ROUTE 66

ROUTE 66 - Travel through the desert, from the gulf of Texas to the mighty Pacific. Route 66 isn’t a place, it’s a mindset. Few seem to grasp the real America began before the settlement of Acoma pueblo or Chaco Canyon. Far before any Pilgrims. The road used for commerce currently was once a footpath, and later a horsepath. In my own journey, travel east and south came first, seeming contradictory, but that’s how it unfolded. Close my eyes and drive by Grants down 66 and meander down Central Avenue. The murky version of the past stored in my mind, frozen in time from the day I left, doesn’t reconcile with the 2018 version. It’s how I remembered what happened. That version, the one I’m used to, not how things are right now. Past Central Avenue. No more Wagon Wheel hotel or Weinerschnitzel next to The Pussycat. From the heights with Foxes on one end, almost to Nine Mile Hill,  the women’s social club.  I got in with my work friend, she drove me there in her 280z. The day in high school when I drove the open road and listened to the space shuttle explode live on the radio. I found signposts along the way. The club in Nob Hill where I could never quite make it. Stop trying to run away, everyone said. Many many times. Go west, young man, the road said. Every young man looks down a long road and wonders, could I make it there? I did that and the road is a place that lives inside my mind. Ocean Beach, no it’s not Lands’ End. But I see the ocean every day in San Francisco. Sometimes I imagine taking the 580 to the 5 to I40 back. But the old 66 of my mind isn't there. I long for a full gas tank and the open road since Route 66 never leaves my mind.