ROUTE THE MAGAZINE THAT CELEBRATES ROAD TRAVEL, VINTAGE AMERICANA AND ROUTE 66
October/November 2018
Magazine
INTRODUCING MOTHER ROAD ICON
GARY TURNER
THE FASCINATING STORY BEHIND THE JACK RABBIT TRADING POST DISCOVER THE MOST UNIQUE TOWN IN ARIZONA $5.99
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A-LISTER ERIC BANA TALKS ON HIS 12,000 MILE US ROAD TRIP AND NEAR FATAL CRASH THE SPOOKY SIDE OF 66 ROUTE Magazine i
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HOTEL Va c a n c y
Some folks say it’s all about the journey. We think the stops along the way can be pretty great, too. The call of the open road, it’s almost magical, and very American. Yet this is no ordinary road trip. This is the Mother Road—the highway that’s the best. A page torn from American history when cars were bigger and life was simpler. We know when you get off the road, you want to feel like you’re home. We’ll have a warm chocolate chip DoubleTree Cookie waiting for you.
The Doubletree by Hilton has all the amenities you’ve come to expect from modern life, including wi-fi, fitness room, pool, and hot tub. If you want to stay in for the evening, we have an on-property bar and restaurant. (And local shuttle service if you decide you don’t.) Since your four-legged friends may be with you for your journey, we’re a pet-friendly hotel, too. Get a great night’s rest on our Sweet Dreams bedding and fuel up on our breakfast before cruising out.
BLOOMINGTON
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ROUTE 66 WAS COM MISSIONED IN 1926, A ND W HEN THE SIGNS W ENT UP ON JACKSON BOULEVA R D, TR AV ELER S FOU ND LOU MITCHELL’S WA ITING FOR THEM. We’ve been feeding hungr y travelers with comfort food since 1923. Drop in and enjoy our famous breakfast and/ or lunch. Lou Mitchell ’s is steeped in tradition and is the oldest continually-running restaurant in Chicago.
Lou Mitchell’s 565 W. Jackson Blvd • Chicago, IL 60661-5701 Tel: (312) 939-3111 • www.loumitchells.com
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CONTENTS
11 1926: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino
Take a step back in time to ���6 for a look at the life of a Hollywood Legend and his eventual demise.
18 Friends for Life By Nick Gerlich
Shortly before Sunset in Death Valley, California.
50 The Town that Time Forgot By Lea Loeb Discover one of Arizona’s oddest, and perhaps eeriest towns, the gem known as Chloride. If spooky, quiet towns are your thing, we have one for you!
54 La Castañeda Act II By Maria Basileo
24 Henry Starr: The Last of
Once a beacon of southwestern hospitality, La Castañeda’s history is as grand as the hotel itself. Join Maria Basileo as she re-tells the rise and fall of this iconic venue, and how a dedicated group of preservationists are bringing the ‘Queen of Las Vegas’, back to life.
Bank robberies and shootouts were a normal part of life for one of history’s lesser known outlaws, Henry Starr. Join us as Cecil Stehelin takes a look at Starr’s infamous life and downfall.
62 Here It Is: The Story of the Jack Rabbit Trading Post
Discover the true story behind one of Route 66’s most beloved icons, the jovial and ever welcoming, Gary Turner.
the Horseback Outlaws
32 An Atomic Story By Rhys Martin
Tulsa has always been a city that knows how to position itself as the place to be. Today, there is a new player in town who is taking the city by storm. Martin introduces us to Mary Beth Babcock and her newest addition to Route 66, Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios.
By Jim Hinckley and Lea Loeb
Few markers from days gone by are as recognizable as the black rabbit silhouette signs that once dotted Arizona’s Mother Road. Find out the backstory of this quintessential Route 66 stop and its undeniable significance to the route.
36 Pictorial: Spooky Route 66
With Halloween upon us this issue, photographer Kevin O’Connell shares his experience capturing some of the creepiest places found on or near our beloved Mother Road.
42 Man at Work: Eric Bana
Brennen Matthews sits down to talk with Eric Bana, celebrated international superstar and gearhead, about his love of cars, family and how he deals with solitude on the road.
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ON THE COVER Photograph @David Schwartz/ PicsonRoute66.
TULSA INSPIRES CRUISIN’ THE MOTHER ROAD
If you’re looking for a road trip adventure, visit the capital of Route 66 in Tulsa and stay awhile. With more than 24 miles of the historic route, Tulsa is proud to be the center of the action. @Tulsa66Commission ROUTE Magazine 7
EDITORIAL I am always amazed at how fast summer disappears and the cooler weather of fall ushers itself in. Summertime is magical. It represents romance and long warm nights where anything is possible. I come from a coastal region, so for me, summer is also reminiscent of gentle ocean breezes and roaring beach fires lighting the night sky, while people laugh and at times sing, together, while the ocean waters lap against the shore. Summer carries many of us back to our youth and to simpler times of little responsibility. Fall however, now that is a completely different story. September brings the end to long lazy days and the start of the school year, the return to work and a ramp up of busyness in all areas. It signifies the hoped for resumption of productivity and output. There is a palpable seriousness in the air, and an excitement about the possibilities surrounding a fresh start, which for many, fall provides. By the time that this issue hits stands the leaves will have already began to change color in most parts of the country. The days will be colder now and that beautifully colorful time of orange pumpkins and fancily dressed scarecrows decorating streets and homes in many a town will have begun. Halloween is around the corner and children will be getting excited by now, deciding what they want to wear as a costume. I have a ��.5 year old and this year will be his final opportunity to go trick-or-treating. As the seasons change, he too is in a constant state of change. This summer we traveled down Route 66 for the 6th time in two years, covering every possible mile of the old road. I watched as Thembi socialized with the people of the route this last time down. He had a hoot with some of the more noted voices on the Mother Road like Michael Wallis, Jim Ross and Jerry McClanahan, but equally regaled every day travelers and motel owners, restaurant managers and some truly colorful characters, with his knowledge of the road and his fascination for the history surrounding it. Many of our friends are older and their seasons are moving faster than they would like. We are all traveling in that direction. So, it understandably warmed their spirits to witness a young boy’s shared passion for something that they have known much of their lives and will one day leave behind. There is a new generation that will be taking up the stories of the road, and carrying on the legacy created and protected by so many terrific folk from Chicago to Los Angeles. And beyond, as America is not a history book and it is not limited to one single road, no matter how unique and magical it is. America is an experiment that went right. And it went wrong. And like the seasons, it too is always changing. As we wrap this issue I am truly thankful for all that we have experienced over the past 6 trips down the Main Street of America and for all that we have learned and been taught by the dear people who call the road home. You all humble us. Have a safe and happy October and November and please remember to let everyone you meet, know about ROUTE Magazine. Your support and involvement in our journey make us who we. If you have not yet subscribed, please visit our website – www.routemagazine.us – and never miss an issue again. For those social media savvy folks, make sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. That is where all the fun is happening! Travel well, travel safe, Brennen Matthews Editor
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ROUTE PUBLISHER Thin Tread Media EDITOR Brennen Matthews DEPUTY EDITOR Kate Wambui LAYOUT AND DESIGN Tom Heffron EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Kalie Palmer Lea Loeb Maria Basileo Susan Hackett-Byers DIGITAL Matthew Alves CONTRIBUTORS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS Cecil Stehelin David Schwartz Efren Lopez Jenny Mallon Jim Hinckley Kevin O’Connell Mary Beth Babcock Nick Gerlich Rebecca Bana Rhys Martin Steve Turner Western History Collections
Editorial submissions should be sent to brennen@routemagazine.us To subscribe visit www.routemagazine.us. Advertising enquiries should be sent to advertising@routemagazine. us or call ��� ��� ����. ROUTE is published six times per year by Thin Tread Media. No part of this publication may be copied or reprinted without the written consent of the publisher. The views expressed by the contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, editor or staff. ROUTE does not take any responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photography.
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ROUTE REPORT While the route is steeped in history, it is also constantly changing, and we’re here to bring you all the latest news: what’s happening, who’s driving the future of the Mother Road, and why it all matters. Blue Swallow Motel of Tucumcari Put Up for Sale Acknowledging “mixed feelings,” the owners of the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico, announced that they have put the iconic Route 66 property on the market. Announcing via Facebook, the couple stated that the motel would continue to operate “as usual” until the sale goes through. Hamilton Realty in Tucumcari lists the motel for $�.� million. If you are looking for a Route 66 investment, this is a good one!
Rock Creek Bridge Near Sapulpa Closed to Vehicular Traffic The historic Rock Creek Bridge west of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, closed to traffic for the second time in five years after failing an inspection. The Route 66 Alliance stated that the bridge will stay open to pedestrians however, as an engineering firm figures out what to do next. The bridge was part of the original Ozark Trail and served Route 66 until ��5�, when officials realigned the highway to the south. The Rock Creek Bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places. Historic Dew Chilli Parlor Site in Springfield, Illinois, is Closing The historic Dew Chilli Parlor site, a short distance away from Route 66 in Springfield, Illinois, closed due to traffic and parking issues. Two other Dew Chili sites, including one on old Route 66, remain open in the city. The location at ���6 S. Fifth St. had operated there since ��5�. The “chilli” spelling is native to Springfield and often credited to Joe Bockelmann, although other vendors used the spelling as well. 2018 Cost-share Grants for Route 66 Sites Announced The Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program announced recently that it awarded seven costshare grants totaling approximately $8�,��� for preservation or historical research. Since ����, the program has awarded ��6 cost-share grants totaling $�.�� million. The program tentatively has planned to award more grants in ���� before it expires that year. If you own a Route 66 business, have you applied yet?
All news and copy for this page has been sourced, created and written by www.route66news.com. Revisions to text have been made in some instances by ROUTE Magazine. 10 ROUTE Magazine
WANDERERS WELCOME Your perfect stop on the Mother Road. Occupying the historic Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Oklahoma City, 21c Museum Hotel is a multi-venue contemporary art museum coupled with boutique hotel and chef-driven restaurant. Best New Hotels in the World - Travel + Leisure, It List 2017
900 W Main Street Oklahoma City 405.982.6900 | 21cOklahomaCity.com
THE YEAR OF 1926 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF
RUDOLPH VALENTINO
The numerical designation 66 was assigned to the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route in the summer of ���6, and US Highway 66 was established later that year on November ��th. But what else was happening in ���6? This series takes a look at the cultural and social milieu from which Route 66 emerged - the famous, the infamous, the inventions, and the scandals that marked ���6 as a pivotal year. In this issue, we bring you the Life and Death story of Rudolph Valentino, a silent screen icon of early Hollywood whose legend still lives on in song and film.
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hree months before the Federal Highway Act of ���6 mandated the paving of an extensive and picturesque highway stretching from Illinois to sunny California, the unexpected and premature death of the nationally beloved Italian-American actor, Rudolph Valentino, made a staggering impact on American culture of the ����s. Rodolfo Alfonso Rafaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina D’Antonguolla famously known as Rudolph Valentino, migrated to New York City in ���3 when he was �8 years-old from Castellaneta, an Italian town located in the Apulian region of southern Italy. During his first year in the US, Valentino worked a variety of odd jobs: a busboy, a taxi driver, a dancer, before finding his way into acting - a gig that would launch his whirlwind career as a film star. Though his initial roles were mainly as an extra, Valentino slowly built his acting repertoire landing small parts portraying villains until he was discovered by June Mathis. Mathis, a talented screenwriter who would eventually become the highest paid film executive in Hollywood at the time, wrote Valentino’s breakthrough picture, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The film featured Valentino as a smooth-talking Argentinian man who exudes sex-appeal - a character that became wildly popular with female audiences. The film was released in ���� to huge acclaim and become the highest grossing film of the silent era. His next role, in the highly successful film The Sheik (����), became the role that defined his career. His next roles exploited the stereotypical irresistible lover persona and several romantic films followed: Blood and Sand (����) and The Eagle (���5). Valentino became synonymous with this character: the exotic, handsome and seductive suitor, a label that became hard for him to shake. Valentino’s career was dogged by news articles that cast doubts on his masculinity. These speculations infuriated him, but one particular unflattering article titled “Pink 12 ROUTE Magazine
Powder Puffs” by an editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune was the final straw. The writer lightheartedly suggested that the advent of pink talcum powder dispensing machines in a new men’s bathroom was influenced by the “sheik movies” and the refined appearance of the Italian actor, implying Valentino’s effeminacy throughout the entire piece. The actor was outraged and felt that his dignity was under attack - both as an actor and a man. He resolved to fight his slanderer in a boxing match, perhaps to prove his manliness, but that effort failed. Just weeks after the July premiere of the sequel to The Sheik, The Son of the Sheik (���6) in New York, Valentino collapsed with a ruptured appendix. Although he was treated successfully with surgery, this ultimately led to the advent of peritonitis, an infection of abdominal tissues. And, on August �3, ���6, at just 3� years of age, the idolized “Great Lover” of the ����s died. While Valentino’s movies were silent, his chaotic funeral was a felliniesque event. Held at St. Malachy’s Catholic Church in midtown Manhattan, it was a public affair with a reported ���,��� mourners lining up in droves to catch a glimpse of his coffin. Some fans attempted suicide, while others succeeded in killing themselves, photos of the late actor clutched in their hands. This funeral was given an encore on the opposite side of the country in Los Angeles, where Valentino came to rest at the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery. H.L. Mencken, a Baltimore journalist who had been a close friend of Valentino, wrote a piece simply titled “Valentino” for the Baltimore Sun, �5 days after the actor’s death. He captured the essence of Valentino, whom he found disappointed with the outcome of his own life: two failed marriages and a loose mistress, crowded constantly by the press, movie roles that were borderline, if not exploitative. Mencken’s conclusion was fittingly dismal for such a life. “Here was one who had wealth and fame. And here was one who was very unhappy.”
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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.
ESSENTIALS
MEMORIES WHEN TRAVELING Route 66 The very best road trips are the ones that leave that sweet taste of life on our tongue and their unforgettable imprint on our mind. Here, we list our top must-collect memories from Route 66. Embrace being on the open road and savor the experience. CALF FR I ES I N VI N ITA , OK L AHOMA Wrapped in euphemisms on menus - prairie oysters, cowboy caviar, huevos del toros, call it what you may - calf fries or to put it bluntly, testicles from calves that are castrated at branding time, are a delicacy that is celebrated all across the West. We recommend test-ing - pun intended - this cowboy specialty in Vinita, Oklahoma, where every year in June - a tradition since ���� - the town presents the World’s Largest Calf Fry Festival & CookOff. And if you can’t make it in June, stop by Clanton’s - the oldest continually owned and operated (since ����) family restaurant on Route 66 in Oklahoma, for a taste of this unique dish. As our waitress deliciously described: “It is just like eating chicken nuggets; the meat is super soft and melts in your mouth.”
