Route 66: The Mother Road

Long before Interstate 40, Interstate 44, and the web of modern freeways stitched America together, there was U.S. Route 66.

Part of The American Time Capsule — preserving the people, places, products, traditions, and everyday moments that shaped growing up in America before the digital age. This article explores the cars, highways, road trips, and adventures that made the open road part of the American dream.

Historic Route 66, “The Mother Road.”

Stretching nearly 2,500 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, Route 66 wasn’t simply a highway.

It was an adventure.

For millions of American families, the vacation didn’t begin when they reached their destination.

It began the moment Dad backed the family car out of the driveway.

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Our Family on Route 66

Route 66 wasn’t a road our family traveled every summer.

In fact, as best I remember, we took only one real family driving vacation when I was growing up.

It was 1959.

I was ten years old.

CC was nine, Margaret eight, Jean seven, and little Johnny—the baby of the family—was five.

Janey wouldn’t come along until several years later.

There were seven of us packed into the family car, and unlike the vacations people often describe today, we didn’t really have a destination.

The journey was the vacation.

We couldn’t afford to put seven people on an airplane, and we didn’t have relatives scattered around the country giving us a reason to drive somewhere specific.

So Dad pointed the car west from Ferguson and we headed out on Route 66.

That was pretty much the plan.

Go west and see what was out there.

Dad did all the driving.

Mom never drove on our trips. Dad always complained that she drove too slowly, which apparently disqualified her from relieving him behind the wheel.

Years later I would have my own turn behind the wheel, but first I had to survive that teenage rite of passage remembered in The Trauma of the Driver’s Test

Mom’s job was navigating.

Dad’s job was driving.

Our job was apparently to see how long five children could occupy the same automobile before somebody threatened somebody else.

We traveled through Missouri and Oklahoma and eventually reached Amarillo, Texas, where Dad had a friend who lived on a cattle ranch.

We stayed there for a couple of nights.

For us kids, staying on a Texas cattle ranch was another adventure in itself.

Then Dad turned the car around and we headed east again toward St. Louis.

The entire trip lasted about ten days.

That was far enough.

By the time Dad finally pulled back into our driveway in Ferguson after ten days of driving with five children…

he swore we’d never go that far again.

As far as I can remember, we didn’t.

Route 66 Was the Destination

That’s what makes that 1959 trip different in my memory.

We weren’t rushing to Disneyland.

We weren’t headed to Grandma’s house.

There wasn’t a resort reservation waiting for us.

There was no carefully planned destination where the vacation would finally begin.

We were already on vacation.

The towns were the vacation.

The filling stations were the vacation.

The roadside picnic tables were the vacation.

The Burma-Shave signs were the vacation.

The motels and swimming pools were the vacation.

Crossing another state line was the vacation.

Even five kids arguing in the back seat was part of it.

We were simply a family from Ferguson heading west on Route 66 to see what America looked like beyond the places we already knew.

The road itself gave us somewhere to go.

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The Night Before

The night before departure almost nobody slept very well. Dad kept yelling up the stairs with his usual empty threats: “if you kids don’t quiet down and go to sleep, I’m canceling the trip.”

Kids were too excited to settle down but eventually after the last pillow fight, gentle snoring ruled the night.

Suitcases and diaper bags waited by the front door.

Everybody kept asking…

“What time are we leaving?”

The answer was almost always:

“Five in the morning.

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Before Sunrise

Getting five excited kids ready for a journey beginning at zero-dark-thirty was an event in itself.

Mom, barely awake herself, herded us through the bathroom one at a time to wash faces, brush teeth, change a diaper, or whatever else needed doing.

Travel clothes weren’t complicated.

For the younger kids, sometimes it was simply a fresh pair of pajamas.

Then Mom put cereal and milk on the table and ordered us older kids to supervise breakfast while she helped Dad finish getting everything ready.

Excitement ruled the breakfast table.

Arguments could break out over who got the last of the Frosted Flakes, leaving the Froot Loops to somebody else.

And before we even let the screen door slam behind us…

we were already calling dibs on where we were going to sit.

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Preparing for the Journey

Our vacation began before Dad ever started the engine.

Dad would stop by the local AAA office the day before to pick up a TripTik, those spiral-bound personalized route books that highlighted every turn along the journey. You flipped each page as you traveled.

It was turn-by-turn navigation before anything talked to you.

Finding your way across several states required maps, landmarks, road signs, and occasionally a little guesswork, part of a vanished travel skill I remember in The Last Generation That Got Lost.

