“Maybe. A dream put me on this walk.”
“I don’t know if that dream was real or not, but the peace it brought me was real.” She looked into my eyes. “Hating those boys didn’t do anything to the boys, just to me. So I pushed them and all my hate from my heart. Once I did that, God came back in.” She looked into my eyes. “Maybe He will with you too.”
I took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe.”
As we were finishing our dinner, our waitress came back to our table. “Would you like some dessert this evening?”
I looked at Monika. “Dessert?”
“No, thank you. I’m very full.”
“Just the check, please.”
She looked at Monika’s half-eaten steak. “Would you like a box to take that with you?”
“Yes. It will be my lunch tomorrow. Thank you.”
I paid the bill, and we got up to go. “Thank you for dinner,” Monika said.
“Thank you for picking me up. A complete stranger.”
“It was my pleasure.”
A few moments later we left the restaurant. I walked her outside the hotel. I handed the valet a ten-dollar bill and the valet ticket. Then I said to Monika, “Hold on a minute. There’s something I want to give you.”
“I’ll wait,” she said.
I ran back into the hotel and retrieved my backpack from the bag check, took out some money, then went back outside. By the time I got back, Monika’s car had come and she was standing on the opposite side of the car looking for me.
“Sorry to keep you,” I said. “I wanted to give you this.” I handed her ten one-hundred-dollar bills.
She looked at the money, then back up at me. “What is this for?”
I smiled. “The bus.”
Chapter Twenty
The human need to attach ourselves to land makes me wonder if we ever own real estate or it really just owns us.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
The next morning I found myself thinking about my conversation with Monika. I wondered if she really would get on the bus. I hoped she would. Whether she did or not, I was sure she could use the money.
I ate a light breakfast in the hotel lobby, then started out, fighting my way out of downtown St. Louis through both human and automotive traffic. The farther I got from the city, the more pleasant the walking (and breathing) as asphalt and concrete gave way to grass and trees.
A little after noon, I left the freeway, following a sign to the Route 66 State Park. The park’s visitors center was located in an old roadhouse. It was run by a woman named Madeleine who introduced herself to me as “the ambassador of the 66.” Even though I had little interest in the building she occupied, Madeleine had enough passion for both of us and told me about the place in excruciating detail.
Built in 1937, the two-story building had once been a bar and restaurant called the Bridgehead Inn. People came to the inn to escape the summer heat of St. Louis. And to gamble. Maybe just to gamble.
The park was built on land once called the Times Beach—a questionable vacation spot that the St. Louis Times newspaper gave away plots of. People’s houses were built on stilts because the place frequently flooded.
As the area started to grow, people began to mysteriously get sick and it was discovered that dioxin, a highly toxic compound, had been used in the construction of the roads. This revelation was followed by a mass exodus of residents. In 1982, the final hammer fell when a flood decimated the town.
“The government stepped in and bought people out,” Madeleine said. “They were more than fair.” She looked me over. “You’re following the Route?”
“Yes.”
“East to west?”
“Yes.”
“Good. It’s the only way to do the Route. Be sure to stop at the Meramec Caverns. They’re only an hour away from here.” She looked me over again, then added, “At least, by car.”
“It will take me a few days,” I said.
“You know the caverns were the hideaway of the legendary outlaw Jesse James.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said.
“He used to go there during the Civil War when he was a bushwhacker. Then after the war he used the place as a hideout from the law. If you’re interested, there’s a Jesse James museum not far from it.”
“I wouldn’t go there,” someone said. I looked over to see an old man standing near the front counter, leaning on his cane. “When I went there, there was a woman who just blabbered through the whole film. I couldn’t hear a thing.”
Madeleine frowned. “I don’t think the woman will still be there, Vic.”
“You never know. That biddy was like stink on manure.”
“That was twenty years ago, Vic,” Madeleine said. “Get over it.”
“I’ll check it out,” I said.
I bought some cold bottled water and a bag of horehound candy, ate lunch at their café, and started back out on the road.
Near the end of my day the Route left 44, returning to the historic byway. I spent the night at a KOA in a kiddie train called the Kozy Kaboose. It didn’t cost much.
The next two days were pleasant walking. I was glad to be off the highway and on wide, less-traveled roads where I wasn’t constantly worried that I’d be killed by someone texting and driving.
The small towns I passed seemed to be clinging desperately to their pasts. Nearly every store or business had a Route 66 shield in its window or even took the name of the road, like Route 66 Taxidermist or Route 66 Realtors—“The shortest route to your new home.”
But clinging to the past has never guaranteed tomorrow, and many of the towns I walked through looked to be in a terminal state, as if they couldn’t make up their minds whether to live or die. I suppose, in a way, that described me as well.
Three days out of St. Louis, I reached the Meramec Caverns.
Chapter Twenty-One
It’s curious to me how many ways people have prospered off this hole in the earth.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
The Meramec Caverns are roughly three miles off the Route, preceded by a long descent down a lush, oak-lined road with the Meramec River flowing to the north.
