Route 66 Gateway Sign, Miami, Oklahoma

Just as you enter Miami Oklahoma you see this really nice Route 66 sign

The Miami in this case is not the Miami of Florida, rather it denotes the land that had been assigned to the Miami tribe, a people that had originally lived in what is now Indiana [where they are no longer recognized as a tribe] but were forcibly moved here when the white populations in Indiana wanted them gone. This relates to other places I’ve visited such as Tippecanoe Battlefield, where after the battle of the same name the Indians who had followed Tecumseh, were forced to move to here, to Oklahoma (i.e., which literally translates to Indian Territory — discussed in greater length on this blog post) while the ones who did not support him and had decided to live like white men were allowed to stay in Indiana.

Sapulpa, Oklahoma, one of America’s crossroads

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to Dallas Texas… it USED to run all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston Texas, but that last bit (like 66) has been replaced by I-45.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.

The mega Cross in Groom Texas

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.

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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.

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

VW Slug Bug Ranch: Panhandle, TX

Another Route 66 artwork is the VW Slug Bug Ranch, which is just east of Amarillo, in Panhandle Texas. This piece is sort of the baby brother of the much more famous Cadillac Ranch, which I was at a few days ago.]

Unlike the Cadillac Ranch which was built by a well known art group, and funded by a multimillionaire,

There was no one there to help me, and I was having a hell of a time finding a place to put the phone where it wouldn’t fall over…

no one knows for sure WHO built this, or even for sure who owns the Bug Ranch. And unlike it’s more famous brother, almost no one bothers to come to see this one… only one other person was there when I visited.

Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas

Cadillac Ranch is one of those classic American public art works that everyone has seen in pictures, and of course its been on my list of things to see in person. The fact that it was cold and VERY wet and muddy, kind of added to the fun

Finding this was a little bit problematic. My GPS for my car had no idea where it was, and the address I had for it, the program didn’t recognize… but, as I was on I-40 there was internet, so Google maps to the rescue. It’s located between two off-ramps, so I took the one to the west of it, which brings you to a gas station. There I found a plethora of folks who had just come from there (and not one group of them either). I talked to a couple in the car parked next to me, and they assured me I was in the right place and it was about a half mile down the road and I couldn’t miss it because of how many cars were parked there.

In something I had read on one of the travel sites I had referenced before starting my Route 66 trek, a writer had warned that if it’s wet, the mud becomes like tar and almost impossible to get off your shoes afterwards. For the last four years I’ve been schlepping around a pair of rubber boats for JUST such an occasion (and yes this does mean I had the boots in my car back in 2016 in Canada at the boat graveyard when the muck had actually pulled my shoes off my feet, only I’d forgotten they were there).

Although some folks opt to take their shoes off and just kind of go for it… like this girl did… but it was raining and 48 F, what WAS she thinking…

It turned out this was a very good thing because in order to access the site you have to go through this gate, and because everyone takes a fairly similar path to the site, the ground is lower along the path and fills up with water, becoming a bog it’s very difficult to avoid stepping into, especially if like me you’re not sprightly.

Over the years the piece has become interactive, not just with the elements, but also with the viewers, which is tacitly encouraged by the artist who created (aka the permanently unlocked gate).

People bring cans of paint to use, but most times don’t use all of it and leave behind half used cans for the next person…

although others will come through from time to time looking for the empty cans and disposing of them.

One foot in the air dripping muddy water

The Helium Time Monument in Amarillo Texas

Why yes, I’m a geek. What’s your point? It’s a statue of the Helium molecule that’s located next to a Don Harrington discovery center that was closed by the time I got there. (It closes at 4:30, on a Saturday!!!?????? This is a Science museum in a major city… WTF?)

It’s a sun-dial, but it was rainy, windy and overcast

By visiting it I learned something I had not known, Amarillo is the Helium capital of the world… who knew?

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Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch: Oro Grande, CA

On route 66 in Oro Grande California is an outdoor found art piece worth visiting… a Ranch of trees made out of glass bottles

When I arrived the other visitors that were there on my arrival were just leaving so I had it all to my self, and I discovered that the piece is as much about the sounds as the visuals (two videos I took)

And then, just as I was leaving a THREE mini-bus loads of tourists showed up and two freight trains passed by one after the other going in different directions, all of which would have greatly altered my enjoyment of the place

(I found this YouTube documentary someone made that includes an interview with the owner/artist.

