Snapshots, clockwise from upper left: Oklahoma’s soil is strikingly red and provides an interesting background for wild flowers; Jean Van Der Elst and his wife Isabella were tracing Route 66 west, along with 65 other vintage car owners from Europe; a crucial moment in the the Team’s trip: Getting Route 66 hats!; Giant windmills outside Weatherford — the self-described “wind energy capital of Oklahoma”; At some point as the Route 66 Team headed east, rivers started having water in them again. This is the Canadian River in central Oklahoma; Lee French, his wife Vicki and granddaughter Dai, in a 1955, two-door Bel-Air sport coupe, in Clinton, Oklahoma. French owns 15 vintage cars, most of them Bel-Airs.
Nick Carey/James Kelleher, May 19 ,2007

Only a handful of shops are still open in the downtown in Erick, Oklahoma, including an antique store that brags the little town is “The Redneck Capital of the World — Yee Haw!”
 
Erick’s best-know son is probably Roger Miller, the songwriter best known for “King of the Road,” a tune the Route 66 Team sang as they approached the town. One of the few other open businesses on the town’s main street is a museum dedicated to Miller. 
 
But Erick was also the hometown of Sheb Wooley, a rodeo cowboy turned singer turned actor who appeared in the movie “High Noon” and the television show “Rawhide” and wrote and performed the hit novelty song “The Purple People Eater.” A street in Erick is named for him.

The Route 66 Team decided to take another detour from the old highway’s route in Texas in order to experience something surprisingly elusive in that state these days: real cowboys.  

The team knew it would find them up in this part of the state, which was once part of the X.I.T. Ranch, a 3 million-acre spread that in the late 19th century was the largest ranch in the world. The X.I.T. ranch was sold and broken up years ago. But the 10 counties that it encompassed in its heyday are still very much cattle country, home to dozens of feedlots and hundreds of thousands of heads of cattle.

We filled the 912 all the way up, putting nearly 12 gallons into the car’s tank and running up the largest gasoline bill — $43.60 — ever for it.

But it was all worth it. Because Texline was crawling with real, horse-mounted cowboys. In fact, the Route 66 team wound up being late for their appointment at Carrizo Feeders because they got stuck behind some cowboys moving a herd of cattle from one pasture to another.

Photos: James Kelleher/Nick Carey, Dalhart and Texline, Texas on May 18, 2007.

When Route 66 was decommissioned, and cross-country traffic moved to the then-new Interstates 40 and 44, the motels along its old path didn’t have the option of moving.

In some towns, the businesses quickly shut their doors. In others, death was a more drawn out affair, as the hotels tried to hang on by lowering their rates or finding some other way to compete.

In Albuquerque, some of them have been turned into residences for people who are down on their luck. But this has become a point of increasing tension in recent years as the surrounding neighborhood, which was once decaying along with the motels, has gentrified.
 

For years, this city in eastern New Mexico has used the slogan “Tucumcari tonight” to entice travelers on the cross-country highways that have passed through here or near here to stop and spend the night.
 
Judging from the rundown look of the main drag, which was hard hit when Route 66 was decommissioned, fewer and fewer people are taking the town up on its suggestion. But Tucumcari still has a faded charm, probably best viewed after sundown, when the neon lights turn on.
 
Here’s what the city looked like on a recent night.
 
Photos Nick Carey/James Kelleher on May 17, 2007 in Tucumcari.
 

Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque isnt the only house of worship located on the old cross-country highway.

Not by a long shot. Route 66, after all, passed through some keys states in the  Bible Belt, including Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Churches were as plentiful as Whiting Bros service stations in the heyday of Route 66.  

But Immanuel Presbyterian can confidently claim to be the primus inter pares among the many roadside houses of worship thanks to its website at Rt66church.com

Even without the spiffy URL, Immanuel Presbyterians claim to the title is probably as good as any other churchs. Maybe better.  

For starters, it was organized in 1948, just as Route 66 was entering its prime.  

The sanctuary itself, built shortly thereafter, was designed by noted architect John Gaw Meem in his signature Spanish Pueblo revival style, a style that is almost as emblematic of the old highway in places like New Mexico, Arizona and California as the Route 66 sign itself. A view from the bell tower is on the left.

Rev. Joyce Lieberman (pictured), who with her husband Chris, runs Immanuel Presbyterian, admits that only a handful of Route 66 travelers stop into the church each week and that probably half of them come to look around, not to worship.

But Liebermans OK with that. Shes also OK with the fact that most of the members of her congregation, which numbers 400, don’t have what she calls “Presbyterian roots.” Instead, they are spirtual wanderers — as much travelers as the folks who drive past on Route 66. And like those drivers, they sometimes grow tired of the journey they’ve been on, and they look for a place to pull off and rest.