NEW M E X ICO M I N I NG MUSEUM I N GR A NTS, NM If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live the life of a miner, then the New Mexico Mining Museum is the perfect place to find out. The ground level section houses the traditional museum, however, the real fun begins when you take the elevator down to the one-of-a- kind experience in the replica of an actual Uranium mine. As you navigate through the different tunnels, set up with authentic old equipment on display, ranging from rail wagons to drills, and you listen to the recorded audio stories from former miners themselves, you get a real sense of what it must have been like to work in a mine. It really brings home the risks and hard work that these oldtimers dealt with.
TH E BLUE HOLE I N SA NTA ROSA , NEW M E X ICO Halfway between Amarillo, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, lies a natural phenomenon: a fresh water spring pool that is eighty-one (8�) feet deep and sixty (6�) feet wide, filled with gorgeous crystal clear azure blue waters. Born of a geological anomaly called the Santa Rosa sink, this oasis in the desert was a popular stop during Route 66’s heyday. The water completely renews itself every six hours, making visibility an unbelievable ��� feet. 14 ROUTE Magazine
However, a dip in this pool is not for the faint of heart. The water is a chilling 6� degrees (�6 degrees Celsius), which, even for the bravest of swimmers, is shockingly cold. After driving in the heat of New Mexico, a plunge in The Blue Hole is like a cold refreshing gin and tonic.
OATMA N, AR I ZONA Oatman, named after Olive Oatman, a young girl who was kidnapped by an Apache tribe, sold to Mojave Indians and later rescued near the current site of the town, got its start as a mining tent camp in ���5, quickly growing into a flourishing gold-mining center. Today, the town - monikered ‘the town that refused to die’, where wild burros, descendants from the original burros from the mining days, own the streets, has become a bustling, touristy, modern-day ghost town. But as daylight dims, the burros suddenly disappear down the narrow winding road, the tourists leave and, then, and only then, does the essence of this little ghost town come to life. The mood becomes spectacular. The entire town shuts down for the night between 5-6pm and a certain calm, an eerily quiet calm, settles over the town as night falls. Spend the night, if you can and take a night trip back in time.
DESERT ART COR R I DOR I N CALI FOR N IA There is nothing much along California’s Route 66 stretch from Essex to Amboy, but this is precisely the beauty and draw of driving through the heart of the Mojave Desert. It is this sense of loneliness or isolation that may have compelled that first desert wanderer to stop and write their name with rocks on the side of the lonely road. The heat is harsh. So, proceed with caution. You have to scramble looking for the rocks, and if you have a long name, think twice. Sweat. Sunburn. Chapped lips. And of course, watch out for snakes. But once your name is out on the desert floor and you are back safely in the coolness of your vehicle, it will feel like a remarkable feat, to have left a trace of yourself behind for others to discover.
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FRIENDS 16 ROUTE Magazine
FOR LIFE By Nick Gerlich
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combination mancave and Route 66 Visitors Center. Even he humidity hangs thin over southwest though he had retired from the workforce, he just couldn’t Missouri, near where the land starts to open sit still. up to the west, and things begin to dry out. It “I think it was just another of my dad’s things that he is lush and green most years, and always hot did. He always did something different. He owned his in the summer. It is the place of small quaint own car lot. He worked at Redi-Mix. He worked at Knott’s towns every few miles, with buildings constructed in the Berry Farm. This was his next adventure. He was always vernacular style of native stone and rocks. Families sit on looking for his next adventure, that’s what mom would front porches after supper, swatting flies and reflecting on say,” Barb noted. the day’s events. “I knew him right from the get-go,” said author and If it feels like a slice of American pie, the only thing Route 66 historian Michael Wallis. “I think a lot of people missing is a bowl of ice cream. Or a replica ��3� Sinclair were surprised who met him there. He had been there fueling station. a relatively short amount of time, but it felt like he had Wait. They’ve already got one of those. been there forever. That was part of Gary, his personality, “Well, my brother-in-law sold me this property. There his demeanor, his manner in dealing with people. He was was an old gas station here. We built a new gas station. The a man who obviously had never met a stranger. Maybe he original station was built in ��3�, and burned down in ��55. was there before, maybe he This property is called Gay was some old soul who came Parita,” the late Gary Turner back, because he felt like it.” said in ����, with his signature The station was built as gravelly voice. a close replica of the albeit “It was built by Gay and Fred somewhat larger original. Mason. Gay Parita was named “It’s always been Sinclair gas. after Gay. If you were in Spain, They used to live in the back ‘Parita’ means equal. But you of the station, until they built only see Gay’s name up there, the rock house we live in now. so she’s probably more equal That was Gay Mason’s dream than Fred was.” house. They used to have Never mind that “Parita” is cabins here. They sat over not exactly “equal” in Spanish where the garage is now,” (more likely Italian), and that Gary recalled. Parita may very well have been Gary and Michael spent an old place name for this hours in the shade, reflecting part of rural Missouri about on anything and everything. ��-miles west of Springfield. “We were totally simpatico in It’s all part of the myth and many ways, even politics. We legend of a man who turned had a good time. We would his retirement years into a skewer politicians and talk memorial period that have left about many things other a permanent impact on the than the road itself. That was Route 66 community. the perfect venue,” Wallis “Route 66 has a spirit. It’s continued. “It is such a road of alive, and it’s growing all the democracy, such a human road. time.” It’s a road for blue bloods and Even in death, his spirit is rednecks. It’s a couple of blue helping fuel that flame. Gary G. Turner and Lena Faye Call married on states bookending a bunch of December 30, 1959 in Springfield. red states, so the color runs The Back Story purple.” What started out as a way to stay occupied during It didn’t take long for the station to become covered retirement turned into what were often �6-hour days in old signage, the adjacent land to be decked out with spent welcoming travelers, and serving a slice or three of the ephemera of the ages, from old cars to bicycles, and fresh watermelon. If that sounds a bit like a job, you might everything in-between. A pavilion was added behind the be right, except that for Gary Turner, being the center of station (invariably where the watermelon feasts were held), attention drew upon his early days as an entertainer in and the large stone garage next door was used to house California, and he relished in it. even more memorabilia. At least that’s what was put on one of his kids’ birth Tucked away behind all this, and shaded in tall elms, certificates. More on that later. was the house in which Gary and his wife, Lena, lived. It was around ���5, as recollected by Barb Turner Barnes, “My mom felt like this was just another adventure for my Gary’s last born, that her uncle Steve and cousin Stevie dad. She was a total sweetheart. Anything my dad wanted erected the now-iconic replica of a vintage Sinclair service to do, mom went along with it. She would let him sleep station. The real one had been built on the same location late, walk down at 5 or 6 in the morning, get the coffee near Paris Springs, Missouri, on Route 66, and had burned started, and go down to open the gate. It was a complete down a half-century earlier. It was to become Gary’s love story.” 18 ROUTE Magazine
The Younger Years
his role in the successful Cars franchise of the stern, but loveable Sheriff. Asked where he got his sense of humor, Gary humbly replied, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I have a sense of humor. I guess I just love what I do. If you love what you do, you can laugh about it.” “He had that spark of being an entertainer, and he used it well. You always know when you have the audience right in the palm of your hand, and there is absolutely no better feeling in the world than that. I think that Gary got a lot of pleasure out of what he did, and the key is [that] he cared about people,” Wallis remembered. Barb confirmed her father’s wit and humor: “I checked my birth certificate. I sent off to California to get it and I laughed when I received it and it said that my dad was an entertainer. I asked my brother Steve and his said that his father was a train bandit. He was always entertaining someone. How many kids can say that their dad was a train bandit?” “Then he had a used car business in ‘�� or ‘�8 that was very, very successful. Anything that he touched, he made it come out like the station is today. It was on the corner
Gary G. Turner was born on February 3, ����, to Henry and Dorothy Turner, and grew up in Abesville, Missouri, a rural community south of Springfield. He was the first of two boys and two girls. Gary and his family were “fruit tramps” both locally and far afield, as explained by third-born child Steve Turner. “They would pick fruit, he and his mother and father. As a youngster, his parents took him and his siblings from Missouri to southern California to pick.” This went on for several years, from ��5� to ��56, when the last child (Beverly) was born. Gary’s sister Leah Faucett recalls those early trips west: “I was just a little kid. The two boys got the back seat of the car, and I got the floorboard. We spent a lot of time in the car,” she chuckled. They picked cherries, strawberries, almonds, and whatever was in season, working their way as far north as Oregon, before returning to winter in the Springfield area. “We just followed the harvest. We were worse than poor.” Roamin’ Rich Dinkela was especially close to Gary, in spite of a 35-year age difference. He recalled how Gary would often regale him with the same family stories of loading up the beat-up car and heading west, the kids tumbling around in back. It was a Grapes of Wrath style tale, even if more than a decade after the movie and book. California was the Promised Land, even if only for a few years, but it set the stage for a future chapter in Gary’s life. “He wound up back in Missouri, where he met mom (Lena), and had four children,” Steve continued. Lena was born on December �, ����, and grew up in the Hurley and Galena communities of southern Missouri, not far from Gary, but unbeknown to him until years later. They met when Gary worked for Lena’s parents at their The original Gay Parita was built around 1930 in Paris Springs, alongside gas station in Springfield, where both Route 66. families had moved. Gary lived just off of 66, and walked of Beach Blvd and Ball Road. It was called Beach Ball Car across town to get to work, saving his paychecks to buy his Company,” Steve recalled. first car, a ’53 Ford. “Now, just so you know me, and understand me a little The couple married in ��5� in Springfield. “They then bit better, you’ve heard about hillbillies? Well, me and my moved back to California and he became a gunslinger at wife come from the hills. We’ve been married since we was Knott’s Berry Farm,” Steve said, uprooting the first two of �6-years-old. Fifty-one years, and we weren’t even related. their children for the cross-country trek in the late-��6�s. Now, her kin folks are all related. She gets mad when I say It was a trip west, little different from the one he had that,” Gary shared without a hitch back in ����. Ba da bing. taken with his family as a child, once again in search Humor a la mode. of work. Around ����, Gary and Lena packed up the kids Knott’s Berry Farm, which today is known for its thrill and moved back to the Missouri Ozarks, settling in the rides, was then focused primarily on serving up more or Paris Springs area. They wound up acquiring the small less authentic re-creations of the Old West, including gun homestead from family members who parceled it out fights and train rides, in which park visitors were treated from its immense acreage. Thus was born the location for to an action-packed robbery. It was here that Gary Turner the new Gay Parita station, now visited year-round by 66 unwittingly cut his teeth as an entertainer, learning how to travelers. interact with the general public, albeit according to a rather “My aunt and uncle owned this property. They bought rigid and predictable script. it and it had 8� acres. They separated it off and asked my Wallis recalls one conversation with a hearty laugh: “’You mom and dad if they wanted to buy some of it, the house know, Michael… you’re talking to a man who has robbed and a few acres. He bought it in ���3, and he worked out of his share of banks.’ He was as much a real bank robber his garage,” Barb explained. as I am a real Sheriff.” Wallis of course was playing up on
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Getting Started. Again. Back in the Midwest now, Gary drove a truck for �3 years. Upon retirement, his relatives set to building the replica station for him, unknowingly at the time setting in motion what would quickly become one of the premier highlights along Route 66. In fact, Gary Turner became one of only a handful of human roadside attractions up and down the route, far more endeared among roadies than the buildings that they inhabit. People may have stopped at the building, and indeed photographed it with reckless abandon, but they came there to see Gary first and foremost. “He said that he was going to make this place the most famous place in the world. He called every newspaper that would talk to him, all over the United States. They would come there and spend the day with him,” Faucett recalled. “You know, I meet some of the nicest people you’ve ever met in your whole life from every country in the whole world. There’s not one country, I believe, that has never
Gary and Lena here in 2010 on their 51st anniversary.
been here. The truth of the matter is, they are wonderful people. They’re just like your neighbor,” Gary waxed poetic. Gary would sometimes stay in his “office” (how the tiny station was known colloquially) until midnight, lingering with late visitors who hopefully had planned ahead for lodging down the road. After locking the gate, he would tiptoe into bed beside Lena. He loved to regale visitors with stories, and guide people to other attractions and good food farther down the road, often using David Wickline’s two pictorial books as his Bible. “This is The Big Texan. They have a steak that’s about this big and this tall. And if you can eat this, and everything with it, it’s free. If you can do it. You’ll come out looking like a Louisiana tick, that’s what you’ll look like,” Gary deadpanned. “Now, when you guys get to Williams, Arizona, take the train ride if you’ve got time. It’s about a �-hour ride, and 20 ROUTE Magazine
everyone says it’s really, really good. And this here is one of my favorite places. This is Oatman, Arizona. These donkeys live here, they walk through the streets. They’re probably the descendants of the donkeys that worked in the mines. They’re gonna love you… until you run out of carrots, and then they’re gonna find somebody else to love.” It was difficult for visitors to resist such armchair tourguiding. “He just loved talking to people. He was a natural BSer.” Faucett laughed. Most importantly, though, was Gary Turner’s admonition to everyone: “You’re off to the adventure of your life.” The impact he had on tourists was profound, perhaps none more than with Dinkela. “Gary was just so eager and excited to please people and make them his friend. If you ever met Gary, you probably got one of his signature shirts. He had that little heart that he used to draw… (Heart) Kicks on 66, Friends for Life… Gary. He was so eager to be everybody’s friend and make sure that they had the best possible experience that they could get on 66. He wanted them to have the trip of a lifetime. He really changed my experience on 66. Gary opened up my world. I was a pathfinder, but Gary pointed me toward the people of 66. There’s a balance in everything. That was the lesson that Gary taught me. ‘Rich, you’re doing it all wrong. It’s not about the path. The path wouldn’t be anything without the people,’” Rich recalled wistfully. Gary’s generosity in love, friendship, and food at Gay Parita, though, were owed in large part to his formative years as a picker, with his family trying to survive poverty. “I remember Gary as a generous person,” Beverly Enloe, his sister, said. “He once took coffee and donuts down to the Mueller Company for four days straight while workers were on strike. He was very pro-union. And I remember my mom telling me of when he had the used car lot in California, he gave a car to a couple who had broken down. He just gave it to them,” she added. “He was a very kind-hearted person.” “Because of his lifestyle when he was younger, that explains his lifestyle when he was older. If you don’t know any better, you don’t know you’re poor,” Faucett related. Once he figured it out, though, it framed his outlook on life.
