The laptop has returned, but development on Digital Route 66 is going to be little to zero for the near future for a small combination of reasons:

1.) Work will be ramping up for me over the next month or so.  This actually has nothing to do with my ability to update the website; I include it just to sound important.

2.) The website might be drastically changing.  Not disappearing, but changing.  Nothing is set or official but I’m working on some redevelopment behind the scenes so little of the published website will be updated and not much will be added.

So I guess less of a combination and mostly just reason #2.

I’ve also stepped onto the steering committee as the Illinois representative for the proprosed Route 66 Alliance that would serve as an international body to unite the various state and overseas Route 66 associations.  I won’t be passing on much of what is going on with that unless the group at large sees fit to be detailed, though I don’t believe the development process of the Alliance is meant to be a deep dark secret.  It’s an open organization welcoming all who love (or just like…or just have heard of) the road and will serve the road in ways that stae organizations cannot without replacing them as the important ground soldiers of the Mother Road.  I recently posted the mission statement I drew up for the committee to work off of, and I think it sums up pretty well the goals of the Alliance.

I should get my laptop back on Monday, so perhaps things will return to normal on Digital Route 66.  I should get the Gardner page up in the middle of next week…again, hopefully…and then on Sunday the 20th it’s the quarterly meeting of the Route 66 Association of Illinois up in Willowbrook.  I’ll have details from the meeting here and probably on the Yahoo! Route 66 message board as well.I was also able to finally get a mission statement written for the proposed Route 66 alliance as I volunteered to do at the meetings in Litchfield:

—–

To serve as an international uniting force in the ongoing preservation, promotion, and protection of Historic U.S. Highway 66 as well as the principal proponent for the education and enjoyment of the Mother Road.

• Aid and assist individuals and organizations, including the various state and international Route 66 associations, in their national and regional preservation, promotion and education efforts
• Help improve the ability of travelers to experience and enjoy Route 66 and the ability of towns and businesses along the route to share in
• Preserve the history of the road through the capture of oral histories, photographs and other written/digital records that will make the facts and memories of Route 66 available to all future generations
• Raise funds for the ongoing preservation efforts along the highway through alliance/association membership, corporate sponsorship opportunities and assistance with grant application writing
• Recruit future generations of road enthusiasts to travel Route 66 and help support the highway
• Serve as a unified national voice for the highway and her inhabitants, tourists and supporters

—–

I’m sure there will be many revisions.  But it’s a start.

In the meantime I’ve also actually written a bit over at my main blog, exit670.com.  Not that there’s anything terribly relevant there: it’s basically just my personal blog for writing whatever crap comes to mind (though never anything so menial as “I petted my cat today” or such).  That works for some; not for me.  Anyway, one of these days I’ll actually be able to write regularly on both sites.

Now that most of the Route 66 activity for the summer - the state Motor Tour and the Litchfield festival - has wound down things have seemingly come to a crashing halt.  I guess that much anticipation fulfilled so suddenly has quite the affect.

Confounding matters - at least regarding Digital Route 66 - is that my laptop suddenly decided that the motherboard didn’t need to function anymore, and thus my primary work device is AWOL.  Being a smart lad, I do regular backups of all my data, and the last such process was completed only a few days before the notebook died.  So everything’s safe.  It just makes it harder to function since few files are on my desktop and even less applications have been installed here.  My next website update was to be Gardner, and all sixty-six (!) pictures are sitting on the laptop waiting to be uploaded, while the HTML page is halfway complete and needed only an hour or so of tweaking.  Yes, it’s all on the external hard drive and could be recalled, but I’d have to copy over a slew of files plus install Dreamweaver just for that one page, and since I could have the laptop back as soon as early next week I might as well wait.

In the next several weeks I also hope to get out to several businesses here in the Litchfield area and hit them up for Association membership and/or newsletter advertisements.  Not being a natural salesman, hopefully I won’t come up too short.

