Category: Historical

The Maid Rite Sandwich Shop, Inventors of the Drive through window, Springfield, IL

The Maid Rite Sandwich Shop in Springfield, Illinois is located on one of the multiple  Route 66 that pass through this town…. There’s more than one, because of changes to the route over time. This restaurant is on the National Register of Historic Places and claims to have invented the concept of the drive-through-window, although that doesn’t quite jive with the corporate history of the chain as written up by wikipedia.

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According to the guy who owns and runs this place, who I got to talk to, this is the restaurant that invented the idea of the drive-through window. It is in what was originally the caboose of a train where they took the wheels off.

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The caboose was built in 1881, The building has been here since 1919 and it had a gas station in the front originally. It was registered as a business in 1924 which is when the tax system came into tax businesses. They’ve been selling loose meat sandwiches since 1919, and from the beginning the layout was as it is now, with sandwiches either being sold direct from the kitchen through the side window, or to customers at the bar. (Later, they expanded sideways and added more indoor seating.) Remember how on the Rosanne TV show, how her shop sold a loose meat sandwich… the Conners live in the mythical town of Lanford IL, which is supposed to be somewhere around here. This is the first place I have ever been to that had it. So of course I had to try it, it is not a sloppy Joe it’s different, they call it a sloppy Joe with no sauce. It was homemade pie, their maid-rite sandwich (loose meat), and homemade root beer which they still make.

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Now that I’m not in the building anymore it was not very tasty. The root beer was VERY good, but the loose meat…. the primary flavor was salt with a second flavor underneath it that I could not quite identify… it was some sort of spice. The guy as a hint said the woman who invented it was originally from Hungary, and that no it was not paprika, but the taste was really familiar I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I timed it right because they were closing up just as I was getting ready to leave   

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Luna Café, Granite City, Illinois

First opened in 1924, The Luna Cafe in Mitchel Illinois on historic Route 66 is a dive bar with historic value… supposedly Al Capone used to hang out here.

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Sadly, their Neon signs, which to be honest is half of why the place is worthy of note… were in a horrible state of disrepair when I saw it.

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The 66 sign is not part of the neon; it is reflective, and I had my flash on… so…

According to what I read, the upstairs at Luna’s was a whore house, and when the local ladies where ‘ready’ to see gentleman callers the cherry in the martini would get lit up with red neon… otherwise it was “apparently not working.” (Since this was NOT visible on the neon at all, I swung by the next day to get a picture of it in daylight. Good thing I was staying for two nights).

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That said, the place has HORRIBLE Yelp reviews, so I stuck my head in, took a look around — spotted a lot of people too drunk to drive… and left

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Route 66 Gateway Sign, Miami, Oklahoma

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

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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.

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Indian Territory Memorial, Quapaw, Oklahoma

The word Oklahoma actually translates in the Choctaw language to “red-person,” specifically, ukla=person and huma=red, and the entire territory had initially been ‘given’ by the US government as a territory intended solely for the tribes… and it is where the tribes from the southeastern states were marched towards on the Trail of Tears.

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This Memorial located directly upon the old Route 66 route marks one of the boundaries of “Indian Territory” a continually shrinking zone that the American government promised to leave to its native populations that at this point is more easily observable via the names of places than on the faces of its occupants.

Route 66’s Rainbow Bridge, Riverton, Kansas

The Rainbow Bridge in Riverton KS, (Baxter Springs is the closest town) dates back to the two lanes period, and is directly adjacent to a much newer version of 66.

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One of the things you realize driving route 66 is it developed in stages. There’s the original one, which was generally two lanes and existed in a time when there wasn’t much traffic… then increased usage necessitated wider bridges, or that the road be moved entirely… and then there’s the most recent version some of which I’m beginning to think was organized AFTER the road had been decommissioned, when it started to become a tourist destination.

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View from 66’s newer route and the new bridge

Apparently, in a fight between the county, which wanted funds from the government to build the new bridge whose rules demanded demolishing the old bridge, and the Kansas Route 66 Association… who clearly wanted it preserved, a compromised was reached. And now the bridge is listed with the National Register, so it will never be demolished, and has since been used as local for filming route 66 specials on TV.