Death Became Them The days and months leading up to ���5 were not good ones for Gary and Lena, as health issues began to take their toll. Both had been as inseparable as pie from ice- cream all their years together, Lena supporting Gary selflessly. Gary
had multiple health issues problems, while Lena suffered a stroke. “His health started to show decline in the early- to mid-��s. It just got progressively worse. He had emphysema, and he had two heart attacks that I remember. He had a stroke also,” Steve recollected. A lifelong smoker, Gary struggled to relinquish the habit. “He would say he was going to quit, and the next day, it didn’t happen.” Gary seemed to bounce back in January of ���5, offering a ray of hope that he might be with us a while longer, but his condition took a turn for the worse in the last week of the month. On January ��, he had one brief moment of his former self, and begged Barb, from his hospital bed, for a slice of German chocolate cake and milk. Barb got the go-ahead from the head nurse, ran to the store, and brought back her father’s last wish. But it sat unconsumed on the bedside tray, as he slipped away before he could enjoy them. As can be expected, Lena took Gary’s death terribly, and found it difficult to live in his absence, passing on herself on May �8, barely four months after Gary. @DavidSchwartz/PicsonRoute66. “She died in her sleep. She had diabetes antique signs and artifacts that made Gay Parita one of the and cirrhosis of the liver. I remember after most popular and unique roadside attractions on 66. dad passed her saying, ‘He wasn’t supposed to leave me Barb describes what happened during this period: “The alone.’” station sat empty…. almost a year. My mom passed away “I was with him during the last hours of Gary’s life. I got at the end of May ���5. We packed up a lot of stuff after to say goodbye to him. I don’t know what I would have mom’s death, but thought, ‘Let’s just leave the signs so that been like had I not been able to say goodbye. That was the tour groups can see them.’ When they started getting a rough moment for me. He was so selfless. All he cared stolen, my aunt and uncle came and took down the rest. about was people coming here and seeing America, not One tour operator told me, ‘If we have to drive by there one taking anything for granted. He cared about people. He was more time and see all the signs gone, we’d rather just see it considerate, he was kind. Even if he didn’t like you, he was burned down.’” kind to you,” Rich lamented. That revelation is what finally jolted the family to Barb spent a few weeks in Missouri tying up loose ends action. Among the four Turner siblings (two sons and two after Gary died, and tending to her mother. Still employed daughters, three of whom live within an hour), it was Barb back in South Carolina, she wound up commuting back and husband George who were in the best situation to and forth to Missouri, first in March to Gary’s memorial completely up-end their lives and assume the roles Gary service, and then in May when Lena passed away on and Lena once held. the �8th. That the couple should go in such short order “We got here on April �, ���6.” Barb abruptly left a career together is testament to how close they were throughout in theater management in Charleston, South Carolina, their married years. and began packing. Without any children to raise or other Meanwhile, the future of Gary’s Gay Parita was very commitments, the couple was more portable than the other uncertain. siblings, and set to downsizing their possessions for the ����-mile move west… a move similar to the one Gary and Gay Parita, Part 2 Lena had taken 55 years earlier when they pulled up stakes The Gay Parita station sat in quiet repose for months and headed to California. following Lena’s death. No doubt the ghosts of Gary and “It just takes time to do all this stuff,” Barb sighed. “I quit Lena mourned the inactivity, but so did legions of Route my job of �3 years. After we got here we threw everything 66 travelers for whom this was a frequent and necessary into the house and started bringing out all the stuff we had stop shortly after leaving the busy streets of Springfield, packed away. We live in the house now. I thought it would Missouri. be scary at first, but it is so comforting to me.” The grass and weeds grew. The flowers failed to bloom. Sorting through the belongings of a couple married for Worse yet, vandals started claiming some of the many 56 years was no small task, even if their home was only ROUTE Magazine 21
�88 square feet with a basement. Add in Gary’s ephemera, knickknacks collected through the years and gifts from hundreds of visitors, and it began to look like an episode of a popular cable TV show. Barb recalls finding her father’s long-silenced flip phone. “It totally reminded me of Rainman. I looked at his phone and there were no names… only numbers. He remembered everyone by number. My whole thing about coming here was seeing that it was preserved. I didn’t want to see it being auctioned off. It was about making sure that I was here. I promised dad that I would take care of mom and the station. I had to sell my house and quit my job. Dad got me home no matter what.” Gary Turner’s impact on Route 66 has been noted by many, particularly the people and communities nearby Gay Parita in Missouri. He has been sorely missed. “We miss him dearly,” said Bob Gehl of the Missouri Route 66 Association. “Barbara has done such a great job in welcoming the traveling public to Gary’s station and his site. He made everyone feel like they were the most important guest he had ever met. Gary was one of the consummate hosts of Route 66. If we could have cloned him and had a thousand more, we would have done it. He was that much of a supporter.” “It takes a storyteller to know a storyteller. We clocked many hours just swapping stories. It was like a tennis match. We told true stories, and we told yarns. We both believed in the old adage, ‘With each telling of the story, the story should get better’,” Wallis reminisced. “It’s so bittersweet being here. It’s hard for me to talk about them. I don’t think the process of healing ever ends. I live it every day,” Barb continued. “But in the end, this is my life.” Today, Gay Parita has been given a new lease on life. The grounds are immaculate. Replacement signs and artifacts have been found or borrowed, like a ��3� milk 22 ROUTE Magazine
Photographs provided courtesy of Steve Turner.
@EfrenLopez/Route66Images.
truck. Landscaping is neat and tidy, with a memorial garden behind the station, a vegetable garden, and a large pen where a pig, two geese, and four ducks call home. The couple plan to add permanent restrooms, and even a small theater. It is a grueling ��/� job for Barb and George, particularly from March through to the end of October. For eight months a year they are on call, but still welcome the occasional winter guest as well. “A lot of times we don’t go inside until ��pm. Sometimes, we have people here until midnight. This is a oncein-a-lifetime thing for most people. You have to expect things like this. If you’re not open and they can’t see it, you’re going to lose it. They just can’t come back tomorrow. We try to make sure we catch everyone.” “The beauty of our people who are scattered and littering the shoulders of Route 66 is that they can stay right where they are, and the world comes to them. Gary never had to leave, the world would come to him and Lena,” Wallis acknowledged. The same is true today for Barb and George. The station is a constant reminder to Barb of how influential her father was, and what he did for Route 66. She feels his presence daily, as do the thousands of people who pass through that gate. Gay Parita looks much the same as it always did, perhaps a little neater and tidier in places where Barb has left her fingerprints, but the vibe is no different. There is no such thing as a �5-minute visit to Gay Parita, with or without Gary. Watermelon and sodas are still offered free of charge in the pavilion. It’s a place where there are no strangers, and conversation is served in abundance. You forget the heat, the humidity, the flies, because this is the day’s premier event, and this is not the typical Missouri front porch. Wallis laughed aloud, “If you’re in a hurry and you stop at Gay Parita, you’re in trouble! That’s the way it should be. If you’re a true open road traveler, then Gary Turner and Gay Parita were made for you. You shouldn’t be in a hurry when traveling the Mother Road. “Although he might not have settled in to the road until ���5, in a way, he was always on the road, if not physically, then certainly in his head and heart. He was always a road warrior, whether he was entertaining people in California, driving a truck, or picking apples,” Michael Wallis continued. “He was a guy of basics. Love your neighbor. Be good to people. If you can tell them a good story, you better do it, and send them off knowing a little more about themselves.” And that he did. But only after a bowl of ice cream and watermelon.
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Henry Starr Last of the Horseback Outlaws By Cecil Stehelin On Saturday morning March ��th, ���5, everything seemed quiet as usual in Stroud, Oklahoma. Grocers began setting up their stalls, saloons bristled with the breakfast rush, and eight men tied their horses to the stockyard fence on 3rd Avenue. Three men went north to the First National Bank on �th Street, while four men went south to the Stroud National Bank on 3rd Street, and one man stayed in the middle to guard the horses. They wore fine clothes that blended in with the townsfolk as they went about their morning errands.
A
s Henry Starr entered the Stroud National Bank, he calmly pulled a revolver from his holster and leveled it at the teller, his accomplices corralled the frightened patrons and took three hostages. Starr grinned at the teller and demanded everything in the safe, it was a phrase he never got sick of repeating, and indeed, he found plenty of opportunities to say it over the course of his 3� years as an outlaw. The world that greeted Henry Starr when he was born to mixed-race Cherokee parents George “Hop” Starr and Mary Scott Starr on December �nd, �8�3, in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, was filled with turmoil. Henry spent his early years at his grandfather Tom Starr’s feet, absorbing his stories of running whiskey and his bloody guerrilla campaign in the Cherokee Civil War. “[Tom Starr] was a fierce guy. It was said that his fists alone were lethal weapons and he could kill a man with one blow from his fist,” recounts acclaimed historian and author Michael Wallis. The Starr family had come to Oklahoma before Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of �83�, an event where, as Wallis relates, “At the point of bayonets [the Cherokee] were force-marched West and placed into what is now the State of Oklahoma.” Thus was the Oklahoma Indian Territory born, out of a Trail of Tears. Henry Starr grew up in the Osage Hills near Tulsa, often referred to as “Robbers’ Roost” by the locals. The rockhewn forests provided sanctuary to bandits and smugglers, including the infamous Belle Starr “Queen of the Outlaws” and wife of Sam Starr, Henry’s uncle. However, Starr was quick to tell anyone who asked, that Belle was his aunt “…by marriage only,” as he found her manner crude and repulsive. 24 ROUTE Magazine
Starr was not your typical outlaw; he didn’t drink or smoke, he even abstained from coffee and tea. He was soft-spoken and made friends easily, but the association of the Starr name clung to him and made him a target for the Indian Police. As Richard Slotkin, historian and author of the novel The Return of Henry Starr, relates, “The Starr’s were on the weaker side of intra-tribal political conflicts, dating back to the time before the Trail of Tears. They opposed John Ross, titular head of [the] Cherokee Nation.” At �6, he was twice charged for horse-theft without evidence and locked up in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The Fort Smith prison, referred to as “Hell on the Border,” by the inmates, lived up to its name. Hundreds of men were crammed into two underground rooms that had no natural light, no ventilation, and no separation between the inmates. His cousin was able to scrape together enough cash to pay his bail and the pair split town. “For Henry, choosing an outlaw way of life was a viable, even honorable response to perceived injustice and persecution,” explains Slotkin. Starr himself would remark, “I preferred a quick and unostentatious internment in a respectable cemetery, than a life on the Arkansas convict farm.” Henry assembled a gang and began robbing stores and railway depots across Oklahoma in a series of brazen daylight robberies. At night the band would hide out in the Osage Hills north of Tulsa, boasting of their adventures with the other outlaws. Henry Starr seemed uncatchable, giving Marshalls and Indian Police the slip on multiple occasions. In �8��, he was nearly captured by Deputy Marshall Floyd Wilson near Wolf Creek. In the shoot-out that followed, Wilson was killed, adding murder to the charges accumulating behind Starr. His bold daylight robberies and frustrating elusiveness made him a household name,
and soon his striking dark features were plastered across the state, offering a reward of $5���, equivalent to about $�3�,��� today. Despite the law being hot on his trail, Starr and his friend, Frank Cheney, decided to up the ante, robbing their first bank in Caney, Kansas, on March �8th, �8�3. They burst into the bank at mid-day, each brandishing a pair of Colt revolvers. While the robbers corralled the customers into a stockade, a cashier broke from the group and sprinted into the manager’s office. Starr gave chase. He relates the standoff in his autobiography Thrilling Events: The Life of Henry Starr: “He had his hand on a big Winchester, but I shoved both pistols fullcocked into his face, he dropped his before I could command him to do so.” The thieves made a clean escape out the back of the bank and were galloping hard into the hills by the time the alarm was raised. The rush of the caper had a tremendous effect on the young man; robbing banks gave a thrill unlike anything he’d experienced, it fast became an obsession. However, Henry’s luck soon ran out. He was captured in Colorado Springs at the Spaulding House on July 3rd, �8�3, and returned to the black hole of Fort Smith. Twice he was sentenced to hang by the neck, but his lawyer was able to appeal the decisions. Eventually, he pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced with �5 years. He ended up serving only eight years of his sentence as he was well-behaved in prison and even helped the guards contain a jailbreak by convincing an armed prisoner to surrender. In ����, he was pardoned by President Roosevelt and released. Following his departure from incarceration he made an honest living working in his mother’s restaurant. He married in ���3 and had a son, whom he named, Theodore Roosevelt Starr. Henry tried to make a go of the simple life, but Arkansas authorities were still clamoring for his extradition, unsatisfied by his light sentencing. He fled to the Osage Hills and fell in with his old compatriots. In ���8, he crossed the border into Kansas and began a new spree of robberies. This run would not last however, as he was soon captured and sentenced to seven years in Canon City,
Colorado. He served five years before being paroled in ���3, on the condition that he didn’t leave Colorado. Of course, Starr only followed the law when he was in prison. Upon release, he immediately crossed back into Oklahoma and began his most daring spree yet: pulling off �� daylight bank robberies between ���� and ���5 across the state. Marshalls turned over every rock and shrub in the Osage Hills trying to find Starr’s hideout. They grilled his known accomplices for information and offered a $���� reward for him, “Dead or Alive.” Henry was, in fact, hiding in plain sight, in an apartment block in downtown Tulsa, just two blocks away from the county Sheriff, as Slotkin illuminates: “A dusty part-Indian cowboy riding into town was too ordinary a sight to attract much attention.” The spree culminated in Stroud and a daring double daylight robbery, a feat previously attempted by the Dalton Gang in Coffeyville, Kansas, in �8��, where the gang had been wiped out. As the Stroud National Bank teller emptied his till into Henry’s burlap sack, a surge of confidence flooded the outlaw’s body; was he really going to get away with it? Word of the robbery had spread quickly around the small town. As the gang charged out of the bank and regrouped with their compatriots, bullets began to wiz. The citizens of Stroud took up arms against the bandits and turned the quiet streets into a cacophony of gunshots. They fired from shop windows, grocery stalls and saloons, forcing the gang to scatter. Twentyyear-old Paul Curry brandished a short-barreled shotgun his uncle used to butcher hogs and incapacitated Starr and his accomplice Lewis Estes. The rest of the gang made off with $58�5. Starr recovered from his injuries, but was sentenced to �5 years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As usual, however, his good conduct behind bars and fervent renunciation of the life of crime impressed the prison officials, and he was released in ����, having served only four years of his sentence. This time, however, Starr was determined to stay straight. He parlayed his infamy into a successful acting career. ROUTE Magazine 25
$6�,��� during his 3�-year reign, an equivalent of about $�,5��,��� today. Much of this stash was never recovered by authorities and is reportedly hiding somewhere along the Cimarron River in Stevens County, Kansas. Starr described the spot as “…near the border in a place nobody could find it in a million years.” Visitors to the southwest of Kansas may benefit from a closer look along the banks of the river. However, the money was not what pushed Starr into a life of crime, as Richard Slotkin describes: “[Starr] thought of himself as what social historians call a ‘social bandit’ – an outlaw who acts on behalf of an oppressed social group or community against the dominant group.” Victimized by the law from a young age, Starr saw banditry as his only salvation against injustice. As he related in Thrilling Event: “Privately, I don’t believe completely in anything that has or ever will happen; only in the inexorable law of total obliteration and nothingness.” He was the last of the horseback outlaws. As cars became ever more affordable, highways spread into the remote wilderness that he once called home. In ���6, five years after Starr’s death, Route 66 was designated, and Stroud turned from a tiny backwater into a bustling way station. Tulsa was transformed from a rough cow town to the “Oil Capital of the World”. The legacy of the bank robber would continue, but on tires rather than hooves, as the Old West died and roadside America dawned.
