Was Commissioned Way Back in 1926

And It Spanned Over 2,400 Scenic Miles

Providing Many of Us With Lots of Kicks

I’ll never forget the glorious day

That I bought my first old Chevrolet

I happily left old Chicago on Route 66

I was joyously motoring my way to L.A.

It was a cool aqua green convertible

And I rarely put its white rag top up

As I happily tooled down the old road

Feelin as frisky as a happy-go-lucky pup

What a truly wondrous cross country adventure

Stoppin at all those glorious old diners and motels

Route 66 was a marvelous way to see all the sights

Toolin right along with not a care in my wandering soul

But over this past weekend I read an extremely sad story

About the old mom and pop establishments now in disrepair

No one in our modern society even cares about them anymore

And far too soon for someone like me, they’ll no longer be there

The old Chelsea Motel pictured above, like so many others along the old Mother Road, is now closed and crumbling away. And it was once a vibrant bustling stop along Route 66, the 2,400-mile Grand Neon Road that once connected hundreds of communities from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Now, it’s just an extremely old weather-worn building on the side of an extremely old weather-worn road in Oklahoma.

And it’s sadly among thousands of other quaint old mom-and-pop establishments that have met their modern demise along old Route 66, as America's interstate system has siphoned traffic off the old Mother Road onto modern, fast, four-lane divided highways, that we somehow called ‘progress.’

Most of these once glorious old Route 66 businesses are now derelict or abandoned, used as junk yards, makeshift car lots, and flophouses.

And the present owners no longer have much use for them today; they try to sell them off as quickly as possible to modern day land developers – for yet more modern day blight, urban sprawl, and junky strip mall space.

Far too many of these sturdy old hand-built structures that made America great - the good old apple pie diners, the friendly family-owned service stations, the tantalizing home-made barbecue joints, the ice cream parlors, and the cozy mom and pop motels - have all sadly fallen by the modern wayside.

The modern corporate era has truly become the Mother Road’s worst enemy; and very sadly to me, there’ll be no more Kicks on good old Route 66.

The National Historic Route 66 Federation estimates that at least 3,000 of these historic old businesses along the route are in horrendous states of disrepair today.

Route 66, immortalized in John Steinbeck's novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and crooner Nat King Cole's very catchy tune instantly became a slice of Americana.

And it’s yet one more wonderful slice of Americana that I for one will truly miss in this modern, pre-fabricated, corporation run, hustle and bustle world of ours today:

I’ll never forget the glorious day

That I bought my first old Chevrolet

I happily left Chicago on old Route 66

I was joyously motoring my way to L.A.

It was a cool aqua green convertible

And I rarely put its white rag top up

As I happily tooled down the old road

Feelin as frisky as a happy-go-lucky pup

What a truly wondrous cross country adventure

Stoppin at all those glorious old diners and motels

Route 66 was a marvelous way to see all the sights

Toolin right along with not a care in my wandering soul

©2007, A Sadly Nostalgic Mr. Ed