Saturday in Litchfield started early with cars lining up just after 9:00 AM for the busiest day of the festival. We arrived at the Illinois Association tent at about that time and setup a slightly revised (read: shinier and more impressive) version of the preservation poster that we had displayed at Farmersville. Winds were horrible, so we just laid it on the table (we had two, so space was abundant). The poster and my binder filled with 8.5×11 inch vivid photos of Route 66 landmarks were well received, and Jaime Anderson had several posters filled with pictures from a number of Association events that represented the fun of the Mother Road in Illinois.

As we manned the fort and crept away at times to sample the other booths (including the amazing Association, Artisans, et cetera booths inside Victory Lane Ford) more and more classic cars lined up, Young Elvis performed and Bigfoot smashed cars as a great crowd turned out on a beautiful day. We picked up a copy of Skip Curtis’s Show Me State guide at the Missouri Association booth (to complement his History of Springfield, MO book I’ve owned for a while) to aid us in the trip down the road in Missouri that we hope to take in the next several months.

At night attention turned to the banquet, with dinner catered by JoDannis of Benld. Amazing pasta, and even better chicken. After Michael Wallis gave a stirring speech reminding us just why we love Route 66 and donate so much of our time and energy, he and Jim Conkle handed out the eight awards for 2008:

New Business of the Year: Four Women on the Route
Founders: David Clark
Person of the Year: Ron Warnick
Business of the Year: The Ariston Cafe
Wallis 66: Emily Priddy
Cyrus Avery Preservation: Trailnet
Life Time Achievement: Tommy & Glenda Pike
Will Rogers Award: Swa Frantzen

The festival went off quite well, and with next year’s event scheduled for Flagstaff, Arizona in September ‘09 I really hope that we can make the trip. My prose in reporting on the events here is far from as luxurious as the Association’s Motor Tour a fortnight past, but the past few days have been tiring and I look forward to settling back into regular life.

Not that the work ever really ends. Along with stopping by a few businesses in the area before long, I have ideas for a podcast/weekly four or five minute radio show that I’ve been kicking around that need formally developed sooner than later. We’ll see.

After a busy Thursday, we slept in Friday.  Really slept in.  But we wouldn’t be busy ’til that evening.

It took a bit for things to get swinging.  We cruised by the Car Show area just after 5 PM and there was nothing on the portion of Route 66 to be closed and no one milling around the booths setup in back of Victory Ford.  It would be closer to six before a decent number of cars would be lined up along the northbound lanes and about that time the Cavern Beat Beatles tribute band fired up.

We glanced over the offerings inside Victory Lane Ford where the Authors, Associations, Artisans et cetera were setup and then spent the rest of the evening hanging out at the Illinois Association booth in back by the Beatles band; we were able to pitch in and listen to the lads at the same time.

Tomorrow it’s back to the booth early and then the banquet at night.  A few pics from the day are available on the Flickr foto feed.

Day one of the Official Route 66 Festival went off pretty well. Both the morning and afternoon meetings at Lincoln Land Community College were informative and accomplished a bit in rolling towards a unified national alliance of associations; I wrote up a couple brief summaries on the Yahoo! Route 66 board and Ron Warnick should have a more concise summary at his excellent Route 66 News site before long. Illinois was decently represented, but I think Missouri’s association had us beat. Lunch in between sessions at the Ariston was great (duh).

This evening we returned to the Ariston for an evening reception that was well attended and, again, delicious. The highlight of the evening came as Emily and I headed for the door: owner Nick Adam brought a British couple back into the reception room that were traveling the road and had wandered in and asked “if anyone knew anything about Route 66.” They were immediately introduced to a number of experts including Michael Wallis, whom they knew of, and we wondered if anything they encounter the rest of the way can possibly top this reception in Litchfield.

Emily and I with the Sheriff himself.