Starr as a young man. 26 ROUTE Magazine
Michael Wallis is currently working on a new book focusing on the life and times of Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed Starr, better known as the infamous Belle Starr.
Photos supplied by Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.
In ����, he produced and starred in A Debtor to the Law, a film re-creation of the Stroud heist. Starr described the film as a way to exercise his criminal past and “confess” his crimes. He returned to Stroud to film the picture and enlisted the townsfolk who had foiled his robbery to recreate it on film, including the bank teller he’d robbed and Paul Curry, the boy who’d shot him. The film was a local sensation, Starr was even offered a role in a Hollywood movie, but turned it down for fear that California officials would extradite him to Arkansas. In ����, Henry Starr’s life was more comfortable than it had ever been; he remarried and bought a house in Claremore, Oklahoma, making a steady income on his movies. But after two years of calm, he became restless again. He craved the rush of the heist, the challenge of planning, and the thrill of execution. On February �8th, ����, he drove into Harrison, Arkansas, with three accomplices, to hit the People’s State Bank. “It is said to be the first time an outlaw showed up to a bank job in an automobile,” illuminates Michael Wallis. “While they collected their $6,��� in loot, the former bank president slipped into the vault, grabbed [his Winchester], and opened fire. One slug slammed into Starr and severed his spine, the others fled empty-handed.” Henry was rushed to the county jail for treatment. The doctor was able to remove the bullet, but Starr’s wound was mortal. As his life ebbed away, he gasped to the doctor: “I’ve robbed more banks than any man in America.” He died the next morning, February ��nd, ����. Indeed, he had robbed �� banks during his outlaw career, more than the Jesse James Gang and Dalton Gang put together. Henry Starr made off with nearly
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AN ATOMIC
30 ROUTE Magazine
STORY
By Rhys Martin
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Route 66 has always attracted people from all walks of life. Some of them are traveling for recreation; others are traveling out of necessity. The people that own and operate businesses along the iconic highway also come from disparate backgrounds. Some of them are involved in the family business that dates back to before the US Highway system was established, while their neighbor may be on Route 66 by happenstance. There is another class of entrepreneur that illuminates an ‘OPEN’ sign on the Main Street of America, however, that inspires an instant connection with everyone that walks through the door. Meeting them is part of the experience that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. Mary Beth Babcock of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of those memorable personalities that leave an impression not easily forgotten.
I
n late May ���8, I was standing on the side of the road in Tulsa, Oklahoma, mere feet from Historic Route 66. I was surrounded by over a dozen motorcycles and their riders, who were laughing and taking photos under an old gas station canopy. Most of them were speaking Czech. In the middle of the group stood a native Oklahoman named Mary Beth Babcock, the proprietor of Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios on 66. She gleefully communicated with the travelers through an interpreter they’d brought with them, sharing her infectious enthusiasm for the city, Oklahoma, and greater Route 66. One of the tourists approached me and asked about her. What brought her to Route 66? I realized that I didn’t really know her story. So, I asked around and discovered that the high spirit she was now bringing to the Mother Road had been shaping Tulsa for more than a decade. Mary Beth was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and spent her youth around historic sites such as the Price Tower and Woolaroc. When she was in high school, her trademark energy surfaced, which she channeled into cheerleading. Her father worked for Phillips 66 and her mother was the Site Manager at Shinenkhan, a unique home designed by famed architect Bruce Goff. “My parents loved to go to estate sales,” Mary Beth remembered, as she often tagged along. “I’ll never forget being about seven-years-old and seeing the most magical gold vintage cash register. That was my big moment where I feel like I knew I wanted to work in retail!” After high school, Mary Beth attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where she received a Bachelor’s Degree in Retail Merchandising. It was on that campus that Mary Beth really connected and forged friendships with people that continue to help her today. She worked at Eskimo Joe’s, the well-known restaurant and merchandising institution, eventually working her way to Assistant Manager of Inventory Control. “[Owner] Stan Clark had an enormous impact on me with his hard work, dedication to being the very best, and his magnetic personality.” After graduating college, Mary Beth moved to Dallas. She spent the mid-��s working for Neiman Marcus at their flagship location in downtown Dallas. She worked as their visual stylist for cosmetics, perfumes, and accessories. She designed window displays for international brands, such as Chanel and Kate Spade, and she also helped organize massive fundraisers for clients. At the turn of the century, Mary Beth moved back to Oklahoma. “I was homesick,” she admitted. For the next several years, she worked in management positions for 32 ROUTE Magazine
retail outlets in the Tulsa area, but she began to dream of owning her own shop. “I got a journal and started writing down what I envisioned.” She just had to wait for the right opportunity. That opportunity emerged in ���6. In those days, downtown Tulsa essentially went dark at the end of the work day. Kathy Taylor, the mayor from ���6����, remembered that the streets were desolate after 5:�� PM: “You really had to have a vision and a dream and a lot of hope to be in that part of downtown when Mary Beth opened up.” Aside from a few bars, there was no reason to be down there. “If I left work at �:�� from City Hall, it would just be me [on the roads.]”
A college friend of Mary Beth’s, a man named Jack Allen, owned a modern furniture shop called Dwelling Spaces. “I went to him to ask for advice,” Mary Beth said, and discovered that Jack wanted to sell his business. “He introduced me to Michael Sager, who owned a property at �nd and Detroit.” That property was right on the corner of the original alignment of Route 66. At that time, Michael Sager owned several buildings along Route 66 alignment in downtown Tulsa, including the iconic Blue Dome and the Vickery Service Station on Elgin Street. Much like the rest of downtown, though, the pickings were slim after the work day was over, but Michael believed the Blue Dome District could be something more. “I had a space downtown I was looking to find the right tenant for,” Sager recalled. When he was introduced to Mary Beth and she told him about her plans, Michael quickly knew her unique energy was the right fit for the area. “It [was] not a question of ‘What are you doing?’ but a question of ‘How do we do this?’” “I pitched my dream and they took a chance with me,” Mary Beth said of Sager. The original concept for Dwelling Spaces included a wide variety of goods. “It started out with small wares and contemporary furniture,” Sager explained. It wasn’t long before that focus began to shift to a wider variety of artistic endeavors and Oklahoma-centric merchandise. “Within about a year, I started feeling this passion for the state of Oklahoma,” Mary Beth said. Local writer and historian Lee Roy Chapman would come into the shop frequently and talk about people like artist Joe Andoe, photographer Larry Clark, and photographer G. Oscar Herron. It inspired Mary Beth to create the Okie Grown brand and seek out other local artists, musicians, and authors to help them realize their dreams. “Mary Beth was one of the first people to hear the call that downtown was revitalizing,” said Kathy Taylor. “She followed her vision. She’s always a few steps ahead of everyone else. Her passion is incredible. Nothing ever gets Mary Beth down.” Mary Beth’s star rose fast. In ���8, two years after Dwelling Spaces opened, she won the “Emerging” Tulsey Award, recognizing her in an annual competition that focused on local entrepreneurs. Her little space at �nd and Detroit had become known as a hot spot for local culture and art appreciation. She began collaborating with all manner of artistic Oklahoma endeavors, from music group The Flaming Lips to author Michael Wallis. Groups like Booksmart Tulsa and This Land Press held events at Dwelling Spaces knowing that they would get a great deal of support from Mary Beth and the community she was forming. When Mary Beth won “Oklahoman of the Year” in ����, Oklahoma Today Magazine called her a, “geek-chic cheerleader for all things Okie.” It was a prosperous time for Mary Beth and the Tulsa artistic community. Shortly after the tenth anniversary of Dwelling Spaces in ���6, the building was sold to a new owner. The Blue Dome District had experienced tremendous growth; it was now a hotspot for trendy restaurants and nightlife. Mary Beth felt it was time for a change. Ownership and day-to-day operations of Dwelling Spaces transitioned and moved to a new location downtown. Mary Beth’s next venture, POST, fell together quickly and with a bit of luck.
Mary Beth in 7th grade. She was a cheerleader for the Bartlesville Central Middle School Bears.
“It was born thanks to an incredible price on rent on another one of Michael Sager’s properties.” An old storage facility on the east end of downtown was being turned into a usable space; Mary Beth partnered with local artist and co-founder of Clean Hands Aaron Whisner to anchor the building with a small retail operation. The city block became a hub for graffiti artists who re-spray the exterior of the building annually at the HABIT Mural Festival. Most of the building was turned into a weekly flea market, curated to highlight a few of the city’s respected collectors. After managing POST for a time, Mary Beth was at a crossroads. During this time, she was approached by Jeff Moore, the director of OKPOP. In early ����, Mary Beth had seen an early exhibit for the in-development Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture. She was highly impressed: “I thought to myself, man, if they can pull that off it’s going to be incredible.” Jeff has known Mary Beth for over a decade and offered her a position helping with branding, community outreach, and merchandising. As much as she enjoyed her role with OKPOP, Mary Beth didn’t expect to miss the world of retail as much as she did. Something in her heart didn’t feel right. “I’ve learned a lot about myself throughout my life. Trying to learn to follow my instincts and follow what truly makes me alive and happy.” During a time of self-reflection, she wrote in her journal: “What do you want?” Half an hour ROUTE Magazine 33
later, she came across a photo of a ��5�’s-era PEMCO gas station on Route 66 in Tulsa with the caption: Available for Rent. “I said to myself, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Can a sign be more crystal clear than that?” She met with the landlord the very next day. “I have a passion for all things Oklahoma as well as Route 66. Tulsa is doing an incredible job of embracing the history of this special pavement we call the Mother Road. I wanted to be a part of this movement.” Mary Beth had been interested in Route 66 specifically, ever since she opened Dwelling Spaces downtown on the original alignment. Before she opened her new shop, she took a trip to Arcadia, Oklahoma, with her niece on the old historic highway for inspiration. She met business owners, travelers, and volunteers that all added their own touch to the Mother Road experience. It felt like home. Her new shop, Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios on 66, sits on the newer alignment of Route 66 through Tulsa. She joins several other entrepreneurs that have taken root in the shadow of the massive Meadow Gold neon sign. Once again, she is in the heart of a business district that is on the eve of a great revitalization. In the spirit of the roadside attractions of yore, she worked up a whole backstory for her cowboy-spaceman mascot. She tells it with great flourish to anyone who asks. “Buck Atom used to rodeo up and down Historic Route 66 back in the 5�s. One day, he was pulled up into the ether by a far-out space rocket! While up in the stars, he could see down on the route and he was sad that what was once vibrant had lost some of its energy. After his rocket landed 34 ROUTE Magazine
in Tulsa, Buck made it his job to help me be a voice on Route 66!” She also dreams of installing an elaborate neon sign, beckoning to travelers with Tulsa’s beautiful skyline as a backdrop. Like many of her Route 66 business-owner brethren, she has a map on the wall for tourists to mark their home town. After only two weeks, it already had representation from multiple continents. Michael Sager called her, “the perfect emissary” for Route 66 in Tulsa. Kathy Taylor remarked that she is an authentic part of Tulsa’s Route 66 renewal. “What I love about what’s happened on Route 66 is the same thing that happened in the Arts District and the Blue Dome District. Local entrepreneurs are opening businesses: Soul City, the Campbell Hotel … alongside folks that have been on the route forever. It’s not chains. What [Mary Beth] has done is authentic and unique.” Knowing her journey, it’s easy to see that all roads that Mary Beth has taken led her to the Main Street of America. The shelves at Buck Atom’s represent that journey. There are Bigfoot stickers, coffee cups, fine art prints, local-made popsicles, antique goods from estate sales, and books from Oklahoma authors. A wooden standee of Buck Atom himself stands at the window, ready to greet the next visitor. Mary Beth is part of a larger family now, with the likes of Angel Delgadillo, Dawn Welch, and Dean Walker. And she’s right at home. Next time that you are passing through Tulsa, make sure to stop over and visit Buck Atoms for yourself.
Photographs courtesy of Rhys Martin. Image on pages and 4 provided by Mary Beth Babcock.
The colorful sign in front of Buck Atoms.
ROUTE Magazine 35
SPOOKY 36 ROUTE Magazine
ROUTE 66 Photographs and Words by Kevin O’Connell/KoGalleries.com
ROUTE Magazine 37
PREVIOUS SPREAD: An abandoned farm in Pontiac, Illinois.
RIGHT: A creepy farm in New Mexico, creepy, like it came out of the movie, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
BELOW: Livingston, Illinois. I’m not sure what happens here at night, and I don’t want to know.
38 ROUTE Magazine
ABOVE: Cuervo, New Mexico. I was so happy to find this town, but kept my distance from the front door.
LEFT: New Mexico. This creepy crooked silo is in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t stop staring at this place and wondering what or who may be in there at night.
ROUTE Magazine 39
MAN AT By Brennen Matthews
Photographs: Rebecca Bana / Trunk Archive
40 ROUTE Magazine
WORK
ROUTE Magazine 41
G
iven the impressive body of dramatic work that Eric Bana has done in his career - Troy, Black Hawk Down, The Hulk, Munich and The Time Traveler’s Wife - it’s hard to believe that the Australian born actor got his start as a stand-up comedian. That is until you hear him talk about everything from his love of hitting the open road in his classic cars to how he chooses his roles, and then you see how versatile he can be. Eric Bana recently sat down with ROUTE to talk about his current project, Dirty John, the ���� Targa Tasmanian motor rally crash, vintage automobiles, his ��,��� mile vehicle odyssey across America, and how the quintessential road trip differs between the United States and his home country of Australia.
You are well known to possess a deep passion for motorcycles and cars. Where did that originate?
their engineering, but I always, always hark back to wanting to jump into my old cars to get around for sure.
