Burlington/Santa Fe line through town, more memories come to me.

Images of today remind of years past: The deserted brick house for sale on treelined Historic Route 66 in Joseph City, where upstairs, I find a box of books with a Mormon magazine from 1956 and an issue of American Saddlery from 1964. The young family stopped at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, where the husband works on their van, and his wife helps the children into the saddle of a large rabbit replica. At Meteor City, a world map with pins denoting visitors' homelands, and a wall of cards of appreciation received by owners Judi Kempton and Dale Scrivner. Outside hangs another map, this one a mural billed as “The World's Largest Map of Old Route 66.” Twin Arrows, one of the unique prefabricated Valentine Diners built between 1938 and 1974 in Kansas and shipped West, remains closed for the past nine years. The faded words “Mountain Lion” etched into a rock face near Two Gun, where travelers on 66 once viewed caged animals. The next night, in The Museum Club on the well-marked East Route 66 in Flagstaff, a country singer steps in front of the microphone. “Hello, I'm Clay Spradlin from West Palm Beach, Florida,” he says. Then the music and dancing begin. The club's log building, a country-music tradition since 1936, now known as “The Zoo,” started as a trading post and a Route 66 roadside attraction a taxidermist's dream filled with stuffed birds and animals, including sixlegged lambs. When Spradlin sings the 1956 Ray Price song “Crazy Arms,” I am taken back to this club and the Fourth of July gatherings of decades ago, when Native Americans from throughout the West, tourists, cowboys, loggers and railroad workers turned Flagstaff into one continuous block party; when night was not for sleeping nor dawn for waking. The 7 A.M. sunshine lights the sidewalk in front of the Grand Canyon Cafe on East Route 66 in Flagstaff. Inside, the man down the counter from me orders his coffee without cream. “Straight up, no chasin',” Sharon Jones confirms. Jones has been a waitress at the Grand Canyon Cafe since 1977; her mother, Jean, since 1946. Fred Wong's family has owned the cafe for more than 50 years. I smile. Here, at this moment, America's Main Street of the past remains alive and well.