Route 66
The magic of Route 66 is as simple as the American dream of hitting the road west. Historically, it went from Chicago to St. Louis to Oklahoma City to Albuquerque to Kingman to Las Angeles. Starting on the shores of Lake Michigan, it took you to the Pacific Coast in Santa Monica. It was a road to adventure and it was a road to escape. Some say salvation lies in the pavement and others say it lies like a pile of bones at the side of the road. Romance and nostalgia are around every turn, but so is boredom and the distinct desire to cleanse the mind and soul of decay.
Steve had done his duty most of his life. As a child he had obeyed his parents and had kept his nose clean as they had expected of him. By the time high school rolled along, he had racked up at least a dozen student-of-the-month awards from the local Minnesota school system. College had involved a minor tack scholarship. It was minor because the University of Iowa was not a big track school and had only a small budget to promote a sport that few alumni cared about enough to sponsor. But it was enough with his summer and school year jobs, and the small amount his parents could contribute, to get him through a notably undistinguished four years as a second-string miler and a B student in history. Now he was a graduate and his parents asked him at graduation what was next for him. They were, at best, casual observers in his life, and he knew he was entirely on his own at that point.
So, Steve decided to take his beat-up VW bug and head west to start his life. He had a plan of sorts and tried to sell it to the few acquaintances he had at school, but everyone else was headed to Chicago or St. Louis and thought the idea of going to Los Angeles was simply too bold for their corn-fed upbringings. He was on his own. He needed a cushion before he set off, so he took his job at the Piggly Wiggly and pretended to want to make a career so he could get the manager-in-training position, which paid an extra two dollar per hour. Piggly Wiggly was pleased as punch to attract a college graduate who had already proven that he was an ace pallet-buster into their “training program.” Steve hated working at the Piggly Wiggly, but he had his plan and his plan would be served.
After about six weeks on the job, Steve’s name came up in rotation to open the store at 3am for the start of the morning delivery of produce and fresh meats. He took the keys and went over the state line to Illinois and had duplicate keys made. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with them just yet, but he knew his plan involved some degree of larceny and keys like these would come in handy.
Steve figured he needed about $1,000 to make his drive west and he started saving every penny he could find. That is a very literal description of what he did. He scoured the store, the street and anywhere he went for spare change. He stopped at every phone booth and cigarette machine and checked the coin return cups. It was surprising what people left behind or ignored. He became quite the scavenger. At the store, if there was a loose package of food or a wayward bar of soap, he would put it in his bag and take it home. He was amassing his hoard for the journey and saw value in the discards that other people tossed away in the increasingly disposable economy of the late 1960’s.
When Steve had accumulated his $1,000 and a car-full of miscellaneous groceries, Steve made one last foray into the Piggly Wiggly at 2am. He very carefully took a shopping cart of fresh groceries from the store, being careful to take only one item from every area so that it would either not be missed at all or just assumed away as part of the natural “breakage” of running a retail store. He left a note on the manager’s desk saying that he had a personal emergency and would not be returning to work. He did not touch to cash box and he tossed the keys he had made into the dumpster on the way out. Steve was no thief, he was just a man on a mission.
He got in his VW, which he had fully lubricated and gassed-up the weekend before. He had scrounged one of those springy seat cushions that gives you ventilation between your butt and the seat (the bug had no air conditioning), so he adjusted himself in the drivers seat and set out south to St. Louis. There he would find Route 66 and begin his adventure,
Steve’s first stop on Route 66 was for breakfast. He hadn’t eaten a meal out in over four years (actually, he hadn’t paid for a meal out, to be exact). He was surprised at having to pay almost three dollars for breakfast. He decided that from then on he would make his own meals from his backseat pantry complete with its ice chests for perishables. He had purposefully pilfered extra tin foil for a very specific purpose. When lunchtime rolled along, he took some stew meat and some potatoes and carrots and put them in a piece of aluminum foil. He took it back to the little engine compartment of the VW and placed it in a tidy nook on the manifold as the car idled. When he stopped about 50 miles further on Route 66 at a picnic table rest stop, he took the foil package out with a gloved hand and sat down for his first meal of VW roadside stew. It tasted OK, but there was a slight hint of gasoline smell to the potatoes. He ignored it and carried on.
Steve got very good at engine block cooking and made all his meals this way, eventually not noticing the garage smells that all his food took on. That and his roadside camping under underpasses kept him dry at night and reasonably well fed. Texaco stations gave him a place for his daily ablutions and his car radio provided the entertainment as he drove west on Route 66.
While crossing the desert in New Mexico Steve got so hot he stopped under an overpass to think about a solution. Maybe he should drive at night? Then it hit him. He filled a spray bottle with water and spritzed his face. THe immediate relief from the evaporation was perfect. He hit the road again and sprayed his face every few minutes to create his own home-made air conditioning as the Sind through the window dried his face and the evaporation cooled him. That night when he stopped at the Texaco station before bedtime he found the error in his plan. His face was one giant chapped lip. He had chapped and dedicated all of the skin on his face and it had now dried out and started to peel. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
When Steve got to the pier at Santa Monica he was relieved. Route 66 was more tricky-tacky than fun. There was little romance in his chapped face as he stared out at the ocean. In fact, the ocean didn’t look so very different than Lake Michigan. Steve was out of food so he went to a Ralph’s supermarket to spend the last of his $1,000 on some groceries. As he paid the cashier, he noticed a sign proclaiming job openings for assistant store managers. Steve stared at it for a moment and asked the cashier where he could find the manager.