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Cars on the Route, Galena, Kansas

Yet another historic gas station repurposed to take advantage of renewed interest in 66 that the Pixar Movie Cars generated. Every car has been anthropomorphized, and the police car is claiming to be from Radiator Springs. (From what I read they also serve sandwiches and stuff to generate income.)

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As is clearly obvious from the photo, it was approaching 7pm by the time I got here, and it was raining, and the temps were dropping precipitously … I think it was already like 47 F according to my car’s “outside” thermometer (in MID October, i.e., unusually cold).

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The website I had looked at said they were open on Sundays….AND, I got there on a Sunday (this part of the country seems to close down on Sundays…), but apparently not so much.

The Round Barn of Arcadia, Oklahoma

This is one of those seriously iconic Route 66 things. Numerous times along the route people had asked me had I seen it yet, or was I intending to go see it. It’s a barn, it is old, it is red, and unlike most barns it is round…. that’s about it

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When I first arrived I was a bit excited about what I was going to see.

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But, other than some placards on the walls that talk about it’s history….

IMG_1066.JPGFrom which I learned that back when they were building this there was a folk-belief that round barns were tornado proof, and that there had been a huge preservation movement in support of the barn that began in the 1970’s, which resulted in it being placed on the Register of Historic Places, … really not much of major interest was offered.

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currently, the ground floor, for the most part…. it’s a great big shop full of junk… no seriously, the sort of stuff you find at flea markets in poor neighborhoods. (I didn’t bother taking photos of it) Well, that and some obligatory Route 66 stuff you could easily find on Amazon and pretty much EVERY other 66 stop, but that said… it is mostly junk. As a potential marketing space it is being completely wasted. WHY the community doesn’t make it gallery for promoting local artists or something of the like, I don’t know.

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That said, the UPSTAIRS is GORGEOUS, and is rightly used a venue for weddings.

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Another photo taken using the camera app on my watch

Chandler Oklahoma’s Route 66 interpretive center

Located in Chandler Oklahoma on Route 66 in a beautiful building that once served as their national guard armory, is a museum dedicated to the Route 66 experience. Smartly, its designer looked at the other museums dedicated to 66 (the good and the not so good) and opted to compliment them rather than to repeat them … So, this exhibit is about the experience of some of the local high-points, rather than the road itself — for the low price of $5

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I have got to admit, this is one of the better local attempts at a museum I’ve seen.

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It has a docent, who, as soon as you walk in…. gives you a little tour of the place. First she talks a bit about the history of the building and it’s construction

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Picture of workers mining and working the stone that makes up the walls

Then she showed us the drill hall which has now been repurposed by the community for things like a wedding venue

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and finally she took us into the exhibit hall and explained how the interpretive center works. She told us (me, and two women I had run into previously at Pops), about how they had hired a curator to design the space, and I could have told her that just based on layout. (As you guys all know nothing pisses me off more than museums that don’t even TRY to curate themselves). Less is more people, less is more…

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The suggested way to start the exhibit, is a 20 minute movie (assuming you have the time) about a man originally from IL who made about his first trip on 66 in his 20s (in 1939 going road-tripping with a buddy to their university in Arizona). On that trip he had written letters to parents at every top along the way, and had taken photographs. Years later, when it was time to move his mom into managed care, upon clearing out the family home he found his mother had kept all the letters and post cards… and this stimulated in him a desire to do the trip a 2nd time, in 2000, now that he was retired. He did so, making a point of trying to stop at all the same motels (or finding out what had happened to them) and focusing on the differences between the two trips. With the help of a friend, a documentary was created which is being shown only in this museum (I looked for it on-line and couldn’t find it, other than references saying it was showing at the museum.

Then you move into a section where you can lie on beds (as though you were staying at one of the Route 66 motor homes), or sit in chairs (which were pulled from classic cars), And watch from a large selection of shorts (about 5 minutes or so each) on a variety of different topics

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This one showed either a movie about renovating the Round Barn, that I had visited earlier that day, or a movie about the former icons that are no more — and the changing awareness of local communities and the government that these road side attractions actually need preserving as they are part of our history.

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