If you weren’t using a TripTik, chances were you had a giant Rand McNally Road Atlas spread across the kitchen table, complete with mileage charts showing exactly how many miles separated St. Louis from Amarillo or Albuquerque from Los Angeles. The atlas was so big it barely fit in the car—and certainly didn’t fit comfortably in the glove box.

Suitcases were strapped to the roof.

Into the car went the metal cooler.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Pieces of Mom’s fried chicken wrapped in aluminum foil.

Potato chips.

And glass bottles of Coca-Cola buried in ice.

Why buy lunch when Mom had already packed enough food to feed a small platoon?

Lunch Along the Road

Sooner or later, Dad would pull into one of those roadside picnic areas with a table tucked beneath a shade tree.

That was our lunch stop.

Mom didn’t simply open the cooler and start handing out sandwiches.

We set up camp.

Mom spread a tablecloth across the picnic table.

Jean would pick a few yellow dandelions growing nearby and put them in a little vase on the table.

CC helped set out the paper plates, napkins, cups, and plastic forks and spoons.

Even little Johnny had a job, helping Mom unwrap the sandwiches.

For a few minutes, a roadside picnic table somewhere along the highway became our family dining room.

Once everything was ready, we’d all sit down.

Someone said a quick prayer.

Then we dove in.

Sandwiches.

Mom’s fried chicken.

Potato chips.

Cold Coca-Cola from glass bottles that had been buried in the ice.

Nothing fancy.

But after several hours in the car, it tasted pretty good.

When lunch was over, everybody helped gather our things. We threw away the trash, packed the cooler, folded the tablecloth, and climbed back into the car.

There were more miles ahead.

Lunch also produced one of Dad’s favorite parts of the trip.

Silence.

The combination of full stomachs, the steady rhythm of the road, and the warm afternoon eventually put most of us kids to sleep.

One by one, conversations stopped.

Heads leaned against windows.

Someone stretched across whatever portion of the back seat he or she could claim.

And for a little while, Dad could drive in peace.

Mom often rested too.

But she had a habit that bothered us kids.

She’d turn sideways in the front passenger seat and rest her back against the door.

From the back seat would come the warnings:

“Mom! What if the door opens?”

“What if you fall out?”

Mom apparently wasn’t worried.

We were.

Of course, this was also an era when five kids could bounce around a car without seat belts, somebody could claim the “death seat,” and sticking your arm out the window at highway speed qualified as entertainment.

Apparently we had very selective ideas about automobile safety.

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Air Conditioning… 1960s Style

Air conditioning?

Most families didn’t have it.

Instead, Dad rolled down all four windows, swung open the little triangular vent windows, and announced with complete confidence:

“There… now we’ve got air conditioning.”

The kids bounced around the back seat without seat belts because, back then, hardly anyone wore them.

The kids sitting next to the windows stuck their hands out into the rushing air and pretended they were airplanes.

The lucky child who claimed the front passenger seat to sit beside Mom first proudly declared,

“Dibs!”

It was affectionately known as the “death seat,” although nobody thought much about that at the time.

When Mom and Dad were both in the car, Dad always drove.

Within an hour came the inevitable question every father expected.

“Are we there yet, Daddy?”

Usually followed by…

“How much farther?”

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The Journey Was the Entertainment

To pass the time, we invented games.

One favorite was license plate poker, spotting license plates from as many different states as possible. Others searched for alphabet letters on highway signs or tried to be the first to spot a particular make of car.

Peace in the Back Seat Lasted About Ten Minutes

Of course, we didn’t spend the entire trip peacefully playing license-plate games and searching highway signs for letters of the alphabet.

There were a lot of kids in that car.

There was always some kind of drama going on in the back seat.

The first battle usually began before we left Ferguson:

Who gets the window?

Nobody wanted the middle.

The window seat gave you fresh air, something to lean against when you slept, and control over how far the window was rolled down.

The middle seat gave you…

the middle seat.

Then came the territorial disputes.

“He’s touching me!”

“She’s on my side!”

“Move your leg!”

“Mom, tell him to stop!”

There was name-calling.

Occasional hair-pulling.

Elbows wandered across invisible borders.

And Mom, sitting up front, served as the United Nations.

She usually tried diplomacy first.

Dad had a different approach.

We all knew there was a point beyond which you didn’t push him.

If the commotion continued long enough, Dad could keep his left hand on the steering wheel while that enormous right hand suddenly came reaching over the seat, blindly swatting at whoever happened to be within range.

Accuracy wasn’t really the point.

The message was.

If that didn’t restore order, Dad brought out the ultimate threat:

“Do I have to pull this car over?”

Sometimes he escalated further and threatened to put a couple of us in the trunk.

Of course, he never would have done it.

We weren’t entirely sure of that at the time.