Afterwards Emily and I briefly cruised Litchfield with Geri and Marty Bilecki in their gorgeous blue ‘57 Chevy. As we headed up State Street several of the shopkeeps were painting their storefronts, part of the ongoing restoration efforts that the city’s main downtown stretch has seen over the last couple weeks. Litchfield should be in great shape for the next two days.

I wasn’t expecting much success representing the Association at Farmersville, and unfortunately my predictions were correct.

Emily and I spent a few hours Friday night and most of the daylight on Saturday hanging out in the park in Farmersville for their annual town festival. We’d both been at Irish Days as mere spectators the last two years (and Emily many times before that,) so we knew what to expect. It’s all food booths and no other vendors, so I didn’t think we’d fare well, but given its proximity to our home and the cheap cost (just a small donation to the festival) it was worth a try.

The result: one new member, which is better than none I suppose. We also talked to several people who were mildly interested and took membership application pamphlets with them as well as a couple other individuals who talked with us about the history of 66 through the area; one promised to contact us with an old postcard she had that we could scan a copy of. So there were benefits beyond just getting new members.

We had no cookbooks to sell and only moved one photo. And that was to Emily’s mother. But it still counts.

I don’t think the booth was the problem as much as the makeup of the crowd. They just didn’t care, and I can’t say I blame them: they’re not used to this type of thing at their fair. Whether we’ll try again in Litchfield July 18-19 is still up in the air, but I think we’re leaning towards appearing there. We enjoyed it when we did get to chat with folks…they were just too few and far between.

Pictures of our booth are available on my Digital Route 66 Flickr Photostream (in reverse order, because that’s what Flickr does.

The whole idea of appearing at local town festivals was borne out of the April quarterly meeting of the Association in Hamel. One of the key points of discussion was the fall off in membership and the subsequent need for us to promote the Association (and the road). We can’t just expect people to hunt us down.

Emily and I quickly volunteered to appear at Farmersville, Raymond and Litchfield’s celebrations…and seconds later we found ourselves the Montgomery County reps. Cool.

This left us with the unenviable task of showing up at group of town celebrations that have nothing to do with our Association. Unlike next weeks National Route 66 Festival in Litchfield, these events have nothing to do with the Mother Road other than the fact that the communities are on the highway. Even Edwardsville’s fiesta this weekend is at least called the Route 66 Festival even if it’s just a name.

I figured I needed a battle plan. And this is what I came up with:

1.) Wow them. Pictures, music and a big banner. Instead of a tiny table with a few brochures, give the people something to help them grasp the utter awesomeness of America’s Main Street. One of my pet peeves about the Association’s website has always been the lack of vibrant images of the road, something I believe [cheap plug] that Digital Route 66 is not lacking in (that banner at the top has about twenty-six different pictures that rotate right now, and I keep adding more). So we need lots of color and flash.

The result: a flip book of around fifty 8.5×11 full color images from my collection of Illinois Route 66 landmarks. They’re brilliant and attention grabbing and there’s information that goes along with them. In order from south to north, they help tell the story of Route 66 as you leaf through it. In addition, I’m making a large presentation board (the type used for science fair projects) into a preservation display with, at last count, fourteen more images (mostly 4×6, but a couple 8.5×11) of landmarks that have been restored or preserved along the Mother Road in Illinois. There’s also a map of Illinois featuring all of the projects worked on.

Oh, the music: I purchased a few 50’s oldies compilation CDs to go with my already pretty good collection of 60’s music and created a four-to-five hour playlist for our iPod to take along on last weekend’s Motor Tour. It’s called “Cruisin’”, and to be a little polite it, well…it kicks your ass. The songs haven’t outlived their usefulness, though: I’m taking small speakers and the iPod with me to play crusin’ music (at a reasonable volume) at the booth to get people in the Route 66 mood. Trust me, it works.

The banner: didn’t get it done in time. We’ll make do without it.

