The personal authentic travels of a world-wide drifter, you'll always see pics of me at the locations being described (if the other blogs you're reading don't do that, odds are they were NEVER there, just saying…)
Located directly in front of the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum, is a VERY big gas pump, but of the sorts that used to be used back when Route 66 was a thing.
The gas pump stands along side car museum. I found the juxtaposition of the very OLD fashioned gas pump with the Tesla charging stations amusing.
Unfortunately the places closes at 4pm and I got there at around 6pm… At first I thought it was open because so many cars were the parking lot and people were standing around, but it turned out to be a high-school reunion for the class of 1968 from the local high school
In Sapulpa, Route 66 (from LA to Chicacgo) crosses with Route 75 a north-south highway that travels from Noyes, MN at the Canadian Border to Dallas Texas… it USED to run all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston Texas, but that last bit (like 66) has been replaced by I-45.
Where the two road meet the town created a really nice Neon display…which for some reason google maps doesn’t know about (will try to submit it) … the maple below the neon is right where Main street and Dewey meet.
From what I’ve been seeing on line, the current Ludlow Cafe on Route 66 in Ludlow, CA is resurrection of what had been. That said, this whole area is kind of disturbing. As you drive, its through the mohave desert, where there’s nothing… and then you come across this cafe. I didn’t eat here (it looked kind of sketchy to tell you the truth) … but when I started reading the various plaques on exterior walls… well it was a bit disturbing.
So if you head just pass this café heading back north you’ll see the route 66 that no longer exists. The road’s blocked, but you can see where it was.
I’m currently seeing truckers, as the sun is starting to go down, parking their trucks on a closed off stretch of road that is in fact where 66 used to be. The last few miles I was driving on the opposite side of the freeway from where 66 had been (it was fairly obvious that this was the case) even though the signs were telling me I was on 66 (I think it was more a marketing ploy than the reality… I wasn’t on 66 but rather a frontage road constructed after I-40 had cut off that piece of it) …
because the road had been cut off by the freeway construction… if that makes sense. ANYWAY, when I got to the building I started seeing the signs below embedded into the walls and into concrete pillars in front of the place
This Mega Cross belonging to “Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ Ministries” is located directly between I-40 and Route 66 in Groom Texas, is impossible to not see from either. That said, even as a Jew, the artistry of some of these things tends to impress me… whoever did this installation was actually pretty gifted, and has a tongue in cheek sense of humor, that I have got to wonder if the owners of the property who paid for it actually get.
According to Atlas Obscura, this is the seventh-largest ‘freestanding’ cross in the world (at 190 feet)… so pretty frigging big. Like I’ve said before at other Catholic “Station of the Cross” tourist traps, Jews just don’t do shit like this… cause you know… the fourth commandment and all that good stuff.
What I found kind of interesting was that at the base of the statue of Jesus on the cross, people had left engraved bits of stone
As a Jew we place stones on graves, is this somehow related to that?
At the bottom of the hill is the last supper… And for reasons beyond me, into the dish from which Jesus is supposed to have lifted the bread, people were placing money
surrounding the ginormous cross are the stations of the cross…. all of them impressive bits of work
But what finally made me decide that I have to pat the artist on the back was the view as I walked towards the building with the gift store…. you don’t really get the full impact from a distance. Standing near the cross it’s just looks really pretty and inviting… but as you walk towards it, the impact hit me like a ton of bricks, so hard that it actually made me uncomfortable. I took a step back, looked again, and SURE enough I was damned sure the effect was intentional
From about this position (and I’m not sure the photo does it justice) it looks like you’re looking between a woman’s legs into her vagina ….which is a paradise of gushing waters with the cross as her clitoris
The alignment staying true even as you walk closer… wondering if Jesus is the G-spot
… and note the placement of the huge phallic symbol. I’m sorry but there’s no way a professional artist did any of this by accident…. talk about the ecstatic moment of Christ’s love….
And of course inside you find a massive gift shop….
Even the bathroom art made me giggle nervously… Seriously who was the artist and HOW in Christs name did he or her manage to convince the the folks footing the bill to allow any of this? Or were they THIS oblivious?
My ex-boyfriend who I was with in college …who my parents assumed would be the son-in-law, his mom was a painter who worked mostly in watercolors and used to do a lot of flowers along with Japanese inspired images (in spite of being Korean which I always found interesting). Anyway, my mom felt that she had to support this woman’s endeavors (since she might soon be family) and asked her to bring over some stuff that my mom could buy from her. I told her my mom liked flowers, so she brought a lot of those, and my mom looked through the pile, focusing ultimately on one image that she said called to her, but she wasn’t sure why. That’s the one she wanted….
I looked at my dad, who looked knowingly at me… and we both looked at Mrs Cha (my boyfriend’s mom), who was trying to smile. We all knew what she was drawn to even if she didn’t. Of ALL the images my mom had opted for the one with a massive phallic symbol in the middle. People do this all the time… artists know exactly what they’re looking at but the naive don’t see the hidden sexual messages in the art. THAT is what was going on here.
These dish towels made me giggle
I horrified this one nice southern lady by pointing out the art she was oggling (see above) because of what it cost for what it was, had to have been made in China. I’m serious, she dropped it like it was anathema, saying, “Oh you MUST be wrong, they wouldn’t sell that here.”… so I picked it up, turned it over and quickly found the “Made in China” mark… and showed it to her. Keep in mind almost all of these folks are the Pro-Trump, Make America Great sort.
And then there was a movie theater showing a movie talk
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