My Route 66 birthday
Any birthday ending in zero or five is supposed to be special. You know, forty, sixty, eighty. One Hundred!
There are some odd numbered birthdays that have significance too. Three months after my thirty-third birthday I celebrated my 33 1/3 birthday by playing the LPS that meant a lot to me. At that point records were giving way to cassette tapes. We hadn’t yet dreamed of CDS or simply downloading music directly from the internet because of course in those days there was no internet. But I had the feeling records were going the way of dinosaurs and it seemed appropriate to celebrate their passing as the end of an age. Also I was a third of the way to 100! Farewell to youth!
Ha! As it turned out I stayed young for quite a few more decades but how could I know then? As if to emphasize that surprise, records have made a comeback. Those LPS that played at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute are back in style.
Right now I’ve experienced three significant birthdays in a row and only one ended with a five..
Two years ago I turned 64, which I called my Paul Mccartney year, after his song “When I’m Sixty-four.” It was a great year, with a trip to Costa Rica, hiking in the Grand Canyon, and renovations to our home.
A year later I celebrated my Medicare birthday, 65, when I felt free from some of the fears I’d had about paying for medical treatment. However, it’s also been the year of the Great Pandemic. The world got a whole lot smaller – and sadder. My younger brother Michael died. There were other losses. It’s been a tough year for all of us, and it’s not over yet.
Now I’ve just turned 66, on December 6. I’ve decided that’s my Route 66 birthday. Sometimes called The Mother Road, Route 66 ran from Chicago through the Midwest and the Far West, opening up parts of the country to just about anyone who was willing to roll down the window and stick out their elbow and just drive.
Because I was raised a Navy brat I don’t really have a home town, just a lot of places where I’ve hung my hat, but Route 66 ran through Azusa, which is where I went to high school, and where my family settled after my father retired from the service. I actually stayed in one place for a few years. I walked back and forth along part of Route 66 going to Foothill Junior High and Azusa High School every day for six years. I passed by the Drive-in Theater where they held a Swap Meet every Saturday, and the drug store where you could buy a hand-dipped ice cream cone, any flavor you wanted, for a nickel.
If I had a nickel, which wasn’t very often.
Route 66 isn’t really there anymore, except in bits and pieces, but who cares? Route 66 is about our longing for the open road, our desire to hop in the car and just drive. I look forward to reading every historical marker, hiking in national. My Route 66 birthday is all about hope.
It will happen. The highway’s going to open up again, we’ll travel all we want, we’ll hug family and friends, and we’ll see each other’s smiles, if we’re just patient and behave ourselves a little longer. Good things are worth waiting for.
Some people say you can’t get there from here. Not me. I believe.