It was just always there, I’d say. I was so young that I don’t remember there being a specific moment. I have a lot of specific memories about certain things like driving a car way too young (Laughs), about always wanting to be behind the wheel, and all of the kind of marker memories are there, but I was just always, always interested in anything mechanical, two wheels and four wheels. Right down to, I remember there was a friend of my grandparents who used to sometimes drive us to school in a truck, and it was one of the early style trucks that didn’t have indicators, but it had a hand that… he would pull a lever and the hand would pop up on the right-hand side. There was nothing more exciting to me than reaching across while he was driving and pulling the hand up. I was just always excited about anything to do with cars. If a relative turned up with a car that was different, I would be climbing all through it and asking a million questions. I mean, I’m talking when I was really, really little, I’m not talking about eight or nine, I’m talking about two’s and three’s, so it was just always there.
Is the Australian culture and love of vehicles and driving on par with what you have experienced in America?
Do you like vintage vehicles or racing machines? I mainly prefer old stuff for sure. I’m in awe of modern engineering and what the latest cars can do, and how efficiently they can do them, but I do feel like we are heading into oblivion a little bit with some type of cars and super cars, and I think there is a really interesting conversation to be had about what electric cars are doing to design and the elephant in the room being the fact that we basically sit in traffic to shuttle from A to B, and that design brief seems to be largely ignored by all but a few manufacturers. So, I appreciate the modern stuff in terms of 42 ROUTE Magazine
I guess I have experienced it more through the eyes of being a parent, and now having a son who is nineteen, and I think the thing that I really notice is the massive disconnect between the younger generation and the automobile. I think it’s a massive thing. I believe that as real estate gets more expensive, and life becomes more expensive, they choose to value things differently to the way that we did. I’m seeing a massive shift. I mean, I know tons of ��-�� year olds who have absolutely no interest in owning a car, whereas when I was young, if you didn’t own a car, you just couldn’t get from point A to point B. It was just not a conversation to be had. So, that is the biggest shift I’m seeing. I’m seeing a lot of people not care as much about car ownership. There is a lot to be said for it I think.
You’ve spoken about a mental switch that must happen for you when you put on your helmet and are preparing to go ride on your motorcycle. What do you mean by that? It’s something that I picked up early on in some advanced training which I thought was a really, really good notion; that you must make a mental decision to enter a different headspace, and that if you just continue whatever frame of mind that you are in, that you can kind of daydream and think about whatever you were thinking about before putting the helmet on, and you are probably not going to have a great day. I’m not saying you can’t relax while you are riding a motorcycle, I’m just saying that I think it was great piece of advice to treat the putting on of the helmet as the moment that everything changes in terms of your mindset.
If you had to choose, do you have a preference between riding a motorcycle or driving a car? I’ll definitely ride.
How long have you been riding? All my adult life, so since I was… I mean, I got to play with friends’ bikes when I was a teenager, but I never owned one, so, probably since the age of ��, so about 3� years.
Does Rebecca support you riding a motorcycle or is she a worried spouse? (Laughs) No, she is… that’s a good question. It’s interesting. She never really worried about me racing cars, and I’d say that she probably worries about me riding. But she is quite good, like if I go to a track day with my race bike, I don’t think she is overly concerned. I think she is more concerned when I’m commuting, and she’s also a little bit concerned when I go away for multi-day rides on my adventure bike. But, I would say that probably commuting is the one that she would be most concerned about. She is able to identify where the real danger exists verses the ‘he might get banged up a little bit’ danger.
You just made me think about another famous rider from your neck of the woods – Burt Munro. The film, The World’s Fastest Indian really drew a lot of interest in the sport. Does Australia have anyone similar to him? To Burt Munro? No. I mean, we have a history of producing good dirt track motorcyclists and grand prix riders, Wayne Gardner and Mick Doohan and so forth, but no, that was more your single land speed stuff wasn’t it.
In 2007, you had a serious crash at the Targa Professional Road Rally and your car was destroyed. This was a vehicle that you loved and even did a documentary around (Love the Beast). Would you consider that incident to be the scariest moment you have ever had in racing or driving cars or motorcycles? It wasn’t very scary; it was more the fact that I was just really, really, really disappointed that I was hurting the car, so I wasn’t overly scared, and I kind of knew it was coming a few seconds before we hit, but I’ve definitely had scarier moments than that. The ironic thing about tarmac rallying is that the scariest moments are the ones where you don’t crash. The scariest
moments are the ones you have just before the crash, where you thought you were going to crash but didn’t. The car breaking away slightly on a crest that is going a different direction than you thought, or a surface change halfway around a corner where you… I think that sometimes the near miss can actually be scarier than… the couple of small crashes I’ve had have been a lot less scary than the near misses I would say.
Being a father and a husband, did you find that after the Targa accident, or any of the near misses that did actually frighten you, that the way you viewed or embraced racing changed at all? No, because after that Targa accident… after I repaired the car and got it back on the road and all that sort of stuff, I actually increased the amount of racing I did. I stopped ROUTE Magazine 43
Did you ever meet Paul Walker before he was killed? Actually, by complete coincidence I did. I had a very lovely dinner at a Melbourne restaurant, a mutual friend was traveling with him and called me up and said let’s go out to dinner and it was just the one time.
His death was obviously very shocking. Such accidents don’t seem to happen often, but it always makes me wonder if it changes the way a person views the sport when it does. Well, I guess the closest I came was as I started to get more serious about my circuit racing, I definitely made the decision to stop pursuing the tarmac rallying because I identified that there was a significant risk engaging in that form of motorsport, in kind of a haphazard way. And what I mean by that is, I never really had the time to really go and do extensive “reckies”, reconnaissance and pace notes for the tarmac rallies. We would just turn up and do them, and I think that when you combine a little bit of competitive spirit with some self-belief in your ability without being prepared, it’s a bit of a recipe for disaster. I could see that if I continued going down that road that - it bites - tarmac rallying bites. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when for most people. I’d seen a fair bit of carnage and decided to just concentrate of the circuit racing side of things.
How would you respond if Klaus [19-yearold son] or Sophia [16-year-old daughter] decided to take up riding a bike competitively or otherwise?
doing the tarmac rallying and just really concentrated on the more serious GT3 sports car racing on circuits, so actually, my participation in competition went up after the period that was covered in that documentary. More recently, it’s sort of abated a little bit for various reasons but no, being a dad never really affected any of that in terms of how much I ride, what kind of riding I do, what kind of racing I did. It had no affect at all. I guess it’s probably because I’ve been doing all that stuff for so long that it never felt like an activity you took up later in life that you can drop because you’ve known different. Does that make sense? It would never occur to me not to ride a motorcycle. It would never, ever, ever occur to me to stop taking that risk. But if I had started riding at the age of 35, that would be a different conversation I think. Also, there is that side of you that says, ‘I’ve invested a hell of a lot in this. I’ve invested a lot of skill set. I’ve invested a lot time. I’ve put myself at a lot of risk to learn a lot and I want to back that experience in and enjoy myself,’ you know? 44 ROUTE Magazine
Yeah, that would be interesting. Neither of them are showing interest, thank God. It’s going to save them a fortune. They both have their own interests and I think that is also a generational thing as well. They really enjoy being in older vehicles. I can definitely see a change in anxiety levels, when you throw a teenager into a car that has no buttons and no Bluetooth and not choices, its kind of beautiful actually. I think they have enjoyed that side of classic car ownership, but I don’t think that it’s in their stars.
When you were 21, you decided to head over and explore America, traveling for close to six months and over 12,000 miles in a ’79 Mustang. What inspired that trip? What made you choose to go find America and was that your first time actually being in America? I’d only been to America once before when I was a small child with my mum to visit some relatives on the East coast. I look back on it now and the thought of my kids doing that now… that was back when there were no cell phones, there was no internet, there were no emails. I would phone home every three or four weeks just to let my parents know that I
was still alive. God knows what they were going through in the three or four weeks between each call. It’s actually a pretty standard Australia psyche, that notion of doing extensive travel when young. We are a very traveled population. I think one of the most traveled, perhaps up there with the Germans, in terms of passport holders and people who do extensive travel. I don’t know if it comes from being so far away from everything that it’s a given that you must travel and just cop it and not see distance as an impediment to experience. I think part of that comes from growing up in a country that is so big and sparse, that it’s nothing for us to drive from Melbourne to Sydney; it’s eleven to twelve hours and I wouldn’t think twice about covering that distance, I do it four to five times a year. The thought of being on a plane for fourteen hours or twenty-two hours, I just don’t think we see that as a reason not to go somewhere. It’s culturally something that is engrained in us. I don’t know what drove me to do that trip. It was extremely lonely, very, very lonely. I didn’t have a travel partner and was by myself for vast amounts of time, unless I hooked up with someone at a youth hostel and they got a lift with me to the next place or something like that. Generally, I was on my own and without the ability to communicate with back home.
Were there any key experiences or stories from that trip that made an impression on you? Well, I drove all the way down the East coast, halfway back up and then did a definite crisscross all the way to the west, then up to Seattle and then a little bit in-between. I look back on it now and I don’t even really know how I managed it. I remember having a small notebook with… mainly for budget reasons. I had to be really careful with how much I spent each day and each week, because I would have simply run out of cash. I met a lot of travelers and I did come to the conclusion, that it was in many ways… that it was financially cheaper to take the car route, because it meant that I was actually able to sleep in the car for a start, and secondly, it would give me the ability to move around and have more choice. Back then gas was really cheap, so that wasn’t a huge factor. Generally I had a good time, besides being really, really lonely, and there was a few times there where I recall traveling through some vast areas, and I look back now and I think, I [didn’t] have enough water, I had no spares, I didn’t have any tools with me, even though I was able to do some basic stuff. I wasn’t kitted up for such an adventure. A massive leap of faith in a very, very cheap automobile is what it was, and the car didn’t let me down. I think I got it serviced once in the middle of the country somewhere, I got an oil change out of sympathy for the thing. It just kept going and going. I had one really scary moment in Washington, DC, where I got lost in the middle of the night and I think I was saved by the rain. I ended up in a very, very bad part of town. It was nighttime, and it was raining, and I had zero sense of direction and I just couldn’t get myself out of it. It didn’t matter which direction I turned, I just seemed to be ending up in a worse and worse part of town. It was bad enough that I was genuinely fearful, and like I said, I think the only thing that saved me was the rain, because there were a couple times that… I was running red lights deliberately
trying to get pulled over so I could get directions, which wasn’t really helping and I think I ran one red light in full view of a cop car and not even the police car wanted to stop, so I just kept driving. I think the weirdest thing that happened to me after that is when I finally got myself onto a freeway, I thought ‘I’m out of here, I just need to drive for a few hours to get away from here’, and I spent about three hours on the freeway, and I finally succumbed to checking into a cheap motel at whatever time of the morning it was, and when I checked in I asked the person at the desk where I was, because I figured, perhaps three hours out of Washington DC, I don’t even know where I am, and it was teeming with rain. I couldn’t really read the signs very well. [It turned out] that I was about �5 miles from Washington, DC. I’d been, I guess, on the circular route around the edge of the city. I had done a couple laps, kind of like Chevy Chase in Paris in European Vacation. I remember my shoulders dropping considerably for a couple of days and I don’t think I left the room actually for a couple of days. I think that was probably the low light of the trip. But I met some great people. I thought the roads were fantastic, the highways back then were pretty great, and they didn’t feel crowded. I think that was one of the memories I had is that I don’t recall anywhere being super crowded, and I’m sure that if I did the same route today, most places that I would stop would feel vastly different to what they did back then.
Have you ever been on Route 66? No, I haven’t. I’m sure I must have been on it for a little bit during that trip, but I can’t remember. I would need to look at my old map that is marked up. I don’t think I covered much of Route 66 to be honest, because I approached California more from the south. I came up from Texas and I don’t think I hit much of Route 66 actually.
Is it a highway that you’d like to experience for yourself? Oh for sure! I didn’t get up enough to the mid and upper states, so there is a lot that I would still like to see, and by road would be my preference.
Do you think that the concept of the road trip is realistic in Australian culture or is it more of an American phenomenon? It’s definitely very popular at home as well. I think Americans are kind of spoiled though, because when you look at the map and you look at driving from point A to point B, there is a lot more in between point A and point B in the United States than there is at home. I mean, if we choose to drive from Melbourne to Perth, there are a lot of natural points along the way, but in terms of basing yourself out of towns and cities, there are very, very few. Whereas, if you are going to drive from the East coast to the West coast in America, your choices are infinite as to your route, which cities you are going to avoid, which cities you are going to see, what you are going to do… so yeah, Americans are amazingly fortunate and spoiled for choice in that regard. But the road trip is definitely a part of the Australian culture that I grew up with. ROUTE Magazine 45
Looking back on that trip, or subsequent periods of long trips alone, do you feel that you discovered anything about yourself that has stayed with you? Well yeah, it’s kind of interesting that it ended up being a really handy experience for my professional life, because I guess something that most people won’t assume about the life of a working actor, if you’re fortunate enough to have a decent career, is that you end up spending vast amounts of time on your own. Most people wouldn’t think about that because they just see movies and they see the glitz and glamor of the movie business, but the reality is that you end up spending copious amounts of time on your own. That trip was kind of a bit of an entrée into that reality, and it definitely gave me tools for spending large amounts of time in my own company. I didn’t realize it at the time obviously, because I wasn’t working in the industry, but there are times when I look back and I think ‘yeah, that was an interesting little appetizer for how you would end [up] being on your own a lot with work.’
Have you ever turned down a project because you were going to have to be away for too long from Rebecca and the kids? It’s definitely a consideration, [but] there haven’t been too many projects, if any, that I have had to turn down simply for that reason. But I guess I go through periods where my agent knows I’m not prepared to work. So, whatever is happening in that period, I don’t see it as a period where I’m actively turning down things, it’s just a period that I’m not available to work. I never go back to back [in projects]. I think that I’ve only gone back to back once in my life. I generally complete a long production and then I head back home and carve out a significant chunk of time where I don’t want to work, and it just works that way for me. There are some people that can do it, some people can go back to back and never stop. I identified early on that it doesn’t suit me and doesn’t suit my disposition. I would probably burn out and ride off into the sunset way too early. I guess I try to pace myself.
