66 Years Ago on Route 66

Route 66 is one of the iconic national highways in the U.S. On May 26, 1957, 66 years ago today, June and I drove up that highway as newlyweds. We were on our wedding trip to Chicago—and driving up Route 66 was the best way to get there. 

Route 66 was established in 1926, and it was the major U.S. highway from Chicago to Los Angeles, traversing about 2,450 miles.

In Chapter 12 of the powerful novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), author John Steinbeck writes:

HIGHWAY 66 IS THE main migrant road. 66—the long concrete path across the country ….

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership …. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

But even by the 1940s, Route 66 was viewed in a much happier mood by many people: Nat King Cole recorded the hit song, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” in 1946 (hear it here).

It amazes me now to realize that June and I were driving up Route 66 for our honeymoon “kicks” only 31 years after it was established as a national highway.

“57 Years for a ’57 Marriage” was the title of the blog post I made on May 25, 2014. I made some reference there to our marriage, but it was more about the year 1957 in general. (You are invited to (re)read that post, and see our wedding picture, here.)

June and I met in September 1955, not long after we matriculated as first-year students at Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, Missouri (30+ miles north of Springfield.)

It wasn’t very long before we started talking about getting married at some point. A few months before graduating from the small junior college, we decided that the point was soon after our graduation in 1957.

So on May 26, a Sunday afternoon, we were married in Rondo Baptist Church, June’s home church about 15 miles north of Bolivar. Following the reception in the decorated basement of the church, we left at about 4:30 and drove east for a little over an hour to Lebanon, where we got on Route 66.

It was not much more than an hour’s drive to Rolla, but it had been a big day already, so we decided to stop for the night at Schuman’s Motor Inn. (I was amazed to find that there is a “Shuman's Motor Inn US Route 66 Rolla Missouri 1957” postcard for sale on eBay.).

The cost for the room in Rolla was $7—which seems very cheap now, but that was all I made in seven hours working for minimum wage at a shoe factory later that summer. At the current minimum wage in Missouri, that would be equivalent to just over $72.

The next night, we stayed in the southern suburbs of Chicago, and it cost $9 there. And then we spent a couple of nights in the elegant Palmer House in downtown Chicago. The construction of that 25-story hotel was completed in 1925. It was an impressive place for us, two Missouri farm kids, to stay!

So, what can I say after 66 years of marriage? Would I do it again, get married that young? We struggled financially for our first nine years, during which time the two of us, combined, were full-time students for eleven years—and we also had two children by November 1960.

But, yes, I would do it again, no question about it. In spite of the challenges of those first years—and different challenges in the following decades—I have never for a moment regretted marrying my beautiful 19-year-old bride 66 years ago, when I was still 18.

For several years now, we have talked about hoping we will be able to celebrate our 75^th wedding anniversary. My parents were married 88 years ago this month, and they celebrated their 72^nd anniversary about 2½ months before my father died at age 92 in July 2007.

But we are still hoping that on May 26, 2032, we will, indeed, be able to celebrate 75 years of married life. We may not make it—but if not, we will die trying. 

Tasting the Grapes of Wrath

Last week I finished reading John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) again—decades after my previous reading of that powerful book. Although closely related to my two previous posts, I am writing again about the knotty issue of exploited laborers. 

Migrants and Immigrants

“What about the Immigrants?” was the title of my May 5 post, and this one might have been titled “What about the Migrants?” Whereas immigrants are people who move from one country to another, migrants move domestically from one region to another in their own country.

What is called the “Great Migration” was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately 6,000,000 African Americans moved from the American South to northern, midwestern, and western states from the 1910s until the 1970s.

The “Great Okie Migration,” another significant relocation of people in the U.S., took place in the 1930s as some 2,500,000 people migrated from the Dust Bowl region of the lower Midwest to California. Many of those migrants were from Oklahoma and were given the derogatory nickname Okie.

The Migrants in The Grapes of Wrath

As the many of you who have read The Grapes of Wrath know, Steinbeck’s book is about the Joad family, who traveled from Sallisaw, Okla., to the San Joaquin valley in California. Much of that trip was going west on Route 66, the Chicago to Los Angeles road that became a national highway in 1926.

Google maps indicates that the distance the Joad family traveled was more than 1,750 miles—and can be made in about 25 driving hours on today’s Interstate highways. But it took the Joads considerably longer than that in their rickety old vehicle.

But the worst of Joads’ troubles began after arriving in California. They were used at the discretion of the landowners and managers and had absolutely no bargaining rights. There were far too many migrants for the work available.

Those who did find work at a depressingly low wage one day might find the wage even lowered the next day as other migrants desperate to feed their families would agree to work for less.

The Joads’ decision to leave their home in Oklahoma and make the arduous trip to California was aroused by their vision of Calif. as a place of abundance for all.

Just before they left their old home, Grandpa Joad exclaimed, “Come time we get to California I’ll have a big bunch a grapes in my han’ all the time, a-nibblin’ off it all the time!’’

But Grandpa died long before the Joad family got to California, and for those who did make it, soon their vision of plentiful grapes and other fruit turned to grapes of wrath.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines grapes of wrath as “an unjust or oppressive situation, action, or policy that may inflame desire for vengeance: an explosive condition.”

Those words appear only one time in Steinbeck’s novel by that name: “in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

The “Grapes of Wrath” in 2022

The current situation in the U.S. is far different, and far better, than it was in the 1930s.

Now, rather than there being hordes of workers without jobs, there is a shortage of unskilled laborers. Still, there are far too many workers with jobs that pay far too little. Laborers deserve a living wage.

William Barber II and Liz Theoharis continue to lead the Poor People’s Campaign, an anti-poverty campaign that calls for "federal and state living-wage laws, equity in education, an end to mass incarceration, a single-payer health-care system, and the protection of the right to vote."

Here in the Kansas City area, Stand Up KC is an organization of fast food and retail workers who have joined forces to demand better wages and a voice (labor unions) for low-wage workers.** 

Those of us who are better off financially need to act in greater solidarity with those around us who are presently tasting the grapes of wrath.

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** Here is the link to the Poor People’s Campaign, and the link to the blog post I made about Barber is here. And you can find more information about Stand Up KC here.