The Route 66 Chick

Five things that are happening with my Women of Route 66 project: Thing #1: On March 7, I gave my new program, "Dreams, Designs, and Dastardly Deeds:  the Women of Missouri Route 66," at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. Wish you could have all been there! Some of the stories I shared were:  Julia Chaney, cook/owner/operator at Red's Giant Hamburg; Mayme Ousley, four-term mayor of St. James; outlaws Bonnie Parker and Blanche Barrow; and the women of the Boots, Wagon Wheel, and Munger Moss motels. I hope to have a couple more bookings of this program to announce soon. Thing #2: Watch for an article on some of the Missouri 66 women in the summer issue of Show Me Route 66 , the excellent quarterly publication of the  Route 66 Association of Missouri . Thing #3: My column in the next issue of the Buzz will be about the Mansholt family--particularly the women--and their hotels in Litchfield, Illinois. The Mansholts, now well into their second generat...

On Sunday, Joe Sonderman and I did a very fun book signing at the Litchfield Museum and Route 66 Welcome Center in Litchfield, Illinois. We had a great crowd and had the opportunity to chat with a lot of visitors. It was especially fun for me as Litchfield was my hometown for over 40 years. I appreciate so many old friends, acquaintances, and extended family stopping by! Thank you so much! And thank you to the Litchfield Museum for hosting us. Route 66 exhibit sign at the Litchfield Museum. We do wish to issue apologies to everyone who came expecting to hear our "Route 66 in Illinois" presentation. We were looking forward to sharing the program but museum staff was concerned about space considerations and the lack of a proper set-up for presenting a program to a potentially large group, and so preferred that we did not do it. Unfortunately, this was expressed to us after the publicity had already gone out. In the fall, please watch for us to return to Litchfield to g...

The Litchfield Museum and Route 66 Welcome Center at 334 Historic Old Route 66 North (across the road from the Ariston Cafe) in Litchfield, Illinois, is celebrating its first anniversary on Sunday, June 1, from 1:00-4:00 pm. The museum invites everyone to come join them for the celebration, with new attractions, special music, vintage automobiles, door prizes, and refreshments. The museum and welcome center opened a year ago after many months of planning, design, and construction. Construction of the building was followed closely by Litchfield residents driving by the site and by Route 66 fans around the world via social media. The building was designed by John Fletcher to be reminiscent of Route 66-era service businesses with a corner entrance and plenty of neon. Carol Hampton Berry is credited with the floor plan for the building and United Builders/Larry Pence did the construction.     The “Vic Suhling – Gas for Less” sign, appropriately situated in its original loca...

What started last Saturday as a photo-choosing and -culling session for our new book turned into a very pleasant afternoon in Litchfield and DeCamp Junction instead. We probably already have more than enough images at this point to turn "Route 66 in Illinois" into a two-volume project. But the mere thought of more vintage images waiting somewhere is always enough to cause us to jump in the car and head out after them.  We took 66 up to Litchfield - there's construction on I-55 right now, as if we needed an excuse. First stop, the  Litchfield Museum and Route 66 Welcome Center . Inside we ran into Nick Adam of the Ariston Cafe and Martha Jackson, driving force behind the museum. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the exhibits since Joe had not been there since they opened, and I had not been there since opening day, which was so packed - plus I kept getting into conversations with hometown friends - that I really hadn't taken a good look. This was special for me...

Joliet was our destination this past weekend for a couple days of research, acquiring photos, driving some stretches of historic Route 66, and generally schmoozing with fellow Route 66 and history aficionados. Joe Sonderman and I are working on "Route 66 in Illinois," our collaboration for Arcadia Publishing. We signed the contract earlier this summer with the goal of release next May. Since my two earlier Route 66 books for Arcadia covered two stretches of the Illinois road, namely that of Madison County and of the Springfield (capital city) area, and Chicago Route 66 expert David Clark covered that city in his Arcadia book, Joe and I determined from the start that our new book would not "recycle" material from the other three books. This would be a fresh look at the history and heritage of the route through Illinois with as many unpublished and utterly amazing vintage photos as we could ferret out up and down the state.We also agreed that as long as we were ment...