2.) Have a product. Our main goal is to hopefully get one or two (or more) new (or renewal, even) applicants to the Association. Or to at least hand out brochures. But that’s not enough.

Since I printed all those pictures out to display, why can’t we sell a few? The Waldmire prints up for sale on the Motor Tour did okay, and while my photography is not nearly as artistic a few people may still find it attractive. And since we’re in Farmersville, printing a few extra copies of the Art’s sign and the Our Lady of the Highways Shrine might result in a few sales. It costs me (well, the Association after I get repaid) about $1.50 at most to produce a print. Selling just a couple at $10/print would do a lot.

What else sells well at these festivals? Cookbooks. Since the Association already has a stack of them, putting some on the table certainly won’t hurt. I was promised a shipment of them from up north by this weekend; no luck yet, but there’s still time.

3.) Get them talking. Our biggest advantage is our love of the highway. Emily and I are well versed in its history and speak with passion. If we can get people asking about certain pictures or landmarks or just what the heck we’re doing there, then we might get move a print. Or get a new member. Or at least just get someone to want to travel the road…someday. And isn’t that what we’re all about, anyway?

—–

I think it’ll work. If nothing else we have the three festivals before the next Association meeting in Willowbrook in July so we can report back on our successes and failures. Hopefully more of the former.

I’ll take pictures this weekend at Irish Days and show off the final product.

Okay, so it wasn’t the Illinois Central.

And it wasn’t Monday morning; it was Monday evening.

But it was still awesome. With Emily having to work in Chicagoland this week, it was the perfect opportunity to travel the rails alongside Route 66. After arriving at a friend’s house in Plainfield to catch up on sleep after the Motor Tour, we spent Monday - our first anniversary - heading up the Mother Road out of Joliet all the way up to Michigan Avenue. We missed a few miles of road in Joliet, but we’d taken Veterans’ Parkway around Springfield on Saturday so we’d already cheated once. It’s the thought that counts.

At 6:05 that evening she dropped me off at the historic Joliet Union Station and I jumped the 305 Amtrak southbound to Carlinville. We paused only once - just south of Odell to wait for a freight to pass - and the trip along the Mother Road, coming just one day after we had traveled north, was a fun way to head back home. Of the landmarks easily visible from the train I only missed the Polk-a-Dot and pretty much all of Chenoa before darkness stole my vision from me near Sherman. For a moment I thought I’d missed the Cayuga Meramec Caverns Barn, but then it snuck up on me; with the elevation of the tracks at that point the view of the barn from the train is incredible.

An added bonus: the train car was lined with AC power plugs enabling me to plug in my laptop and do work, specifically for the festival this weekend. The result was me doing about five minutes of work while heading out of Joliet before I ditched the notebook and dug out the iPod. I was just too distracted away from my sightseeing.

• The aforementioned festival is Farmersville’s Irish Days, the village’s annual town fiesta that was once featured on the Illinois Motor Tour. This Friday night and Saturday we’ll have a booth at the event promoting the Association, handing out applications and hopefully educating some people about Route 66. Maybe we can even sell a few cookbooks. I’m assembling a binder full of 8.5×11 prints of Illinois Route 66 landmarks and information about them (and I’ll have some of those prints for sale as well) and there will be a large poster celebrating the preservation efforts of the Association over the years.

We’re looking forward to Litchfield next week, as well, though we’ll just be hanging out at the Illinois Association/Pontiac booth a little bit. I’d love to attend the breakfast at the Ariston on Sunday morning, as well, but we have to go to church sometime. And the rest of the weekend is packed.

Since the crux of the Motor Tour is to travel old, beaten down pavement and see old businesses that reflected the history and economic condition of America, perhaps it’s appropriate to start the second day of the journey in the rotting parking lot of an abandoned Wal-Mart. In the shadow of a sparkling new Wal-Mart SuperCenter. The circle of life, or something trite like that.

