The Lure of the Mother Road

There is nothing in Oklahoma that fascinates me more than the lure of Route 66.  I was mowing my lawn one summer Saturday when three motorcycles pulled into my driveway.  A leather-clad rider stepped off the bike and informed me in French-accented English that he was lost.  He and his two companions had flown to Chicago from Paris, rented Harleys and set out from Chicago to L.A. on Route 66.  He wondered if I could show him the way back to the Mother Road.  Are you kidding me?  Of all the people to stop and ask, he stopped at the home of an employee of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department.  I fixed them up with maps, travel guides, small plastic compasses with the Oklahoma State Park logo, told them the best places to stop and see between OKC and Amarillo and waved them on their way west.  I'm fairly certain they were thinking every Okie is helpful and friendly.  I hope they thought that anyway.  
I have met many Europeans at stops along Route 66 and I am always amazed that the fire to see the Mother Road burns so brightly among these visitors from another continent.  Sir Paul McCartney even drove the road and spent a few days in Oklahoma.  A Beatle!  Such is the magic of the historic highway.
The road also is a powerful elixir for Americans.  Take Laurel and David Kane, a couple of Route 66 collectors from Connecticut.  In 1999, the Kanes packed up their stuff and set out to find a new home on Route 66.  In Laurel Kane's words, "We just decided that we would pack it all up and, pack up the antique cars and the Route 66 memorabilia and find a place to restore on Route 66.  And we traveled the entire length of Route 66 from Chicago to L.A. in one of the old cars incidentally, and this is the place we found."

The place they found is Afton Station, an historic stop on Route 66 in Afton, Oklahoma since the 1930s.  The antique cars are David's collection of old Packards.  The cars and Laural Kane's collection of Mother Road memorabilia now fill the old station and draw thousands of visitors every year.  You have to admire a love so strong that you leave behind what you know and start over with a leap of faith because, somehow, you know this is where you belong.  But even Laural Kane finds it hard to describe the fascination with the legend of Route 66. "I think people just want to get back to their roots and get out of the rush and the hurry-scurry and see the small towns and see what’s between the small towns and look at cows and goats and silos and not always look at the city", she says. 

And perhaps it's just because some people, like David and Laurel Kane, are simply living in the wrong time.  David's Packard collection is proof that he prefers the olden days of elegance in transportation and the lure of a legend.  "They weren’t built for the masses, I guess", he explains. "They were the type of an automobile that’s a pretty high-end car.  They were the cars that in the old days that the guys at General Motors strived to build a car like it and hence the Cadillac.  Ford got into the Lincolns because of the car like a Packard. And so they were doctors’ and lawyers’ and Indian chief's type of automobile."

If you think that the Kanes are in it for the money, forget it.  Almost nothing in the Afton Station is for sale.  They do what they do for the fun of it, for the love of the road, and for all of us who would love to follow our dreams but do not have the courage to do it.  Such is the lure of Route 66.

Laurel Kane's Blog