The caverns are a four-hundred-million-year-old limestone cavern system that stretches more than four and a half miles into the Ozarks. Today the caverns attract more than a hundred thousand visitors a year, making it the most visited of Missouri’s many caves.
Initially the cave was valued as a source of potassium nitrate—commonly known as saltpeter—a chemical compound used in the creation of gunpowder. During the Civil War, the caverns were both mined for saltpeter and used as a factory by the Union army to secretly manufacture gunpowder, until the site was discovered by Confederate guerrillas, who ignited the stockpile of explosives, killing everyone inside.
My great-great-grandfather Jesse James was part of that Confederate attack. I assume it’s how he became acquainted with the caverns as a hiding place.
I walked past several rental cabins into a twenty-acre parking lot with a zip line, gold-panning sluice, and fudge shop. The parking lot was crowded and a half-dozen school buses lined the east end. It was the largest group of people I’d seen since I left St. Louis, which made me feel a little claustrophobic. I ate lunch at the caverns’ restaurant (which was decorated with pictures of Jesse and Frank James), then paid to go on a guided tour through the cave.
The cavern, once called Saltpeter Cave, was believed to be much smaller until the owner, Lester Dill, discovered a passage that led deeper into the mountain. He also discovered some old guns and a railroad strong box that was known to have been stolen by Jesse James and his gang. The box was now on display behind glass near the front of the cave.
Mr. Dill and I had much in common. In fact, when it came to marketing, I would admit that he had me beat. He was a consummate promoter with a natural flair for publicity. He even invented the bumper sticker, first as a sign advertising his caves that school
children tied with twine to the bumpers of cars, and then, after the invention of adhesive paper, actual decals.
He also drove Route 66 seeking out barns near the road and paying the farmers in whiskey, watches, and cave passes to let him paint the roofs or sides of their barns with the words MERAMEC CAVERNS ROUTE 66.
Once, in a gutsy display of promotional prowess, Dill climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and threatened to jump off if everyone in America didn’t visit Meramec Caverns. After a few days he gave himself up to the police who were trying to talk him down.
He spent nine days in jail for the publicity stunt but garnered media attention for his attraction in hundreds of newspapers across America.
Dill and I had something else in common. We had both profited off my ancestor. After all these years, Jesse James was still getting people to hand over their money.
I spent the night in the Meramec Caverns Motel. The next morning I left the grounds, stopping near the highway at the Jesse James Museum. A sign near the door asked, “Was Jesse James America’s Robin Hood or a cold-blooded killer?”
Actually, James was a brutal killer with a good publicist. Himself. After one of his gang’s bank robberies, he and his brother made a daring escape, which was publicized in newspapers across America, making them famous.
James leveraged his newfound celebrity by sending letters exclusively to John Newman Edwards, the editor and founder of the Kansas City Times.
In addition to the sensationalism of exclusive correspondence with a well-known outlaw and the newspapers that sold, Edwards had other motivations for printing the letters. He was a former Confederate soldier and was seeking to return former secessionists to power in Missouri. Edwards published dozens of Jesse’s letters, asserting his innocence—letters which, through time, became more and more political.
In publicity, James was ahead of his time, spinning his image from cold-blooded murderer and bank robber into a Robin Hood–like folk hero. I wondered if that’s where my marketing savvy had come from.
Inside the museum, I watched a movie that claimed that the real Jesse James hadn’t died, as believed, in 1882 at the hands of Robert Ford. The movie asserted that Ford had killed another man and quickly buried him so that James could live in peace without the fear of a price on his head.
Not surprisingly, it was an assertion that the Meramec could profit from. By that time, Rudy Turilli, Dill’s son-in-law, had taken over the caverns and, like his father-in-law, was always looking for the next big promotion. That’s when he came across a man claiming to be Jesse James. Whether Rudy believed the man really was James or not, he found him convincing enough that he announced to the world that James was still alive. He threw a well-publicized party in the cave for the supposed James on his 102nd birthday.
Thousands of people turned out for the celebration. Many testified that the man was, indeed, Jesse James, including John Trammel, a 110-year-old black man who had worked as a cook for the gang.
The museum had some of my ancestor’s artifacts, including an old bulletproof vest and—if it was him—the pearl-handled revolver given to him by Turilli at that birthday party.
I don’t know what it is in the human psyche that celebrates criminals, but we are perverse in that way. I couldn’t help but contrast the small plaque remembering the Reverend Christian Christiansen I’d come across in Gardner—a humble man who may have quietly helped to save the world—to the legacy of my great-great-grandfather. Today there are six museums and five festivals dedicated to Jesse James.
Over the next ten days I walked past nothing of exceptional interest. I wrote down a single list of unusual observations.
- Town of Bourbon. Home of the Bourbon virus, cause of a sometimes fatal disease. (Not sure I would have added that fact to a welcome sign.)
- The “world’s largest rocker” in Cuba, Missouri.
- The Vacuum Museum. (Really. It was closed.)
- A miniature Stonehenge.
- The Uranus Fudge Factory. (No comment.)
