Paul Richardson: This isn't Route 66 any more, Toto

There is a piece of road, a not so little piece as it stretches for about one hundred and sixty-six miles, from Exit 18 to Exit 184. What started out to be four lanes of loneliness has evolved into four lanes of almost bumper to bumper congestion.

I began traveling this road near fifty years ago, well not quite fifty, it was only 47 ½ years ago when myself and a couple of other students from our high school went to take some test that would determine what classes that we would be required to take upon entering the university. 

This was a real adventure, at least for me, to travel along with Pete Babb and Randy Armstrong and then to top it off, a snow event occurred, delaying our departure for home.

 

It wasn’t long before Randy and I were beginning our new educational journey and that road became the main thoroughfare connecting us to home and family. While my final destinations always have been a few miles to several miles beyond the interchange where the journey exits the interstate, that one hundred and sixty-six miles is the bulk of the journey.

After the initial years and then returning a few years later to the university, I somehow managed to marry the girl who is now the good wife. Her hometown is about thirty-two miles beyond Exit 184, so that segment of highway continues to be a part of my life to this day.

I have spun rod bearings in motors on this route. I have been stranded in weather so cold that icicles formed from my beard and all the while I was trying to get a ride to the truck stop at the next exit. I have picked up other wandering souls on this route and hauled them in excess of one hundred miles, all the time just being happy for the company. I have driven this in the dark, the pouring rain, snowstorms, on ice covered roads, in the heat, and every imaginable weather condition.

I stood in a park on a hilltop and watched the storms in 1975 that were ravaging Neosho and then traveled that route a couple days later to begin the summer as an intern with Southwestern Bell Telephone. It was on that return I discovered that my task was going to be moving phone equipment for people that had been forced to find new housing due to the storm.

The good wife and I just returned home from once again making the journey along this very route. I am just amazed at how it has changed over the years. I recall waiting at least five minutes to get a ride when I was stranded in 1974. Now the traffic is constant and congested. 

I have seen the road moved from old pavement that was a part of the Historic Route 66 to entirely new areas that are not nearly as scenic. Through all of these years and changes, the last few journeys along this toad have really hit home. This isn’t the same road of all those years ago. This isn’t Route 66 anymore, Toto!