Companion show revisits kicks of Route 66.
Say what you will about the interstate system, the most fabled thoroughfare in American history remains Route 66, which in 1938 became the world’s first mega-highway paved end to end.
Wending from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., the 2,448-mile, two-lane highway carried countless travelers before being decommissioned by the federal government in 1985 — a victim of the success of the more effective and much safer interstate system.
“It was a dangerous road,” McNichol said. “It was called ‘Bloody 66.’ The idea of driving so fast at each other in those old cars and letting a painted line be the difference between life and death was crazy. The interstate system is the safest road in the world, because it’s divided. And 66, through its tragedies, helped spur on the idea that maybe it would be good if we had separated, controlled access.”
But the mythic power of Route 66 survives — especially for lovers of chrome, fins and horsepower — and that legend will be extolled in “Ribbons Across America’s” complementary exhibit, “Gas, Food, Lodging.”
“This will have absolutely nothing to do with engineering and technology,” Brower said of the tribute, which she is curating. “It’s all a big nostalgia trip.”
Cultural markers in the exhibit will include posted lyrics from the hit song “Route 66,” composed in 1946; acknowledgement for the Route 66 TV series that ran in the early 1960s; a playful roadmap of Route 66 decorated with kitschy period-correct miniatures; and an exact replica of the first Route 66 tour guide produced after WW II.
“The GIs came back after the war and formed families,” Brower said.” And what were they doing during the summer? Loading their families into the Woody and taking them on vacation. And so we talk about how Route 66 was a tourist road with all the roadside attractions along the way. It reminds us of how we used to be.”
And of how we still want to dream.
“It’s part of the American myth,” Brower said.” It’s Manifest Destiny — there’s something on the other side of the mountain, on the other side of the river. And we actually open the show with about five stanzas of Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road, because we’re really talking about the American mythology of the open road and endless possibility.”