That usually bought him another few miles of peace.

Then there were the bathroom emergencies.

Dad would pull into a filling station or rest area and announce that everybody was going to the bathroom whether they needed to or not.

Everybody insisted they were fine.

Ten or fifteen miles later, inevitably, a voice came from the back:

“Dad… I have to go to the bathroom.”

Dad’s hands would tighten around the steering wheel.

“We just stopped!”

Apparently the human bladder operated according to its own TripTik.

Then eventually lunch came, stomachs were filled, and the steady rhythm of the highway began working its magic.

One by one, the combatants fell asleep.

For perhaps the first time all day…

Dad finally had peace and quiet.

Roadside America Was Half the Fun

Every few miles seemed to bring something designed specifically to make a kid stare out the window.

Neon motel signs.

Giant statues.

Diners.

Trading posts.

Souvenir stands.

Billboards promising some mysterious attraction another 47 miles down the road.

Towering neon motel signs glowed against the evening sky, promising Color TV, Air Conditioning, and Vacancy in bright pastel colors.

Many of those little motor courts featured kidney-shaped swimming pools that looked like paradise after a long day on the road.

The towering Holiday Inn “Great Sign” became a welcome sight for weary travelers, while the bright orange roofs of Howard Johnson’s promised a hot meal, ice cream, and a comfortable night’s sleep.

The journey itself became the vacation.

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Every Mile Told a Story

As the miles rolled by, we watched eagerly for the famous Burma-Shave roadside signs, reading one line at a time until the humorous punchline appeared a few hundred feet later.

The constant hum of the tires was hypnotic.

The smell of warm motor oil, hot asphalt, and fresh-cut hay drifted through the open windows as America rolled by one mile at a time.

Route 66 carried our family past diners, drive-ins, trading posts, souvenir shops, teepee motels, giant fiberglass dinosaurs, and enormous roadside figures eventually known as Muffler Men.

Much of it was gloriously unnecessary.

Which was precisely why us kids loved it.

Crossing into another state was an event in itself.

Welcome to Oklahoma.

Welcome to Texas.

Dad sometimes pulled into the first filling station after crossing the state line and picked up a free highway map.

Filling stations were more than places to buy gasoline—they offered maps, directions, clean windshields, mechanical help, and sometimes a little conversation, part of the roadside world remembered in Every Gas Station Had a Story

By the end of the trip, there might be maps from half a dozen states stuffed beside the driver’s seat.

And as we’ve already established…

none of them were ever folded quite the same way twice.

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The Road That Became an American Legend

Route 66 became known as “The Main Street of America.” More than two million people traveled portions of Route 66 during the Dust Bowl migration west.

Route 66 became so famous that it inspired its own television series, Route 66, following two young men traveling America in a Corvette, discovering a different town—and a different story—every week. “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” was written by American songwriter and musician Bobby Troup in 1946. The original and most famous early recording was sung and performed by the Nat King Cole Trio that same year. 

Even after much of the highway was bypassed by the new Interstate System, Route 66 refused to disappear.

Large stretches of the original Mother Road still survive, winding past restored gas stations, weathered diners, vintage motor courts, and glowing neon signs that seem frozen in another era.

Driving those remaining miles today isn’t simply a road trip.

It’s a chance to experience a piece of America that once represented freedom, adventure, and the open road.

Air travel offered its own sense of wonder in those days, something I remember in Airports: Before We Had to Take Our Shoes Off, but our 1959 vacation didn’t require an airline ticket—the road itself was where the adventure happened.

Because for those of us who remember it, getting there was never the whole point.

Maybe that’s why so many of us still remember the trip more clearly than where we were going.

The journey itself was the destination.

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💬 Your Turn

Did your family ever travel Route 66 or take long summer road trips?

Do you remember TripTiks from AAA, giant Rand McNally road atlases spread across the kitchen table, license plate games, Burma-Shave signs, roadside diners, or hearing your dad say, “We’re making good time” while everyone else kept asking, “Are we there yet?”

Share your favorite road trip memories in the comments. Whether it was Route 66, another highway, or simply piling into the family station wagon for summer vacation, I’d love to hear the stories that made the journey just as memorable as the destination.

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Bunker Rule

Every family remembers road trips a little differently. Share your favorite Route 66 memories, vacation traditions, roadside attractions, or funny stories from the back seat. Friendly nostalgia is always welcome—just remember that every family’s journey was unique.

Bunker Notice

The American Time Capsule celebrates the ordinary experiences that became extraordinary memories. Route 66 wasn’t just a highway—it was America’s invitation to explore. These stories preserve the sights, sounds, and traditions of the great American road trip for future generations.