Let’s start with the two opposing schools of thought:

1.) Start the morning strong and no matter what ills you run into the rest of the day and you’ll still enjoy the journey.

2.) Start the day too strong and everything else is just a letdown.

Depending on how you feel, beginning the second day of the tour in Atlanta could either be a brilliant move or a harrowing mistake.

Atlanta is simply the most gorgeous little town on Route 66 in Illinois. The highway curves onto Arch Street and past a collection of older downtown stores that makes the National Register of Historic Places wail with envy. Just restoring the existing businesses would have been enough to secure the village a place on Route 66’s All-Star list, but add the old museum and its clock tower, the cute corner park and old Logan County Fair ticket booth, an old grain elevator museum, and add a giant retired lumberjack/hot dog salesman from Cicero to do round the clock surveillance and you have an amazing combination of pure awesome. Atlanta’s always been our favorite Route 66 community, and it just keeps getting better.

Inside the under-restoration Palms Grill the tourists were greeted with water, coffee, lemonade and a tasty cookie decorated with the symbol of Atlanta: the yellow smiley face painted on the omnipresent water tower. Visitors were directed to the Atlanta Country Store to the north where a gift shop awaited featuring t-shirts bearing the faces of both Tall Paul and the grinning water tower; the latter was a must-buy.

Many of the aisles bore empty peg hooks, and the tiny store seemed to be lacking a lot of essentials. In a rough economy, it appeared that the small town market was being battered heavily, and a stack of flyers at the checkout begging Atlanta residents to buy “at least some” of their groceries in town each week confirmed this. With Lincoln and Bloomington so close, you can understand the temptation to head to a Schnucks or other big name supermarket, but I get the feeling that a little more negligence by northern Logan County will cause a lot of unforeseen heartache down the line.

Over at the Hawes Grain Elevator Museum, an old man waited patiently…just in case. The stop wasn’t on the agenda, but he figured someone might float by, and our group did just that. After a brief tour inside he showed off the main engine outside and promised he’d attempt to fire up the old gal. His immediate success produced a load roar that attracted several other gawkers, quickly scuttling over to investigate the ancient noisemaker and admire the power of the machine; boys and their toys.

Our tour was noticeably smaller as we rolled along the west frontage of I-55, losing the freeway amidst the forestry of Funks Grove. The sirup stop was optional, but few zoomed past the modest entrance without stopping to pay homage to one of the Mother Road’s most unique landmarks. Business was brisk inside the small shack, Route 66 shirts and books, bags of candy and bottles of sweet all flying off the shelves as the visitors scrambled to take home at least a small piece of the Funk (and aid their breakfasts in the days to come.)

Throughout the day we would find ourselves continually running into the group of classic cars that traveled together, and at Funks Grove some of the hoods popped up and a number of tourists took the time gather under the canopy to hide from the sun and gawk at the construction of yesteryear. Back on the road and heading north to the Twins, another group of antiques passed by, traveling America’s Main Street southbound, adding to the fun of it all.

After a quick stop at Terri Ryburn’s gas station restoration in the Normal neighborhoods of the Twins (again, an optional stop that was visited by most) it was onto Towanda and the midday eats. Kicks on 66 played host, and the choice was a cheap (and delicious) box lunch or ordering from the very affordable (and delicious) menu. Service was good and the day was perfect for eating outside between the old two-lane and the later four-lane alignments. Hopefully no townies planned to patronize their village’s most northern business that day; there wasn’t a free seat in the house.

We snuck out of town to the south in an attempt to grab a look at the Duncan Manor mansion (not willing to pony up the time…or the cash…to tour the inside today) but our cars were not even allowed down the lane, with tour traffic directed further down the county road and individuals being bussed into the festivities. Turning around, we stopped back at the Schenk family garage on the north end of Towanda. The family’s garage was filled with Mother Road memorabilia and fun, unique gifts, and the rarely talked about stop, unknown to many (including us,) was a fun surprise. Word of advice: if you’re ever setting up a shrine to Route 66, splurge and get the black and white tiled floor. It totally makes the presentation.