In the town of Devil’s Elbow, I stopped to eat at the Elbow Inn and Bar, a tiny pub hidden among trees at the edge of a forest. I remember thinking, This is the kind of place where you could disappear and never be found.
When I walked in, the only other patrons were two women who were sitting at the bar drinking beer. Jimi Hendrix played on the jukebox.
I ordered the ribs, and the waitress brought out the largest rack of pork ribs I’d ever seen. While I was eating, a massive man walked into the bar wearing a hockey mask. I was pretty sure he was going to rob the place until one of the women said, “Whatcha doin’ wearin’ that getup?”
The man pulled off the mask, exposing a chubby, boyish face. “It’s for fun. You should have seen those Swedish people that were in here earlier. They ran out without paying their bill.” His smile turned to a frown. “Now Jed says I have to pay their bill or I can’t drink here no more.”
As he walked by me, I asked him his name. He looked at me defensively.
“Billy-Bob. What’s it to you?”
“Have some ribs, Billy-Bob.”
He looked at the ribs on my platter and said, “What’s wrong with ’em?”
“There’s nothing wrong with them. There are just too many.”
“Why don’t you just take ’em with you?”
“I’m walking,” I said.
“Fair ’nuff.” He sat down across from me and pretty much ate everything except the bones.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Some attach themselves to the road to make themselves legend. Others, roadkill.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
Another uniquely Route 66 encounter was at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Missouri—a Route 66 icon. The hotel’s welcome sign—with a brightly lit arrow that still advertised FREE TV—is a classic of the era’s design and featured on many of the Route 66 posters and guidebooks I’d seen on my way.
The proprietors, Ramona and Bob, have owned the Munger Moss Motel for more than forty years. Ramona is another self-proclaimed keeper of Route 66 and an outspoken advocate, which I learned the moment I asked for a room.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Chicago.”
“You doing the road?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The road’s a big deal. Did you know that there are museums in other countries for Route 66?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true. People along the Route are practically legends. Once a Brazilian woman walked in here, took one look at me, and said, ‘By damn, you’re real.’ ” She glanced down at my pack. “You’re not walking the Route, are you?”
“I have so far.”
She shook her head. “Route walkers are crazy. Maybe when the road started it was okay, but in this day and age, you could just disappear. Nobody would ever find you. People are crazier than back then. I mean, they’ve always been crazy, but now you kind of expect it.”
“I’m careful,” I said.
She shook her head. “Even without the crazies, I’d never walk it. It’s bad karma. If you push the road too hard, it’s going to push back. People burn themselves out on 66. I’ve seen it. I knew a guy who did the Bunion Run back in the sixties—that’s when they run the whole Route. Burned himself out. Almost had a breakdown. When he was through, he just disappeared. No one ever saw him again. He probably ended up in an institution somewhere weaving baskets, know what I mean?”
I guessed the question was rhetorical, as she didn’t stop talking.
“I used to know people who’d do the Route five times a year, drive up and down, up and down. Now they do nothing.”
I was about to suggest that driving up and down the Route was pretty much the same as doing nothing, but again she didn’t pause long enough for me to speak.
“To me, going down Route 66 is to be savored, like sipping a fine wine. It’s a pleasure cruise. It’s meant to be peaceful. When you’re on the Internet or
in the world, it’s all rush, rush, rush. Got to have more bandwidth, faster service, but Route 66, it’s a Zen thing. It’s peace. If you’re in a hurry to drive it, you’ve already missed it. You’ve got to stop to talk to the people. Learn something about them. Why is everyone on Route 66 happy? I’ll tell you why, it’s because they’re talking to each other. It’s about the people.”
I waited a moment to be sure that she had actually stopped talking, then asked, “How did you end up here?”
“Oh, the road and I were predestined, like star-crossed lovers. My husband’s an auto mechanic. One winter he got caught in a blizzard at the shop with six other men. The power went out and they burned old rags in a barrel to keep warm. They had to break into the candy machine with lug wrenches to get something to eat. For two days they lived on Pop-Tarts and Red Vines. When he finally got out he said, ‘Ramona, that’s it. We’re moving.’
“I said, ‘Where, Bob?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, Ramona. Somewhere else.’ So we just picked up and left. On our way to somewhere else, fate had it that we stopped here at the motel and met the owners, Pete and Jessi. Well, Pete and Bob were both Masons, you know how that is. Next thing we know, we’re making an offer and a month later we owned the place. Pete and Jessi stayed on awhile to teach us the ropes and the rest is history.”
She took my cash and handed me a room key. “Route 66 won’t ever die,” she said, touching her heart. “Because it’s not out there. It’s in here.”
I spent the night in a room with pictures of Route 66 sites adorning the redbrick walls.
As I walked out of my room the next morning, I saw a group of four men gathered around three vintage Corvettes.
“Where are you from?” I asked the man nearest me. He was leaning against an immaculately restored red Corvette convertible.
“Toronto.”
“Beautiful car,” I said. “Sixty-two?”
“Sixty-three.”