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Route 66 for Multiple Sclerosis
The Route 66 Drive for Multiple Sclerosis raised over $10,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. From August 2 through September 20, 2001, Shelley and Scott traveled 6,320 miles on the Route 66 Drive for MS. Shelley burned 379 gallons of gas for an average of 16.67 miles per gallon. She leaked 4 quarts of engine oil. Radiator coolant was added several times, but no other fluids needed refilling. They patched one inner tube, and experienced some minor sluggishness due to dirt from the fuel tank. Slight cutting of a tire sidewall was noted due to rubbing during hard suspension compression, so two protruding screws were hacksawed to eliminate this problem. Overall, not too bad for a 50 year old truck, in stock mechanical condition. Needless to say, Scott is extremely proud of Shelley's performance!
Switchbacks on old Route 66 near Oatman, AZ. Vintage photo courtesy Automobile Quarterly.
Strange Day on Route 66
Water drips onto the back of my old truck’s running board. It’s coming from the bed, of all places. There isn’t a radiator hose within five feet of that drip, so I’m puzzled. It’s also 104 degrees today in the Mojave desert, so I’m a bit concerned.
Besides, “Shelley” isn’t the kind of truck to spring coolant leaks. She’s the stock 1952 Chevy half-ton that saw me successfully round-trip from my Tennessee home to Alaska, on her cancer fundraising drive in 2000. Even though her coolant temperature gauge threatens full boil, there’s no sign she’s going to quit today.
Water preservation is the name of the game in the desert, so I step back and open Shelley’s camper hatch. The two and a half gallon jug of drinking water that was supposed to last through this six hour desert run has leaked across the floor of the bed, soaking my suitcase, wetting my tools, and dripping onto the running board.
Last summer, I couldn’t get enough of Shelley’s long-distance tendencies, so our mutual wanderlust put us on the road again this summer. Today, it’s the loneliest stretch of historic Route 66. This is week five of The Route 66 Drive for Multiple Sclerosis. We’ve met many wonderful people and done dozens of events on this project, but today, fate finds me alone with Shelley in the desert, millions of miles from nowhere. There aren’t any cars on this forsaken stretch of Route 66, not even any airplanes in the sky. There’s only blistering desert, shimmering as far as the eye can see, across a barren landscape.
I hope this doesn’t turn into a crisis. Provided Shelley keeps on chugging, we should reach Barstow this afternoon. It’s 11:30 am, and I still have 3 small bottles of drinking water in the cooler, plus a few sodas. And there’s melted ice in that cooler, if Shelley’s radiator gets thirsty.
Fortunately, my stock of paper towels is on a dry shelf in the camper. I unroll them by the half dozen and attempt to sop most of the water off the bed floor. Yesterday afternoon in Kingman, AZ the humidity was only thirteen percent, so I’m optimistic for quick drying.
I don’t need a crisis today, because I’m starting to get homesick. The road can be a lonely place. After a morning of site-seeing and picture taking, the excitement fades. I’ve begun to daydream about ending the day with a bag of popcorn in my easy chair, and Buttons the cat fast asleep on the couch. Instead, my only taste of home this evening will be a 12-minute call to my wife Barbara, made from a cell phone with nearly dead batteries from lying in Shelley’s hot glovebox all day.
As Shelley and I left Kingman this morning, there was a disturbing site on the lobby television. There had been a plane crash at the World Trade Center in New York, and dozens had no doubt been killed.
Instead of the exhilaration you’d expect to feel on a Route 66 trip, I have the feeling something isn’t right. Maybe the heat is messing with my head. Maybe it’s the eerie way that wild burros – descended from gold mining days – strolled through downtown Oatman, Arizona this morning. I saw no people there, only burros. Maybe five weeks without seeing a familiar face is too long, especially in this heat.
Late that afternoon, I check into a Barstow hotel. Another television still carries coverage of the WTC plane crashes.
“Hey, did they say what kind of planes hit the buildings in New York?” I ask the desk clerk.
“Hmm...” she pauses. “Seven-thirty-seven, I think. Is that an airplane? I don’t know planes,” she responds.
“Seven-thirty-seven? I’ll say it’s an airplane, it’s a big airliner!”
“Yeah, they were full of passengers too. They got hijacked.”
“No way.....you can't be serious...”
“Yeah, it’s sad. They flew one into the Pentagon too.”
“You mean the Pentagon? Oh my....”
“Yeah, and another one crashed in Pennsylvania. They’ve shut down all air traffic in the US, except for military jets. Haven’t you noticed there’ve been no planes flying today?”
Her words hit me like a Mike Tyson gut punch.
“No. Never occurred to me.”
I bolt to my room to read an internet story for a synopsis. It says that both WTC towers "collapsed." Yeah, right. Why do they have to exaggerate? There’s no way an aluminum airplane could topple a concrete and steel skyscraper. How dare anyone sensationalize this disaster.
If only it were sensationalism. Sadly, the TV news confirms it. The buildings had indeed collapsed, killing not dozens, but thousands of people inside. Had I checked out of that Kingman hotel three minutes later this morning, I would have seen that first tower crumbling to dust on the lobby television.
I watch footage from earlier that shows a human body, fluttering like a leaf, falling a hundred stories rather than enduring a hellish, melting blaze.
What if gas prices jump to $5.00 a gallon? What if there’s a panic and stations run dry? Is this the start of World War III? It’s too early to tell what will happen, but prudence tells me to hop in Shelley and start home immediately, before supplies vanish and we get stranded 2,000 miles from home. My enthusiasm for the Route 66 journey is gone.
A call to San Bernardino confirms that our destination event, the Route 66 Rendezvous will proceed as scheduled this weekend, albeit with tighter security. So, instead of leaving, we’ll stay in southern California for a while. The San Bernardino Convention and Visitor’s Bureau has extended us a warm invitation, including special recognition for our MS drive. The least we can do is support such generous folks and do our small part to help the event succeed.
***
They say the world changed that day. But it’s nice to know that some things didn’t change. That lonely stretch of Route 66 through the Mojave didn’t change. Oatman still has its fat burros, and Route 66 still recalls a time when our national borders were safe from all enemies. You can still venture across the desert and feel the loneliness (and the heat) from that era.
Shelley’s still the same, too. Both she and Route 66 saw Sputnik orbit the globe in the 50's, and they endured the Cuban missile crisis and President Kennedy’s assassination in the 60's. Shelley was my college driver when the Challenger space shuttle exploded. And, she’s my only companion on this historic day.
No terrorist can take away the character of the Mother Road, or the character that Shelley’s earned over time. In fact, the incidents have only added to the wealth of history built into Route 66, and into the steel of an old truck—“the truck with a heart.”
Shelley in the Mojave Desert of CA on Sept. 11, 2001.
Left: Chain of Rocks bridge over Mississippi River in St. Louis, MO.
Right: Old stretch of Route 66 is 8 feet wide in Oklahoma.
Left: Gemini Giant at Launching Pad restaurant in Wilmington, IL.
Right: Some maps still show ghost town of Glenrio, on TX/NM border.
Left: 4-lane stretch of old 66 through Missouri. Right: Abandoned beer joint, Montoya, New Mexico.