Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story tells the fascinating, hidden story of America's Mother Road, over 85 years old. Meet Ry Cooder, musical star, a rocket scientist on Route 66, and hundreds of other everyday heroes on America's most famous road: excerpts of old radio, films, period music, and original interviews (3 hours).
Follow America's Main Street from Chicago to Los Angeles, traveling through history or literature, meeting the people and places that make Route 66 one of the world's great roads.
Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story
3-CD set—$14.95 + $5.00 S&H
3-Cassette set—$11.95 + $5.00 S&H
Even before there was a road, there was a route. Buffalo trails, Indian paths, the old Santa Fe trace—all led across the Great Plains and the western mountains to the golden oasis of California. America’s insatiable westering urge culminated in Route 66, the highway that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. Opened in 1926, Route 66 became the quintessential American road. It offered the chance for freedom and a better life, whether you were down-and-out Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s or cool guys cruising in a Corvette in the 1960s.
A Route 66 Companion gathers fiction, poetry, memoir, and oral history. From accounts of pioneering trips across the western plains to a sci-fi fantasy of traveling Route 66 in a rocket, here are stories that explore the mystique of the open road, told by master storytellers ranging from Washington Irving to Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, Leslie Marmon Silko, and John Steinbeck. Interspersed among them are reminiscences that, for the first time, honor the varied cultures—Native American, Mexican American, and African American, as well as Anglo. So put the top down, set the cruise control, and “make that California trip” with A Route 66 Companion.
A Route 66 Companion (University of Texas Press, 2012)
Paperback, autographed—$19.95 + S&H
Visit the Route 66 Oral History Office.