Route 40
By noderel:
You know, I hear so much about Route 66 I just want to puke! To me, there is nothing magical about it. Because I have travelled every inch of it one time or other, and when I started bouncing across western America on that thin strip of madness it was in old Fords and Chevys with a Desert water bag draped over the bumper or a headlight bracket. It was drudgery of the first magnitude.
It wasn’t so bad from Chicago down to about Oklahoma City, mostly just typical mid-America small towns every 30 or so miles. Water tower, crossroads middle of town, two or three obligatory gas stations where someone actually came to your car alongside the gravity feed visible pumps (these were the first to change as the 50’s came along), World Famous hamburgers and milkshakes at a corner eatery…stuff that was marginal then and entirely forgettable now. Well, except for that full one-pound beefsteak out near Amarillo.
And the old vacumn tube car radios that faded in and out as you sped down the highway at an average speed approaching 50mph. Of course, you could get that huge clear channel station down in Mexico, where they were selling mail-order live chicks, or the one from over in Albuquerque that only got stronger as the sun sank lower.
You certainly didn’t want to miss the Wigwam, which was in the era when Motels were new to the scene and a buck a night was normal. Although you could get a pretty good bed, without bed bugs, for as little as 50 cents a night in the edges of the “bigger” towns. Of course, at the See The Prehistoric Thingie you parked out in the desert beside huge billboards that fed into tiny little rooms, and while you were inside someone was sneaking up behind your car and plastering a sticker on the bumper.
We crossed much of that road back before WWII, and all of it before 1950, the later years in a Studebaker Champion that got about 22mpg and an average speed of nearly 55mph. All of the miles with roll-down air conditioning and baloney sandwiches on the fly. It was a long three days from the mecca of Southern California to the relatives in eastern Oklahoma. I never thought to count the number of flat tires. I did grow to dspise those border inspectors at the Colorado River entry station into the Golden State. If your car had a California license, they would often just wave you through, but heaven help you with any other plate.
Going west, the misery tended to climax just west of the California border, as you would climb out of the river plain. From there all the way to San Bernardino it was an oven. We never seemed to make the trek in the cool months. From Berdoo in to LA it was still mostly grapevines and palm trees. You didn’t get into the Orange Ahead much until you started up 99 at Bakersfield. Nope, route 66 was a strip of misery with a smile at either end. Even after we got those window air conditioners that spewed water all over you at a corner. And the only treasure was really as you turned north across San Fernando Valley and went up and over the beginning of 99.
Up on the top of that strip of non-engineering was where, in much later years, I did discover some real un-live treasures.
Back then, it was called The Grapevine, pretty much because it was a twisty and tough pass over into the San Joquin. Coming from the south, the little two lane kind of ran out of humanity out just north of where Magic Mountain theme park now is, at Castaic. Two gas stations, one either side of the highway, and pre-historic trucks trying to make the top, before humping out south of Fort Tejon and running helter skelter down that infamous decline into the Valley. I lived up there, on the top at a little community called Lake Of The Woods in the Seventies, and I got to know the area really well.
Now, you start paying attention. You turn west off the freeway at Lebec and go west about 5 miles to Lake Of The Woods. Nothing much there except for a fork in the road. If you go right (north) up the small valley, keep right at the next fork and go down into Pine Mounain Club. Just as you arrive at that retirement area, there is a small dirt road that turns down a canyon. Through a fence there and shortly you find an old falling down adobe place. That was a Wells Fargo station back when, and if you keep going downhill you eventually come to the east west road from the 99 freeway (I-5) to Maricopa.
But back in Pine Mountain, you keep going north and you descend the mountain enough until you come out of the big pine trees onto a narrow descending ridge. You start looking in those steep gorges on the side, there was a complete ’34 Ford sedan down one of those ravines.
Now, back up to Lake Of The Woods. Instead of going north at the fork, you go straight ahead toward Lockwood Valley. The road opens into a big sage brush flat. I don’t remember the dirt road, but it is only about a mile or two west of LOW, you turn south and climb up into the breaks. Go back into those ravines and on top of one is an old abandoned mine. When I was there it had a dozen or so old cars sitting around. Since none of them were ’32 Fords, I never bothered with them. By now, however, you are getting the idea that there is VT pretty much everywhere. But not right alongside the paved highway. Normally, I used a 4WD for these off pavement excursions.