A lot of people may not know that you began your career doing stand-up comedy. However, you’ve chosen to generally focus your career on more serious or harder hitting roles that have created a very different understanding of Eric Bana. What appeals to you about the more serious roles. I don’t know how many comedians you’ve met in your past. Most of them are pretty intense. (Laughs) The comedy… the acting is what really appealed to me and the comedy was something that I kind of fell into, and once I fell into it, I realized that it could be a kind of interesting alternative route to get to where I wanted to, but that certainly wasn’t my intention when I started doing stand-up. I was encouraged by some of my coworkers to try it and I went and saw some comedy nights and decided that some people were good and some people weren’t very good, and the guys that weren’t very good were getting paid, and so the light went off in my head and I was like, ‘if they are getting paid I’m certainly going to have a crack at it.’ So, it became kind of a means to an end, and 46 ROUTE Magazine
then I sort of started getting some traction. I realized that there was an opportunity to move in different directions. I got very lucky, I worked in the right parts of the business at the right times. I worked in television sketch comedy right when Australian sketch comedy was at its peak. I got out of it as that sort of production was on the decline and networks weren’t investing that kind of money on Australian expensive to produce comedy. I rode the right waves at the right time and made the most of it and when the opportunity came up to get into dramatic acting I just went for it, and then when those roles kept coming up, at no point decided, ‘hey, hold on a second, I have to prove to everyone that I’m funny.’ I really didn’t care about showing that side of me at all, because I was sort of a bit burned out from it and I just didn’t care whether or not people from other countries knew that about me or didn’t. I wasn’t really preoccupied with it, I was more focused on making the most out of this sort of second career opportunity, so that’s why a lot of it was by design. Initially, when I got my breaks in America I didn’t want to muddy the waters by trying to do comedy as well. I thought that would be a really bad idea. I’m sort of glad I did that because it’s hard to change people’s perception of what you do, and I ended up with these two really, completely different careers internationally and in Australia, and so I just had to make the most of that.
I was reading that Russell Crowe recommended you for Black Hawk Down, Brad Pitt requested you for Troy, and Steven Spielberg very much wanted you for Munich. You seemed to very quickly get on the radar of some very talented, respected, powerful people in the industry. What do you attribute that to? I don’t really know. I tried not to intellectualize it or think about it too much at the time. I guess everyone has their moments in our business. It’s like there is a moment and you are either lucky enough to get on board or stay on board, or you miss the bus. I do know that if you miss the bus, it’s unlikely to come again. I do know that, and I’ve seen plenty of examples, the first few steps are pretty precarious, so I always just try to go with my gut and tried to choose what I thought was interesting, and not be too chess game about it. I wasn’t interested in a particular pathway, I wasn’t interested in where I was going to end up. I was just interested in what kind of work I was going to be doing and that was always kind of my guiding principle and always has been. You sort of end up where you end up, but you just have to make the most of the opportunities and again, I feel like I was very lucky. I would not like to be in the position today that I was back then, because the same opportunities don’t exist in terms of the characters and acting roles. The size of movies we have today and the kind of roles that are being offered to young people on the rise are very, very different. I think its much harder for people to create a body of work that shows off what they can do.
Are you a romantic guy? Would you define yourself as a romantic? Uh, somewhat maybe. (Laughs)
Time Traveler’s Wife was quite a romantic film. It had a sad ending, but it was a very romantic and powerful film. What drew you to that script?
Do you have any films that you think get you more recognized or resonate more with people? Is there a character that you are most known for?
I really enjoyed the story, I thought it was pretty unique. I’m a huge fan of Rachel’s [McAdams] and I knew that she was already attached, so that made the decision that much easier. I hadn’t done anything like that before, so it was also a unique challenge as well.
It’s very regional. So, it depends on where I am. If I’m in Europe, it’s Troy, it’s quite often Munich. If I’m in Australia it’s Chopper. If I’m in America sometimes it’s Chopper, sometimes it’s a mixture of almost everything else. There is definitely not one alone, it just depends on where I am and the environment. If I’m at a car show, it’s Love the Beast. If I’m with some women, it’s The Other Boleyn Girl or Time Traveler’s Wife.
Do you think that doing that film and having it be such a big hit helped people see you in a fresh light? Maybe as a way to open new doors? I didn’t really think of it that way. I tend to think of it more as, ‘Do I want to challenge myself? Do I want to do something different?’ I guess the conscious decision to never be in a box has probably been more a result of me wanting to challenge myself and do different things and for whatever reason, I’ve been really, really fortunate that people tend not to pigeon hole me, and directors and producers have been open to me doing different things, and constantly come to me for different things. I think that’s where I’ve been the most fortunate, that I’ve been able to indulge in that, rather that continually just do the same things. I think that sometimes people can end up being bigger stars if they do the same things over and over again, but if you want to do really different kinds of work, it’s a different sort of pathway.
Is it odd for you, as an Australian national who is obviously very at home in America, to see yourself regularly in these roles that are so ‘hyper American’ - The Hulk or special ops in Lone Survivor or Black Hawk Down - very quintessential American?
At the moment you are working on a television mini-series, Dirty John. What is the premise around Dirty John? It’s based on a true story. It’s a true crime that happened in Los Angeles in Orange County only a couple years ago. One of the LA Times reporters, Christopher Goffard, turned it into a signature piece that he does where he does in-depth coverage of a particular crime that has some interesting characteristics to it. He did a podcast to go along with the articles and the podcast was extremely popular, so it garnered a lot of interest from people to develop it as an actual story. We are doing an eight-part stand-alone miniseries right now and it’s essentially a tale of domestic abuse and it’s kind of fascinating. It takes a couple of little twists and turns and [John] is not who he says he is, and it’s all about deception and lies and someone being a serial manipulator, and obviously he has some sociopathic qualities to him. He’s involved in a series of relationships and the most recent one is with a woman named Debra Newell, and they end up married, and the story follows their courtship and what happens after they get together.
Not really, [though] I do occasionally think to myself, “It would just be so easy to be Australian,” because it is another element you are dealing with that other cast members who are American don’t have to deal with. I do think it’s another layer and it takes more work than the person who’s not pretending to be from another country, but I also don’t really know any differently. I’ve done just as many films in the UK as I have done here almost, and have to do a lot of British accents. I have a joke that Australians are everywhere, they just aren’t in films. For some reason we never put Australian characters in movies. I’ve only managed to shoehorn one of them and that was in Funny People. [The character] was originally written as an American and I just couldn’t think of any reason why he couldn’t be Australian, and my big selling point to Judd [Apatow] was that I promised that he’d be funnier if he was Australian, and I think that’s what got it over the line. But sure, the thought of playing an Australian in an international film would be extremely attractive.
In preparation for the role did you ever get to meet the real character?
Do you feel that Aussies are viewed differently in the US now than they were during the Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin period?
Don’t forget to check out Eric Bana in Dirty John, airing on the Bravo network later in 2018.
Not possible… most people will know why that is the case, but I don’t want to ruin it for others.
Do you usually try to meet the real person in non-fiction roles? It can go both ways. I’m not adverse to it. I have done it a couple times. If I do, I try to make it really, really clear to the person that the character that they are going to see on the screen is going to be a different version of them and it’s not going to be them. There is a definite responsibility there and sometimes it can be more awkward if you meet the real person. In some cases you don’t meet the person, you meet their family members, and it’s always something that has to be navigated.
Perhaps, although I think we would benefit from seeing some of us Australians in films not playing those types of characters for sure. ROUTE Magazine 47
THE TIME
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TOWN FORGOT By Lea Loeb
Photographs: Brennen Matthews A visit to Chloride is a visceral glimpse into a once thriving mining town. The eerie quietness and the whispers of a bygone time makes a stroll through this ghost town, one not to forget.
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N
estled in the barren foothills of the Cerbat Mountains, about 8� miles south of Las Vegas and �3 miles north of the iconic Route 66 town of Kingman, lies Chloride, Arizona. It is advertised only by a pale turquoise sign, with bright paint that has clearly faded from years in the hot Mohave sun, which reads: “Chloride. Petroglyphs. Cliff Murals. �86� Historic Mining Town.” A giant arrow points visitors away from the highway, towards what appears to be nothing but dry desert. It is there, four miles off of busy US Route �3, down a road that gradually becomes less and less paved as it stretches out to the base of the mountains, where Arizona’s oldest mining settlement can be found — a ghost town that never actually died. Yes, the dusty dirt roads are empty and the historic buildings are uninhabited; the abandoned mines loom ominously along the outskirts of town and yes, the air is filled with a haunting silence that is interrupted only by the occasional hum of cicada, but despite all appearances to the contrary, Chloride still hums quietly in the shadow of the giant C that paints its horizon. “When I arrived in Chloride, the town seemed immediately eerie,” says Michael Delgado, a veteran magazine writer who stumbled upon the area while working on a Route 66 story. “The town gave off the sensation of being on a movie set, one of those spooky horror films where unsuspecting travelers give the wrong person a lift or ask to use the phone of someone who appears warm and welcoming, but actually has sinister motives.” That eldritch feeling hangs heavy in the town’s atmosphere, but the locals don’t seem to mind - they’re used to the unnerving stillness. In fact, they almost relish it. There is virtually no one around at any given time of day; elusive shopkeepers have to be coaxed out of the shadows
Yesterday’s Restaurant and Shep Miner’s Inn. 50 ROUTE Magazine
and the occasional resident can be seen shuffling around their yard in the early hours of the morning, when the sun is still low in the sky. Even the children’s park, with its old metal style slide and swings, and a few sun bleached plastic toys, seems forlorn and abandoned. Often, it appears as though the town’s people simply picked up and moved on, abandoning the settlement to the wind and time. But they are still around. Chloride’s only hotel, Sheps Miner’s Inn, a venue that until only recently could only be reserved over the telephone, was originally built in the mid �8��s to serve as a rest stop for the Butterfield Stagecoach Line. The stop was then converted into housing for Chloride miners and their families before having a run as a modern-day motel. “When I first visited the Inn in ���6,” Delgado continued, “the rooms were basic and there was no air conditioning - only fans. The adjoining restaurant’s interior fit right in with Chloride’s eerie ambiance. The walls were adorned with old photos that were apparently discovered in the venue’s ceiling (or so the waitress told me), featuring forlorn faces of people who were mysterious to even the owners. Old church pews furnished a section of the dining room and a taxidermy dog sat in a glass box staring at visitors in front of the window. Apparently, the animal died and the owners decided to preserve him and showcase him in the restaurant.” Yesterday’s, the restaurant adjacent to the Inn that Delgado mentions, is one of two eateries in town. Both the Inn and the eatery now have new owners, as of ���8, who are breathing needed life into this time capsule. Technically speaking, Chloride never actually became a ghost town; the area has been continuously populated since the discovery of silver ore in �86�. For over five decades, prospectors excavated copious amounts of silver, gold, zinc, copper, lead, molybdenum and turquoise out of �5 mines.
The Chloride Baptist Church.
As a matter of fact, during its heyday, Chloride was booming; eight saloons, six churches, five hotels and restaurants, four red light dens, a bank, livery, Opry House, billiard hall and hospital which served over �,��� residents for years. Today, however, that is not the case. Over the course of several decades, Chloride’s once thriving community almost disappeared. In the late ����s a fire nearly burned the entire town down to the ground. In ��35, the Butterfield Stagecoach and Santa Fe Railroad stopped providing cargo and passenger services to the area. Finally, in the ����s, the area’s mining industry began to decline. Many miners went off to serve in WWII and as they produced less and less, the mines became too costly to operate, forcing families to pack up and move - rendering the once prosperous camp into practically a ghost town. Nevertheless, Chloride survived. About 3�� people currently call this place home, and although it may have the kitsch of a classic Wild West village, it is far from a tourist trap. Rather than disappear into the desert or turn into a vacation destination after the mining bust, Chloride developed into a refuge for regular folk looking for a quiet place away from the city and a quirky community of collectors, writers, history buffs, artists and hippies. In addition to preservation of western history, art is a major part of Chloride’s culture. Eclectic junk art fills the yards of most houses - a tree made of glass bottles, a tin man with a big blue hat, a huge metal spider, a caterpillar made of bowling balls and a flamingo made of an old gas tank are just a few of the sculptures that are visible from the main streets. About a mile away from civilization, ancient Native American petroglyphs can be found in the mountains
near the old mines. In the same area, a bit further out and accessible only by foot or four-wheel-drive, is famed artist Roy Purcell’s first project, a mural titled “The Journey.” “The Journey” earned Purcell national attention as a rising star in the art world. After finishing his Masters in Creative Writing and Fine Arts at Utah State University in ��66, Purcell worked as a miner. It was in Chloride that Purcell developed his writing and art in his free time, ultimately leading him to create his first acclaimed piece. Purcell used automotive enamel to paint images straight out of the “hippie sixties” onto �,��� square feet of mountain side. A fertility goddess, the phasing moon, a yin-yang symbol and giant red snake are some of the vibrant illustrations that overlook the town from the granite cliffs. Now slightly faded from the desert sun, the illustrations still draw tourists interested in seeing the work for themselves. When visiting the town while researching for this story, my curiosity was cut short while investigating Purcell’s work by the ominous rattling of a nearby snake warning me away. I took the hint, but nonetheless, sitting in the shade of the mountains, with a total stillness during the hot afternoon, with the only interruption being the eerie caw of a local bird, felt unnerving and strange. I was quick to dust off my shorts and head back down to the town. In ���6, on the ��-year anniversary of his project, Purcell returned to Chloride to restore the fading murals to their original glory with a fresh coat of paint - even adding a few new drawings to the piece. While tourism is encouraged, Chloride is not commercialized or gimmicky. Anyone is free to wander through the historic areas at their leisure and all ROUTE Magazine 51
Photograph at Yesterday’s, 2016.