“People are seeking spiritual meaningfulness that is not based on Denominationalism,” she says. “Denominationalism is a thing of the past,” Lieberman says. 

Photos: James Kelleher, Albuquerque, New Mexico May 17, 2007

 

For decades, that was the big promise: Clines Corners a restaurant, gas station and gift shop located at a remote crossroad in central New Mexico — was the ideal place for travelers on old Route 66 to pull off and rest.

On orange and red billboards that start popping up at the Texas state line in the east and the Arizona state line in the west, and that reappear with an almost manic urgency as drivers get closer, Clines warns weary travelers:  

Dont be a sucker. Dont fall for the false allure and instant gratification of the places like Grants, Albuquerque, Tijeras and Moriarty that youll pass before you get here. Clines Corners is something special — something you might even tell the folks back home about.

Route 66 is gone, replaced in this part of the country by Interstate 40. But Clines Corners remains. And it continues to make big promises in its billboards, even though its competition has increased as modern gas stations cum travel centers have opened up and down the Interstate and as Albuquerque sprawls in all directions, making the 350-mile journey from Gallup in the west of the state to Glenrio in the east less of an ordeal.

Photos: James Kelleher and Nick Carey/eastern New Mexico, May 17, 2007. 

OK it’s true: Bloomfield, New Mexico is actually more than 120 miles north of the path that old Route 66 took across this stark, beautiful state. But sometimes it pays to veer off the beaten path.

You reach Bloomfield from Gallup by taking state route 491 north through the heart of the Navajo Nation’s tribal lands. The journey is one that’s not easily forgotten: stunning natural beauty side by side with grinding poverty.

Bloomfield and Farmington are not just off the Navajo reservation — they’re practically on another planet, thanks to oil fields in the surrounding San Juan basin that provide well-paying jobs to many of the locals.

Which brings us to the subject of the flag-waving trucks. Venture into Farmington or Bloomfield and you’ll quickly see them everywhere: trucks of every size with long, white plastic poles poking up into the sky from just behind the driver’s cab — like CB radio antennas of old, only longer — waving small colored flags.

The flags, it turns out, are an informal safety device employed by oil field workers to avoid collisions when they race around in the unpaved, hilly badlands where the wells are located.

“It lets you know when other trucks are coming at you,” says Bill Wilson, 52, who works as a switcher and pumper in the fields, and spend much of his day out in the basin.

“Some guys don’t like them,” Wilson says, “because they can get hung up on things. But they really work — as long as people put them on the driver’s side. Ninety-nine percent of them do. But some people put them on the passenger’s side and that doesn’t make sense. Because when you’re out there in the basin and you see the flag coming at you on the other side of a hill, you assume it’s on the driver’s side. And then if you come around the corner, and it’s on the passenger’s side, you just don’t have the room you thought you did. And that can be a problem.”

We met Remi Nathan, 23, who lives in Albuquerque but hails from Connecticut, at a gas station in the town of Bloomfield in northern New Mexico. Remi sells wholesale perfumes and colognes he said hes a part owner of a company that operates from here to California and he travels extensively to towns like Bloomfield to tout his wares.

Remi had this to say on life in Albuquerque:

We have a pretty serious problem with gang violence in Albuquerque at the moment, but if you know where not to go, you can avoid trouble very easily.

Education is also a big problem in the city, the system is under-funded and not working well.

On immigration

Immigration has long been a serious problem further south toward the border in New Mexico, but its also getting pretty serious in Albuquerque. There are plenty of illegals who come to the city willing to work in the construction industry or in restaurants for much less than legal residents of Albuquerque, which has made a lot of people angry. It doesnt affect me personally because in my line of work you need English and a whole different set of skills to sell the goods I do.

On the war in Iraq

I try not to watch the television news at all because Im tired of hearing about it (the war). But I can tell from the way gas prices have been rising that its not going well. I thought this was supposed to be about keeping gas prices down.

Gallup, New Mexico is a key embarkation point for travelers interested in visiting the nearby Navajo Indian nation.

It’s also home to El Rancho Hotel, an old school hostelry with an Amerindian-meets-Hotel-California vibe that has served as an irresistible beacon to travelers on Route 66 since 1937, when the brother of film great D.W. Griffith first opened its doors.

The hotel’s debt to the old highway is honored in the shirts that front desk clerks like John Moore wear when they greet guests.

El Rancho’s two-story lobby is filled with pictures of the many stars that have stayed here over the years (including Ronald Reagan, Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart) and chock-a-block with funky Spanish-Indian furniture, including one-of-a-kind chairs with arms and backs made from bull horns.

OK, so they’re probably not the chairs you’d want to relax in as you sat through a three-film Spider Man marathon. But they get top marks for Southwest cool.

Photos: James Kelleher/May 15-16 in Gallup, New Mexico