Death by Highwayman - Murder on Route 66

How about reconstructing Route 66 as an ARRA Stimulus Project? It would likely take a lot of time and create a lot of jobs for the duration.

Although most of Route 66 is closed to traffic, its stories and music still live. It is interesting how many people have covered the original Route 66"

• The Rolling Stones - on their debut album.
• Nat King Cole
• The Cheetah Girls
• Depeche Mode - (my favorite, see the video the end)
• Scatman John

Many singers have performed and recorded this theme song.

Just at the 1960s TV show presented a different story on Route 66 each week - some of them mysteries - this book edited by Carolyn Wheat presents 16 short mystery and suspense stories along the Mother Road, nicknamed by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wraith.

Television shows and books have discussed old Route 40, upon which both my grandfather and great father worked in major roles. Later, In the late 2000s, Tom Brokaw presented a road trip across America on old Route 50. This may be the source for another anthology one day.

Pardon the grammar, but this is a book to get lost in. It is engaging escapism about a famous road that was the backbone of a good portion of America, but which is no more. It is a ghost road tossing up stores with the dust that we raise as we ride down its pavement in our minds. Like an old room whose wallpaper has absorbed many stories, Route 66 has gathered many tales into its grasp, and run some of them into the pavement as tribute and homage for modern archaeological readers that choose to resurrect them.

The time frame recalls an era when I have stood in Wright Patterson Air force Base Museum and gazed at the Star Gazer gondola. Spacemen took it into the upper atmosphere on the top of a rocket and glided down with the help of many car batteries. They reached out the open portal and touched Outer Space on the way. Amid the newness of the International Space Station and 13 people there all at once for the first time with their modern technologies, the old story becomes more interesting. We're not in a rush for tomorrow in the Space Race now, so we have time to go back and look at the story. So it is with Route 66 and the road stories of other decades. Without that physical road to travel, we take time to travel through the stories and remember with other individuals' impressions.

This book is fun because it contains stories by 16 writers that have lived along route 66 and brought their own imaginations and true life experiences to the creation of murder on the Mother Road in 16 towns. The road itself has become a museum piece of sorts now, various roadside hamlets activating historical preservation societies to maintain some of the Route 66 landmarks. Humorously though, the authors bring the museum back to life through murder.

The tales begin in 1920 and extend through the life of the open road, to 1985, making an enjoyable collaboration of parts.

Murder on Route 66

Edited by Carolyn Wheat

Berkely Prime Crime/Penguin Putnam, 1999.

1. Michael Allen Dymmoch – Shades of 66 - Chicago
2. Barbara D'Amato – Motel 66- Bloomington
3. Eleanor Taylor Bland – The Canasta Club - Springfield
4. Les Roberts – Willing to Work - St. Louis
5. John Lutz – Endless Road - just west of St. Louis
6. David August – Blind Corner- Palenville
7. Lillian M. Roberts – Rest Stop - Tulsa
8. Carolyn Hart – Spooked - Oklahoma City
9. Doris R. Meredith – Incident on 6^th Street - Amarillo
10. Gary Phillips – ’53 Buick - just west of Amarillo
11. Judith Van Gieson – Dead Man’s Curve - Albuquerque
12. J.A. Jance – A Flash of Chrysanthemum - Arizona
13. Charles Knief - _HELL- Mojave Desert
14. Earlene Fowler – Blue Time- Barstow
15. Dick Lochte – Rappin’ Dog - LA
16. Carolyn Wheat, editor and author: Too Many Midnights - Santa Monica. Each of the stories in this anthology is worthy own right,and all are in a different style. This last selection by the editor is perfect for the finale slot. It is about the owners of a very special dress that appears throughout the timeline of the life of Route 66, from the 1920s to 1985. It's about the abuses and trimuphs each of its owners have endured and is quite good. The garment ties together all of the small pieces and messages left by the Mother Road as it stands broken apart today. 

I enjoy the whole range of stories selected for this athology, but I have favorites. Some of the stores are pretty gruesome but these reflect modern tensions. Adultery, abuse, and murder - especially murder - are recurring themes. The Great Depression, World War II cover ups, gender identity, and survival are high notes as well.

Other stories are nostalgic and poignant. The lot is fascinating enough to absorb a reader for contented hours of escape from the everday grind.

Shades of 66 - The first story tracks murder via the US Mail over the years in a series of letters from a trucker.

Spooked - This is my favorite, tied with Too Many Midnights.Local officials and army personnel seem to be "losing" the US Army's local supply of gasoline during WWII. At the same time, officials threaten to arrest the local diner's owner, a grandmother, fior baking pies - they accuse her of mishandlign sugar rations, buyt she's using honey form her own bees. (Recipe included with this one.)

_HELL is just that - A Shell service station sign in the desert along Route 66 loses a letter and signifies the satus of a Viet Nam solder's relationship with his girlfriend and her husband. A surprise ending adds to the situation.