Exterior of Chloride’s General Store. 52 ROUTE Magazine
attractions, like the Purcell mural, train station, ���-yearold jailhouse, town cemetery and Arizona’s longest continuously running post office (a cute little white building) are open to the public. One main attraction for visitors was a cool, albeit tacky, general store and bar named Digger Dave’s on the main street into town. The owner, David Hunderfund, was a quirky - and according to some patrons, pushy - fellow who battled with the town’s residents and was a perpetual outsider. According to Delgado, “they did not like him and they considered his display of busy signs, wooden structures and other items to be cluttered and unsightly; they wanted him to strip back his external display and tone down his eccentricity.” Eventually, Dave finally packed up and moved away. In ����, a new restaurant called The Prospector replaced Digger Dave’s and although the venue is welcoming, it purposefully lacks the wacky aura of its predecessor. Despite the bizarre hostility surrounding Digger Dave’s, the townsfolk are generally pretty amicable. A complimentary informational pamphlet and hand drawn map are provided to tourists in the official Arizona State Visitor Center, which is located inside the town’s convenience store, the Mineshaft Market. Ruby, who runs the market and visitor center, acts as a tourism liaison, explaining to visitors a brief history of the area and some key points of interest - like the mock gunfights on Saturdays at high noon, the Jim Fritz Museum or treasure hunting at Shady Lady Attic Antiques. While most residents live in Chloride year-round, there are a handful of snow-birds that flock to town come winter to slow down and enjoy the sunshine. According to Ruby, many inhabitants are not actually from the area. She says most people move to Chloride to enjoy their retirement. “They come out here so no one bothers them. They’re free to do their artsy stuff and have their hobbies and be happy.” Genna Bruce, who moved from Bakersfield, California, says many visitors experience a culture shock when they come to Chloride, explaining that many people have never seen an actual Old West settlement or rural desert town. “Most tourists are from Europe - many from Germany and Italy - and they’re obsessed with the Wild West and cowboys. It’s like they don’t believe that history is real, but we [Chloride] are very real.” Even to most American visitors, Chloride is unique. Locals have a very relaxed attitude towards life and everyone marches to the beat of their own drum. “It’s a very slow way of life,” said Bruce, a waitress at The Prospector - one of Chloride’s two restaurants. “Shops open when they open and people do what they want.” In Chloride, there are no set merchant hours, guided tours or police. The fire department is run only by volunteers and even the cemetery has a “do-it-yourself” feel - there are no uniform plots or headstones and each gravesite has its own customized junk art display. Even so, there is a definite stillness that sits over the graveyard, as though the spirits of the departed still haunt the area. Chloride also has no city council and no mayor - or at least, not a human one. According to Bruce, locals have
Outside of Digger Dave’s, 2016.
taken to calling a stray dog that frequents the eatery, which was formerly known as Digger Dave’s, “The Mayor,” since he roams the town doing as he pleases. “Walking the wide streets there really is a feeling of falling off the face of the Earth,” said Delgado. “I have been back again twice since [my first visit] to get a fresh fix of weird and ominous. I like Chloride, it is a peaceful, but undeniably odd place. But I’m into that sort of thing.” Chloride’s rich old history and modern artisan culture blend together in a large celebration every third Saturday in October known as “Old Miner’s Day.” The festival, which commemorates when Chloride was the silver mining capital of Arizona, is rumored to have taken place annually for over ��� years. Attendees dress up in period clothing and artists sell their wares, ranging from metalwork sculptures to handmade jewelry. “We’ve got the history, and it’s quiet and quirky,” said Bruce. “I love living here.” The other day I stumbled on to a website that discussed the best ghost towns to visit in Arizona. There are many. But if you ever get the chance to venture West and into the vastness of the Mohave County in Arizona, make sure to spend some time in unassuming Chloride. But be sure to traverse gently so as to properly take in the magic of what may be the most unique town in the West.
Local yard art. ROUTE Magazine 53
CASTAÑEDA By Maria Basileo
For a growing number of savvy travelers looking for a more authentic hotel experience, a restored historic hotel may be just the answer. And the restoration of La Castañeda — the Queen of Las Vegas — is poised to be just that. The venue’s restoration by the Winslow Arts Trust is set to put the classic venue back on top.
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ACT II S
team rises in the distance as the Santa Fe railway train barrels into Las Vegas, New Mexico, and into the railway station. Passengers become onlookers as the train makes its stop near to the massive horseshoeshaped building with the romantic sounding title “Castañeda Hotel” written on the front. It was �8��, when the future president, Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, flooded Las Vegas for their first reunion. La Castañeda Hotel was only a year old, but would remain renowned for the next ��� years.
Founded in the �83�s by Spanish settlers who received the land from the Mexican government, Las Vegas, a town in northeast New Mexico, was built to resemble the traditional Spanish colony, with a central plaza and market. With the arrival of the railroad, �� years later, the town prospered and boomed. At the time, Las Vegas’ population was larger than that of Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Today, Las Vegas’ population stands at around �3,��� (���6), with over ��� historic buildings, such as the Montezuma Castle and Old City Hall, continuing to preserve the town’s rich history and at its heart is the La Castañeda, the oldest Mission Revival Style building in New Mexico. ROUTE Magazine 55
A Man with a Vision Fred Harvey, an entrepreneur and immigrant from England, saw potential business opportunities in towns along the railway line across the southwest. Harvey approached the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, his employer, with an idea to sprout restaurants and hotels along the railroad, to serve not only the workers, but also the tourists onboard the trains. The Burlington - as the company was commonly referred to - was not impressed with the idea and passed on the offer, only for it to be accepted by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (AT & SF). Harvey would open his first eatery at the Santa Fe Topeka train depot with the AT & SF in �8�6, and his first Harvey Fred Harvey. House in Florence, Kansas, in �8�8, sending his success into overdrive. This was the beginning of the world’s first chain restaurants and hotels. At its peak, a total of 8� Harvey Houses were built from Texas to California, all along the Santa Fe’s main line; one of which was La Castañeda. One of the most recognizable aspects of Harvey Houses were the workers. In the beginning, men served as waiters, but they were constantly getting into trouble with customers and in a revolutionary move that would go on to define the Fred Harvey enterprise, Harvey decided to employ only women, whose only opportunity for employment at the time was primarily domestic, as waitstaff instead. ‘Harvey Girls’ were single, well-mannered young women who were subject to strict rules such as a curfew, dress code and good reputation. Soon, being a Harvey Girl became one of the most sought-after jobs in America by young women across the country, going on to inspire a movie titled The Harvey Girls starring Judy Garland.
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La Castañeda, a �5,���-square-foot hotel with about �� guest rooms, ��8seat dining room, and a 5�-seat lunch counter, was built in �8�8. The only Santa Fe Railway venue designed by Architect Frederick Louis Roehrig, and named after Pedro de Castañeda, a foot soldier who recorded explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition in the �5��s. The hotel thrived through the ��3�s, with a guest list of who’s who, until the Great Depression when its struggles began, and finally closed in ���8 after World War II, the same year that President Truman stopped in while campaigning for re-election. The railway left it vacant for years before selling it to Las Vegas local John Lawson in ��6�, who in turn sold it to Don and Marie Elhd. The pair bought the property for $85,��� in ���3 and transformed the hotel into an apartment building and bar. Their original plan was to restore it, but they did not get to see their vision transformed into physical space.
Hope on the Horizon In ����, Allan Affeldt and his wife, Tina Mion, bought the hotel for $���,���. The building sat for almost three years before gaining the necessary tax credits needed to tackle the monstrous amounts of updates and repairs required to make the hotel a success once again. The couple and their talented team is known for their extraordinary restoration work on other Harvey Houses, including their first, La Posada, in the Route 66 town of Winslow, Arizona. The couple wanted their projects, like La Posada and La Castañeda, to become public institutions, and so in ����, founded the Winslow Arts Trust (WAT), a non-profit foundation through which they can preserve the art and historic artifacts and buildings of America’s cultural heritage for future generations. La Posada - The Resting Place - was designed by famed architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, and first opened in May ��3�. Although most railside businesses declined throughout the ��3�s, La Posada pushed through to the ��5�s before it shut its doors. The railway turned the building into an office space for themselves, but it soon became vacant and fell into disrepair. Residents of Winslow proclaimed the building
as a money pit, but Affeldt and Mion saw the jewel in the rough. Construction on the ��,���-square-foot property began in ����, however, the restoration and transformation of the La Posada to its former glory took a whopping �5-years to complete. The hotel, which opened in ����, has become the flagship of WAT’s projects, and is recognized not only as one of the finest hotels in Arizona, but also as a museum and a gallery showcasing the works of various artists. The economic impact of the restoration of La Posada on the town of Winslow has been tremendous, with the positive effects felt far and wide. Affeldt, Mion and their team is now bringing the same expertise, dedication and proven success to Las Vegas The La Castañeda crew plasters the ceiling of guest room 204 in the second floor and to bringing this southwest south wing. historic treasure, La Castañeda, back to life. Construction officially started in January ���8, and, Motivations behind the ownership of La Castañeda are according to Affeldt, is ahead of schedule. simple and clear according to Affeldt: “There are beautiful During the restoration process, the idea is to reuse buildings everywhere that are falling down or falling apart as much of the original historic fabric of the building from lack of care, or lack of capital or lack of vision.” From as possible, however, obstacles like sewers, plumbing Affeldt’s position, architecture is very much a form of art, and electrical lines threw wrenches in the team’s plans and what his team brings to the table, unlike the ones when updating the building to ��st Century standards. before him, is “a business understanding of how to make One necessity required in every room is a bathroom, them viable again.” which were absent in the original �8�8 floor plan. It is The idea is simple; provide a rail connection between hard to imagine this in today’s era of expected space and the properties in Winslow and in Las Vegas, as one comfort, but back in the late ��th Century, expectations continuous living museum experience, but with each were quite different. venue having its own fascinating and unique story. “For But even before the construction crew was on the ground, us, it’s become a sort of giant museum that scales the residents of Las Vegas and tourists alike were enthused at southwest,” says Daniel Lutzick, president of the Winslow the prospects of a second act for La Castañeda. “They’re so Arts Trust, referencing La Castañeda, La Posada, the Plaza excited that this building is going to be saved, because they and other WAT projects. “Those are like galleries, sort of wanted it for so long,” shares Lutzick. like living history in the museum.” Kathy Hendrickson, a local tour guide, ran preLutzick, Affeldt and Mion met in college in ���� when renovation tours for three years through her company, they were each attending the University of California Southwest Detours, upon the success and hard work put Irvine. While there, the trio were individually involved in by Affeldt and his team. “He [Affeldt] gave me the keys within the art community; Mion was a painter, Lutzick to the Castañeda and said, ‘You can start doing tours,’” a sculptor, and Affeldt was involved with sustainable recalls Hendrickson. designs. La Posada was their first big art project together The ongoing construction does not deter her. in ���� when Lutzick became a partner and Special Hendrickson now runs hard hat tours during the Projects Manager during the restoration. transition period between rubble to relaunch. Other tours Harvey Houses were built close to the railroad for a such as the Las Vegas Art Studio Tour and The Places with reason; to make it easier for tourists to hop off and find a Past also run tours for tourists who desire to see the lodging and food, virtually eliminating the need to walk hotel before it reopens. into town. “When you visit one of our museums, you learn Hendrickson has given tours to people from California, about the other properties you can visit, or are perhaps New York, Washington D.C, and from all over the country. encouraged to get on the train and explore a little bit,” “People are coming into town. They’re going to The Plaza. Lutzick adds. They’re walking around, just intrigued with Las Vegas, Work at La Castañeda began in August ���� with and [are] so surprised about all of its wonderful history. environmental remediation as asbestos in the plaster and They want to see the Castañeda Hotel and the railroad. lead in the paint are often found in historic buildings. ROUTE Magazine 57
They want to explore The Plaza Hotel [another of WAT’s projects]; a lot of them stay there now.” An authentic experience remains key for the success of La Castañeda. Full immersion into ��th Century New Mexico would be impossible with new beds and televisions peppering each room. As part of the restoration efforts, many elements of the ��th century building will remain the same or become repurposed. “There’s an original French broiler. There’s an original dish machine, several original refrigerators and walk in freezers,” Affeldt explains. These objects will be cleaned and repurposed as artifacts within the building. Even artwork, such as the mural that was uncovered in the lunchroom kitchen turned bar, after removing layers of sheetrock, will be restored. Affeldt describes the painting as “a little politically incorrect...there’s various drunks and town characters,” but it will be on display for tourists to see and learn about. Work on the hotel will remain local as many skilled craft workers and artisans from the area “are rebuilding the Castañeda brick by brick and window by window,” Affeldt explains. The prospect of bringing jobs, tourists and money to the city makes residents hopeful for the future.
Hotel Castañeda in its 1941 incarnation. 58 ROUTE Magazine
The hotel is on track to open seven guest rooms in the south wing in late ���8, but aims to be completely open and operational with �� rooms by late ����. In the same vein as the naming of La Posada guest rooms, which are named after famous people such as Howard Hughes, John Wayne and Harry Truman, La Castañeda will do something similar. Rooms will be named after plants and animals from the region like the spotted lizard and black bear. According to reports, the guest list is pages long and growing each day, with people vying to be one of the first guests to stay for La Castañeda’s opening season. Until today, Amtrak trains continue to stop at the Las Vegas railway station twice a day like they have been for almost ��� years. And as with the region that is itself steeped in history and culture, La Castañeda will continue to play an important and enviable role for generations to come. To follow and get updated information and pictures on the ongoing construction and restoration efforts at La Castañeda, follow the Winslow Arts Trust blog link: https://hotelcastaneda. blog or visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ CastanedaHotel.
Photographs supplied by Dan Lutzick.
An illustration of the La Castañeda.
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@efrenlopez/Route66Images 60 ROUTE Magazine
By Jim Hinckley and Lea Loeb ROUTE Magazine 61
Anyone who recalls traveling on Route 66 in the 5�s will fondly reminisce that one of the highlights that they remember the most were the mysterious Jack Rabbit signs that dotted the old road — huge billboards strategically placed all along the route that featured a black, almost sinister, jackrabbit silhouette over a bright yellow background, with the remaining mileage to the advertised ‘destination’. Travelers were intrigued. The destination was the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, an iconic stop on Route 66 in Arizona, that has become a living part of Route 66 history, and one that continues to capture the imagination and instill the thrill of traveling the Main Street of America.
T
he Jack Rabbit and opened the Jack Rabbit Trading Post may Trading Post - a souvenir be a quick stop shop that would become along the Will known for its giant jack Rogers Highway rabbit statue. for some, but to whole The ever-increasing flow generations it remains so of traffic along Route 66 much more than a faded in the post-war era and gift shop. The vivid yellow into the ��5�s provided paint, bold red lettering unprecedented opportunity and dark silhouette of the for entrepreneurs, showmen jack rabbit sign against the and families in rural eastern sepia landscape of rural Arizona. At the time, the Arizona are images that Jack Rabbit was one of kindle nostalgia in many many faux trading posts Americans who remember along the Mother Road. the ‘glory days’ of the road Each boasted their own and of road travel itself. special attractions to lure The trading post, which in visitors. Petrified logs, dates back to ����, has fake wigwams, teepees and managed to cement its frontier era forts blossomed place as an important in the desert along the piece of Americana for highway near Holbrook and generations now. For Joseph City, like wildflowers those who traveled the after a spring rain, creating old road during the halcyon Glenn Blansett with his State Senate sign 1950’s. stiff competition for days, it’s a fond memory of tourist’s dollars. when the double-six was THE Main Street of America and These trading posts and their oddities became famous for younger folks, the Jack Rabbit is a rare, recognizable throughout the country. “Doc” Hatfield, who had Route 66 landmark, thanks to its appearance in the Disney established the Geronimo Trading Post five miles west of animated movie Cars. Holbrook, was luring droves of tourists to his establishment As with many roadside businesses that opened along with signs that advertised the “World’s Largest Petrified Route 66 in Arizona and New Mexico during the post-war Log.” Otis Baird, a former deputy sheriff in Navajo County years, the early history of the building is a tangled mix of opened the Apache Fort Trading Post and used snakes and a faded memories. Purportedly, it began life as a building pet mountain lion as a draw - legend has it that he deterred built by the Santa Fe Railroad. In the late ��3�s, the theft by keeping rattlesnakes in the jewelry cases. There complex was home to the Arizona Herpetarium, a glorified was also the Hopi Village Indian Store & Cafe, which by the snake farm and gift shop. After a few years of abandonment, mid-��5�s had evolved into Howdy Hank’s Trading Post. the Rockwell family used the space as a restaurant and The pioneer in the trading post business near Joseph City dance hall. Finally, in ����, James Taylor leased the property was a self-proclaimed poet, as well as former prospector 62 ROUTE Magazine
and trapper named Frederick Rawson, who for reasons unknown, went by the moniker, San Diego. Rawson was a tangible link to the frontier era, and by all accounts a colorful character. Born in about �86�, the story goes that his early childhood was spent as a captive of either the southern Cheyenne or Kiowa Indians. He came to Joseph City in about ���6 and opened a museum that housed an array of memorabilia from the territorial era as well as personal effects from his various adventures. In ����, he established San Diego’s Old Frontier Trading Post along Route 66. Local lore has it that Don Lorenzo Hubbell, owner of the historic Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona, acquired the complex built of old telephone poles in the ��3�s. However, what is known for certain is that by the late ����s, Hawaiian band leader Ray Meany and his wife Ella Blackwell owned the trading post and that they were fiercely competitive. Today, these trading posts are almost extinct, with the Geronimo Trading Post and the Jack Rabbit Trading Post as the lone survivors. They are the last links to a way of life erased by the need for speed that led to the replacement of Route 66. Of the two, the Jack Rabbit is a true rarity. Unique to the post is signage that dates to its founding, part of a brilliant advertising campaign that gave the store an edge over competition during the heyday of Route 66, as well as international recognition today.