Western Hills Motel; Flagstaff, AZ

Western Hills Motel is on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, and has a very nice sign which is supposed to be especially impressive at night (but of course I was there at around noon)… that’s about all I can tell you. (I’m guessing the horses are animated to look like they’re walking?)

This place was supposed to have award winning greek food in addition to some pretty impressive neon, but apparently five years ago they switched from Greek to Mexican ……because (and I say this sarcastically) what Flagstaff really needed was YET another Mexican restaurant…

When I stopped here I was REALLY looking forward to some good Greek food. Sigh

Stand’in On The Corner in Winslow Arizona

This park on Route 66 in the heart of downtown Winslow, Arizona, contains a brilliant bit of publicly funded art that is an intentional tourist draw, via a tribute to a song called “Take It Easy” — or more to the point, it’s a tribute to the fact that at one point the name of the town is mentioned in that song. Because what does a small town that is essentially dying do when it’s been mentioned in a hit song? Memorialize it in a way that draws tourism off of the highway into the town! (Essentially, therefore, this sort of falls into my “big things” category) But really, there’s something kind of fun and silly about this bit of public art, that people just love.

But the town was already were memorialized in “Get you’re kick’s on Route 66” you say… shouldn’t that be enough?

[That said, I’m from a suburb of Chicago called Winnetka and there’s a song called “Big Noise from Winnetka” which was a HUGE hit in the 1930’s and 40’s and is still played regularly by marching bands and jazz groups, which my affluent upper-crust town pretty much ignored like the plague … but hey]

IF you can’t just by looking at the picture above identify the song in question, it is called”Take It Easy” and was written by Jackson Browne&Glenn Frey, and performed by the Eagles (note the eagle in the mural that’s sitting on the window sill)

One of the interesting things was that all the shops directly adjacent to the park were promoting fund raising actives to pay for the parks restoration and upkeep

Kiddy corner from the wall — which as this picture shows was built SOLEY to put the mural on — is this, along side a store called the “Standing on the corner” gifts shop

Western Folklife Center: Elko, Nevada

Located in Elko, Nevada, a gold mining & railroad town located off of Interstate-80, is the Western Folk-life Center is designed to promote the cowboy heritage and way of life through their songs, storytelling, poetry (for those who don’t know, Cowboy Poetry is THING) and artwork. It is also the location for the yearly (approaching its 35th anniversary) National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and competition…. six days of poetry, music, dancing, workshops, and exhibits all of which are based in tradition but focused on the modern/rural West.

You first enter into the gift shop, which constitutes almost a quarter of the space, and actually has quite an impressive collection of items. Around the outer edges of the store you’ll find areas devoted to Cowboy poetry, music, and art, as you expect….Plus some handicrafts, including beauty products and other ranch produced handicrafts…. but the entire center of the shop???Jewelry! Lots and lots of jewelry — cause well… profit margins…. alongside the gift store is the art gallery. The guy in charge told me that they always have visiting exhibitions in this space… which switch out every few months. While I was here they had an exhibit about the art of Basque sheep herders (a different sort of cowboy) — and their art forms, including carvings, some of which date back to 1900, that are carved into local Aspen treesbecause these tree will ultimately die, a married couple had gone around collecting rubbings of all the ones they could find.

This was followed up by a small display about Basque improvised Poetry. Here they give them a topic and they have to come up with a poem on the subject … which was won by a woman for the first time last year

Then there was a permenent display, of the movie why the Cowboy sings…. only its the 16 minute version

Looking online I found the PREVIEW of “Why the Cowboy sings” (1.24 min)

As well as the Full 56 min movie — but no 16 minute version

After this the docent showed me their western bar… it was not specially made, they found it in a mining camp in a tent and brought it here

Some examples of Cowboy poetry:

This website shows last year’s “Best of the West” show, which is a yearly performance at the Poetry Gathering, which exhibits some of the best of modern Cowboy music. While this video on the event, gives you an idea of the full breath and depth of it:

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