Fiction, Essays, and Other Things

  One particular scene from Pixar’s Cars (one of the most charming tributes to America’s Highway the movies have produced) stands in my memory. Learning to love the Podunk town of Radiator Springs where he currently finds himself sentenced to labor after a night of reckless driving damaged the town’s crumbling roadway (yes, the references to Route 66 are many and subtle), Lightning McQueen, the daredevil racecar, cuts loose and takes off for a drive through the desert with his new friend Sally, the resident Porsche. Mostly they frolic through the desert landscape characteristic of Radiator Springs until the scenery changes to a pine forest where they splash through puddles. It’s a beautiful scene, capturing the diverse landscapes of Route 66. And so, as I made my way to Williams, Arizona, the desert gradually became a forest with pines thinner than I was used to seeing. I loved the wide variety of vistas offered by the road, but the pine forest gave me a distinct comfort remindi...

  Tried as I did, I could not get lodging at the Wigwam Motel. However, I resolved to do the next best thing and visited the icon before departing from Holbrook. Opening in 1950, Holbrook’s motel became the sixth Wigwam Village to open when Chester E. Lewis entered a licensing agreement with Frank A. Redford for his original 1936 design consisting of a row of motel cabins shaped like teepees (incorrectly labeled wigwams). In Lewis’s rendition (the first one west of the Mississippi), fifteen teepees are arranged in a square They offer all the standard motel amenities, including the original furniture. Classic American cars from the golden age of road travel line the parking lot in keeping with the spirit that brought the Wigwam Village to Arizona. Today, the sixth is one of three surviving Wigwam Villages along with the second in Cave City, Kentucky and the last one built in San Bernardino, California. On my way out of Holbrook I spotted the new cowboy statue erected in 2023 to ...

  Gallup is a fun buzzing city but my stay there felt like a whirlwind. It was my last stop in New Mexico and I was looking forward to crossing over into Arizona and Petrified Forest National Park. I was already off to a late start and that is the worst way to visit a national park. Still, El Rancho Hotel is a must see and I’m glad I made time for it. Built in 1937 by R.E. Griffith, the brother of film pioneer D.W. Griffith, and in the ensuing decades welcomed an impressive roster of A-listers from Hollywood’s golden age such as Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Despite its splendor during the studio-era, however, the El Rancho lost much of its glamour when Interstate 40 bypassed Gallup. It was saved from dilapidation, however, when local real-estate magnet Armand Ortega, bought the property in 1989 and restored it to its former glory.                                         ...

  A city’s reputation has never been a strong determining factor in my decision to visit a habit born, most likely, through years of defending my own hometown, Dorchester, from brass generalizations and ill-informed assessments. That is not to say that I am not prepared for what I find. My first impression of New Orleans, for instance, was much like I had heard but even here I gradually grew comfortable in the Big Easy, especially in the Garden District which is practically a small city with invisible but clearly drawn boundaries. Chicago, on the other hand, was a surprise. I walked freely through the streets there day and night and never once felt unsafe nor saw reason to for that matter. San Francisco was an interesting case. I saw evidence of the homelessness and substance abuse problems that have become almost synonymous with the city, but, for the life of me, I really could not make the case that it was any worse than Boston or New York City. The reason, I suspect, that th...

  “This train WILL stop at Tucumcari!” -Lee Van Cleef (Col. Douglas Mortimer, For a Few Dollars More)   Ah, but the train could not stop at Tucumcari in For a Few Dollars More. In the 1870s, when Sergio Leone’s Western takes place, Tucumcari was known only as a mountain that towered over the New Mexican valley upon which the city that would take its name in 1908 would be built. Tucumcari Mountain, once the pride of Comanche territory, now presides over a city of lights. But the lights are almost exclusively the lights of a Route 66 staple, the iconic motels that have greeted travelers with dazzling neon for decades. Because of their limited capacity, I was expecting some difficulty in finding vacancy in these motels during the Mother Road’s centennial. The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, for instance, had already been filled up by April when I began booking my stays so I was fortunate to find a room in the delightfully eccentric Motel Safari. Opening in 1959, this...