A Family Business The proprietors have deep roots along Route 66; for current owner Cindy Jaquez, who now runs the post with her husband Tony, the highway and trading post is a lifelong association. The Jack Rabbit has been in Cindy’s family for all but the first �� years of its existence, when it was operated by the original owner, James Taylor. Shortly after opening the trading post, Taylor realized that he needed a hook - something to make his business stand out from the crowd. Taylor approached Wayne Troutner of Winslow, Arizona, and the men put their heads together.
Covered Wagon Souvenirs February 1966.
In what proved to be a stroke of brilliance, the combined effort resulted in Taylor erecting a large billboard along the opposite side of the highway, painting it bright yellow and adding the black silhouette of a jackrabbit and bright red lettering that read: “Here It Is.” The two men joined forces and set out along Route 66 to set up signs; the yellow sign with the jack rabbit and mileage to the trading post, and Troutner’s sign for his men’s clothing store, with the silhouette of a curvaceous cowgirl and the slogan: “For Men Only, Winslow, Arizona.” Eventually the signs would be placed along U.S. 66 as far east as Illinois and as far west as California. The mileage
Postcard of Jack Rabbit Trading Post. Early 1960s. ROUTE Magazine 63
listed on the Jack Rabbit It was Jones’s first Trading Post signs paying job, and he credits decreased as the traveler his experience at the post drew closer and then, for sparking his interest finally, the big “Here It Is” in travel and fostering his sign. Then, as today, smaller wanderlust. versions of the mileage “To me the place was signs with the jack rabbit magical - there were became popular souvenirs people from all over the and soon they were turning world stopping there, up everywhere; military people from all walks of barracks on bases in Guam life coming and going all and Germany, restaurants day long. One memory in Philadelphia and New that will always stick with York, and, purportedly, me is the smell of the even in a bar in the Yukon cars - you could smell the Territory. bugs cooking on the hot Cindy’s grandparents, radiators and the Desert hoteliers Glenn and Hattie King canvas water bags Belle Blansett, leased the [that] hung on the front Jack Rabbit Trading Post bumpers.” from Taylor in ��6�. “My dad’s parents built New Management the Pacific Heights Motel in Jack Rabbit Trading Post mileage sign. Although the Jack Joseph City in the ��s,” said Rabbit Trading Post has remained relatively intact from Cindy. “Then they built the Pacific Restaurant across the its opening to the present, there have been changes over street. [Glenn Blansett] got into the Arizona state senate the years. Blansett added cold cherry cider to the store’s thru the 5�s, and in ��6�, he leased the Jack Rabbit. They offerings and did a bit of expansion to the trading post bought it in ��6�. Thanks to his Senate ties he was able in ��6�. In ��6�, Blansett passed down the business to get us an exit off the highway during the I-�� bypass in to his son Philip and his wife Patricia - Cindy’s father ��6�.” and mother. Jones, who joined the navy that same year, In ��6�, the Blansetts employed a ��-year-old Glen Jones, returned home in ���� and continued to work odd jobs at as well as his aunt and thirteen- year-old sister to help run the venue. the store - it was the beginning of a 5�-year relationship “The place was still magical,” said Jones. “I helped between Jones and the Jack Rabbit. Phillip Blansett pour a concrete floor in the east end of “My job was to tie on bumper signs; they were made from the store - when we tore out the old flooring, there were cardboard, had four holes in them and had to be attached hundreds of snake skeletons from when it had been a to a car’s bumper with two lengths of heavy twine. I believe snake farm.” I was paid two and a half cents per sign.” “My parents moved here in ��6� from Phoenix. I was not quite four-years-old,” Cindy said. “However, we had visited the trading post often before this as my grandparents owned it at the time, and mother’s parents lived around Flagstaff and Williams.” There were difficulties that came with living in such a remote location, and according to Cindy, growing up in rural Arizona along Route 66 wasn’t easy as a kid. “There were four of us and we were five miles from Joseph City where we went to school. Friends were very hard to come by, and we only went on two family vacations since it was harder for our parents to leave the business as it was open Store front from the road in the early 1960’s. seven days a week. There wasn’t 64 ROUTE Magazine
much thought about Route 66 [at the time], it was simply our road. We rode the school bus or drove this road every day to get to school. Route 66 didn’t really mean that much to us until the early 8�s when Joseph City was getting bypassed.” Cindy’s recollections capture a moment in time when Route 66 was on the cusp of rising from the ashes of abandonment. “[My husband] Tony and his family lived about �5-miles east of Holbrook at Goodwater, where they worked for a local ranch. He eventually moved into Holbrook to live with his older sister and brother in-law to attend high school. We met in ��8�, married in Holbrook in ��88, and lived in Pinetop, Arizona, for two years.” “I was working 6 to 8 hour days managing convenience stores up in the mountains and one night I sat down with my father-in-law over dinner,” said Tony. “He was going to sell [The Jack Rabbit Trading Post] so I offered to run the store for him and Cindy just kind of went with it - it wasn’t planned at all.” Cindy and Tony raised their children at the Post, the same way Cindy grew up. “All of our kids learned how to play soccer, baseball and softball on our gravel and concrete driveways. But you make do with what you have. Not always the best, but you learn to live with it.” In addition to the series of giant rabbit statues that have starred as the Post’s main attraction, there is now a weathered old De Soto sedan that sits at the back of the property and peaks the interest of visitors. “The De Soto was Tony’s dad’s car. He moved back to Mexico after Tony’s mom died and left the car here. That
Grandparents Devaney, Flagstaff, Arizona.
car is almost as popular as the rabbit as far as pictures are concerned. I was always under the impression that there were only two rabbits, but we recently discovered that there were three. The first one was gray and had fur, that was when the store opened in ����. We found out that the
Postcard of the Pacific Heights Motel. 1970. ROUTE Magazine 65
second rabbit arrived here in a convertible in ��56. The third rabbit is the one we have today.”
Cindy and Tony proudly carry on the tradition of making memories for the Route 66 traveler: “Cherry cider was sold here until the very early 8�s, but so many people still come in asking for it. A lot of people say that this store and Route 66 are a big part of their growing up. We now have second and third generations customers.” People from across the globe come to visit the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. During his time in the military, Jones met a man in Vietnam who had traveled down Route 66 and stopped at the Post. Customers from all Dad Phil (left) handing out a mileage sign, exact mileage was to be filled in over the world continue to frequent the Jack and stationed accordingly. Rabbit, some as often as once or twice a year. “Yesterday we had someone here that was from New Zealand that was here �� years ago,” said Cindy. were just looking from the outside and assuming we had In the era of renaissance on Route 66, one would imagine shut down.” that an icon such as the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, a living Cindy began posting regular updates on Facebook on the shop’s happenings, in an effort to prove the Jack Rabbit’s time capsule where a person can have an authentic Route vitality. One day in April ���8, she posted a picture of a 66 experience, would be bustling with travelers. However, souvenir mile marker Tony had made for a customer. It was rumors were circulating online recently that the Post had a replica of the infamous yellow billboards that used to closed, so Cindy took to social media to set the record line the highway leading to the Post’s iconic “HERE IT IS” straight: the Jack Rabbit is definitely still open for business. sign. The picture quickly made its way around the web and “People were writing on the internet that we were closed, but they weren’t even trying to come into the store. They became viral in the Route 66 community. Suddenly, after years of decline, the Jack Rabbit was back on the map. Route 66 has always been about the people. The people are what give this highway its sense of infectious vibrancy. The people are what make a road trip on the double-six memorable. “Every time I was in Arizona on leave to visit family when I was in the navy I would stop in and visit with Phillip and Pat,” said Jones. “I never missed a chance to reminisce about the time Waylon Jennings’s and his bunch stopped in for a visit, or the bus load of naked hippies, or just how good [a] cold can of Coors tastes. It’s still the same Jack Rabbit - still magical, still wonderful people running the place. The Jack Rabbit is not just a tourist stop, it’s a family that has continued a tradition for almost sixty years.” The people, the dreamers that travel the road, the people that organize events, the people that keep the neon glowing bright or the vintage signs painted, they are the essence of the Route 66 experience. If we forget that, if we only see Route 66 as a photo op, a linear theme park, we risk losing everything that makes the highway special and unique. The Jaquez’s have high hopes for the future of the Jack Rabbit Trading Post and the Mother Road. According to Tony, business is starting to pick up again, but he and Cindy urge visitors to support local families along the route so that they can continue to keep the tradition alive. “Don’t just take a picture, come meet us - hear our stories.” As a parting thought, Cindy shares a little bit of wisdom that her father used to say: “If you haven’t been to the Jack Historic Jack Rabbit statue. Rabbit, you haven’t been to the southwest.” 66 ROUTE Magazine
Photographs courtesy of Tony and Cindy Jaquez. Opening Image @efrenlopez/Route66Images.
Today’s Challenges
Lucille's Roadhouse located on historic Rt. 66 is proud to serve hungry locals and travelers the finest food in Western Oklahoma!
1301 N Airport Road ¡ Weatherford, Oklahoma ¡ 73096 Lucillesroadhouse.com ROUTE Magazine 67
PARTING SHOT
Bob LILE
Who is the most interesting person on Route 66? Her name is Lady Lile and she depends on us for food, water, shelter, love and to take her to Route 66 events. She has her own Facebook page and likes nearly everyone she meets. What do you wish you knew more about? How to make money and how to win friends and influence people. I probably need to read that book again. What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives? Travel abroad to learn how the rest of the world lives. It’s amazing how similar and different we are. What fad or trend do you hope comes back? People dressing nicely to travel or attend events. Generally, Americans dress like slobs and seem to act as if we have no pride. What attraction on Route 66 is often overlooked? Historic Route 66 in Amarillo. It is Southwest 6th Avenue in the historic San Jacinto District west of downtown. What movie title best describes your life? “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Gumball Rally”. What’s the last adventure you went on? Cheryl, Lady and I went on a Texas friendship tour of west Texas in April ���8. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? I always wanted to be a performer, singer and actor. Over the years I’ve gotten to perform in plays and now sing acapella Barbershop Harmony in Amarillo and the Oklahoma Panhandle. What does a perfect day look like to you? Just a long, slow day traveling Route 66 in our Mustang convertible with my two best friends Cheryl and Lady. What is your favorite place on Route 66? Lile Art Gallery is my most favorite place because, every day I get to create art and jewelry, and meet people from around the globe. What would your spirit animal be? Probably a fox or maybe a song dog. Which historical figure would you like to meet? Jesus Christ is at the top of the list. Route 66 related, Cyrus Avery. If you won the lottery, what would you do? Preserve a lot of America’s historic buildings, starting on Route 66, and I would do a lot of traveling. What quirks do you have? I cannot stand to be late to any event or meeting, drives me up the wall. Also, I do not like to be interrupted when I am telling a story, and it happens a lot. 68 ROUTE Magazine
What meal can you not live without? Good ole Texas bar-b-que: ribs, brisket and sausage. Where did the name Crocodile Lile come from? I was a volunteer leader for the Boy Scouts of America for over thirty years and thirty years ago I was picked to lead thirty-six young men, ages �5-��, to the World Jamboree in Australia. One of the young men from Amarillo started calling me Crocodile Lile and it stuck after I wrote postcards home and signed them with that moniker. Bizarre talent that you have that most people don’t know about? I can pop my nose. What surprises you most about people? How gullible they are and a lot do not have the ability to reason or make decisions. Is there a customer of the Lile Art Gallery that you remember more than others? All my customers are special, but there are two who really stand out. Daryl Adams from Louisiana has purchased nine pieces of Cadilite jewelry for his wife and three for his daughters, and because he is a really good customer, I gave him number eleven. The other one was an attractive young lady who was travelling Route 66 from LA to Chicago before moving to Norfolk, Virginia. She said she had read about me and wanted to purchase some of my art. I began to pick her brain and found out she was a Commander in the United States Navy and was moving from San Diego to Norfolk to be the Executive Officer on a brand-new destroyer. What makes you laugh no matter what? Watching dogs, cats and people. Favorite memory on Route 66? Riding Route 66 with HOG in ���6, meeting Lucille Hammons and watching Michael Wallis perform a wedding ceremony in Albuquerque. He said it was good for twenty-four hours. Now he can do it for real. Most engaged/passionate nationality to visit Route 66? Czech Republic, with Germany and Australia coming in a close second. What is one thing you have always wanted to try, but have been too scared to? Maybe swim the English Channel. Probably to attempt to paint a large mural. I really hate to fail at anything. What do you think is the most important life lesson for someone to learn? To love oneself, to believe in oneself ,and to forgive oneself. The other thing is to claim our creative heritage as most of us go to our graves with our song still inside
Illustration: Jenny Mallon.
From his art gallery ‘Lile Art Gallery’ right on Route 66 - 6th Ave - in Amarillo, Texas, Bob ‘Crocodile’ Lile welcomes visitors from all over the world, who are in search of his special line of jewelry called Cadilite Jewelry, made from paint chips he gathers from the ground around the Cadillac Ranch. Artist, jewelry designer, Route 66 tour guide and heartily involved in the preservation and restoration of the Mother Road, Bob answers ROUTE’s quick fire questions.
ROUTE Magazine 69
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