I threw my hands up in celebration. “It’s open!”

The gate was open!

We’d walked down Lexington’s Memory Lane several time, but never cruised it. Scandalous, I know. At this point we were without company on the tour, behind a few and ahead of most, and our two car caravan had the old 1926 pavement to ourselves as we entered the open gate to the north and slowly traveled into Lexington, the classic billboards and looming grain elevators beckoning. A bumpy ride, but we wouldn’t want it any other way.

The storm clouds started to assemble at Pontiac, forcing us to beat a hasty retreat from the Illinois 4 marker on Ladd Street after getting our passport stamped. Most of the tour hadn’t reached the seat of Livingston County yet, but the museum was starting to get busy with couples wandering down the rows of cases, checking out various Hall of Fame members, while several other groups huddled towards the back talking about highlights of motor tours past and present. We ducked to the back to check out the giant Route 66 mural, obscured slightly by temporary fences keeping us from being harmed by the elevator construction at the old firehouse, and then we moved further south for a glimpse of the county courthouse. The last time we visited Pontiac was on the Sunday of the Red Carpet Corridor, and downtown Pontiac was far busier on that day then on this weekend when it seemed not a soul was milling under the darkening clouds hovering over the city. Perhaps they were still spooked from the tornado that trampled through just to the northwest one day prior.

South of Odell, the weather turned eerie.

It probably should have been raining. Grey clouds turned black, and sunglasses practically welded to our heads after two days of blinding sunlight quickly became pointless.

But no rain.

This was good news for the happy couple. They were gone by the time we reached the south of Odell, off with their wedding party on a cruise to Gardner and a photo op at the two-celled jail. They had gotten engaged on Route 66 and with the help of John and Lenore Weiss booked the 1932 Standard Oil Station as the site where they would exchange vows. Many of the cars from the ceremony remained there as a trolley bus had shuttled most of the onlookers north for the rest of the fun, but there were plenty of room for the few tourists who cruised in ahead of most of (what was left of) the pack. Running into the group of classics again, we investigated the garage area (finding a stack of chairs left from the wedding ceremony) and a red carpet that was most likely used for the vows and not the Route 66 promotion offered by Pontiac Tourism one month prior.

North of Odell, it started pouring.

The drizzle began as we sat by the old pedestrian tunnel in Odell. We lost the other half of our party (the parents) as they sought to return south at a decent time, and as we pressed on to Dwight the skies opened up and the Rain-X coating our windshield became useful. While the water fell down the sun shined down at an angle from the south, but no rainbow could be found.

By Dwight we were done with the wet stuff.

Having never taken the Dwight bypass, we did that, and now we never have to again. It got us to Gardner early and after we passed the happy couple (and their trolley bus hot in pursuit) as they returned to Odell we had ample time to check out the two-celled jail (as the decorators took down the ribbons and bows from the newly minted couple’s visit) and get our passport stamped at the Gardner Chronicle Antique shop. A few people floated in and out, but , and by the time we reached Wilmington and Camz Gift Shop it was clear that most of the tour was either running far behind or had gone their separate ways.

What began with a bang on Saturday morning whimpered out late in the PM on Sunday, and as we snacked on our burgers at the Launching Pad a small group of tourists – mostly Association board members and VIPs – surrounded us. It was a quiet, relaxing end; one can hardly wish for a raging party to wrap the weekend up when, in effect, the entire weekend was a party all up and down the Mother Road in Illinois.

Besides, when you boil it down, thirty-one years after the State of Illinois tore down the reassurance signs of a stretch of pavement a large group of admirers gathered for the nineteenth time to celebrate its significance and have a blast. At a time when the price of gas is nothing to scoff at.

No matter how the end fizzles out, that has to make you happy.