OATMAN, ARIZONA

We cruised down the mountain passed a dilapidated ice-cream van and into Oatman to be greeted by a couple of people outside a bar. We chatted to them, parked up and went inside for a well-deserved beer and a game of pool. We explained, when asked that, no we didn’t come from the west, we came from the east…
“You came down the freaking mountain in that thing?”
“She did… I can’t drive!”

After a beer or two and as more locals arrived the legend grew. From twenty six feet an hour before, when his friend walked in, one local Bill proclaimed “This girl just drove a seventy-five foot R.V. down the fucking mountain!”

With a round of applause we, or rather Natalie, had written ourselves into local history as much as Olive Oatman who gave the town her name after being rescued in 1857 from Apache Indians who had forced her into slavery and tattooed her face to prove their ownership.

We moseyed around the Wild West mining town, the venue for Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s 1939 honeymoon stopover (he often returned to play poker with the miners) had our fortunes read by one of those coin operated Prospector Pete machines and cooked and ate cowboy beans for dinner… Almost as romantic as Clark Gable’s honeymoon because under the silvery moonlight, and a gift from the Indian Gods just for us, sat shining a perfect accompanying fairy ring; the first Natalie had ever seen. We snuggled up for an early night only to be interrupted by the hee-haw of the particularly nosey local inhabitants.

Ghosts came up in conversation yet again but I didn’t tell my lover the legend of Oatie, who Bill told me inhabited the Oatman Hotel while she was in the bathroom. Later research tells he is a friendly poltergeist whose identity is believed to be that of William Ray Flour, an Irish miner who died behind the hotel, presumably from excessive alcohol consumption. Flour's body wasn't discovered until two days after his death and it was hastily buried in a shallow grave near where he was found.

Early Sunday morning, the place was lit by stunning sunshine, we walked up Main Street and it was hard not to imagine a busting mining town. The hundred year old whispers of Old Time Prospectors, could still be heard on the breeze, repeating “There’s gold in them thare hills” Save for the odd café, this place hasn’t changed in almost a century. The Oatman Hotel was built in 1902, and still stands.

Duels over rights to bountiful land, sparkling gold and fine women must have been a two-a-dime.







This outlaw would fight to the death for his fine, sparkling, bountiful Arizonan Girl.


The petrol heads were still in town so Hot Rods and vintage cars lined old Route 66, Mustangs replacing the cowboys steeds of yesteryear, brake horse power usurping their legs and air horns mimicking their whinnies and neighs.











There are no stallions tied-up outside saloons, but wild burros freely roam the town and can be hand-fed carrots, readily available in practically every store in town.








The burros are descended from pack animals turned loose by early prospectors, and while cute looking are in fact wild. Signs advise visitors to exercise caution. Indeed I saw one woman nearly receive a mule kick by ignorantly walking behind one. The young ones have stickers on their heads announcing that they should not be fed.

Like Gary Cooper, we saddled up and rode out of town around High Noon.

SITGREAVES PASS

We drove from Seligman through the delightfully named Peach Springs which I think is my newest of many nicknames for Natalie and found the infamous set of switchbacks from the cover of our book that we thought were in Santa Fe.



Kingman itself is pretty uneventful, though we did see and overtake a few of the electric blue and neon pink cars from the parade the night before. Not long out of the town, before us the The Black Mountains loomed… dark, monstrous and foreboding.

We raced against the sunset to cover the distance between the West Old Highway 66 and our stopover for the night. The going would be tough, we had been informed it was not one for the feint of heart, but we had a destination in mind, and we wanted a beer.

The Sitgreaves Pass sits between Kingman and Oatman, it is a series of 27 hairpin bends, rising to an elevation of 3550 feet that wind their way up and over The Black Mountains.

Not the best place to take the world’s largest and only visible from space vehicle. But we thought we would give it a crack.

As yellow squiggly warning signs peppered the side of the road, we climbed and climbed.
A matter of feet separated first me then Natalie from the cliff edge as the road twisted and meandered its way toward the heavens. To the right the most desolate of landscapes; to the left Desperate Dan type mineshafts lay abandoned, watched over by rusty keep-out signs. In her own unfathomable words “The Best Example of a Cow” she had ever seen no doubt provided one of Dan’s Cow Pies.


We rested at the top to sit of the pass near some out of the way graves, including the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa (one of many, it seems) I could see why these few fortunate people wanted to be laid to rest among the majesty of the Black Mountains of Arizona and stated that I wanted my ashes to be scattered there, if I’m not cryogenically frozen for the edification of future generations.

The landscape at this altitude was having a dizzying and Mercurial effect. Red Hill Mining Town from U2’s Joshua Tree provided me with the silent, internal soundtrack to match the breathtaking vista unfolding before us. The dark hues of the faraway peaks faded into the distance as the sky turned from blue through yellow, orange and red eventually settling on a dark blue grey.

After what must have been two hours of climbing, falling, stopping and starting, and eight miles of 1 in 8 grades, twisting and turning round ninety and one hundred and eighty degree switchbacks dusk began to set in and the driving became more precarious. We continued down the mountain and snuck passed one not so fortunate relic that had lost control and careened down the mountainside twenty or more years ago.

Natalie did an unbelievable job of getting us up, over and down the alpine pass, and not the short-cut over the cliff edge.

The kid done good.

THE SNOW CAP DRIVE-IN

We awoke the next morning to find that we had been abandoned by our new-found Classic Car enthusiast friends. The RV camp was empty, the only noise coming from the nearby train track. I believe that it was later in this hangover when Natalie said that she wished she could sit on the toilet and drive at the same time.

What we needed was food and we needed it fast. The faster and greasier the better… There are two roadside café options in Seligman The Roadkill or The Snow Cap Drive-in café which is run by John Delgadillo, the son of café-founder Angel's brother Juan.

Confused?

You will be…

It was built in 1953 from old scrap lumber from the nearby Santa Fe railroad yard. Out front sits a 1936 Chevrolet. Out back is Juan’s Garden, a collection of cars with Disney anthropomorphic eyes and general kitsch memorabilia.

Ignoring the “Sorry. We’re Open” sign and pulling the wrong door knob on the Snow Cap Café is mandatory. There are two doorknobs, you see. One on the left and one on the right. Signs on the wall advertise “Cheeseburgers with Cheese” and “Dead Chicken” to the twelve foot square of prime real estate reserved for customers.

Business cards from all over the world adorn the walls, and inside a group of German, Australian and Japanese fast-food fans were abused by John and his wife.

Small orders of ice cream come in thimble-sized cones and a yellow cord emanating from a squeezy mustard bottle over peoples clothes and faces like a string based cumshot makes everyone jump, no matter their race, creed, colour or nervous disposition.

In a nutshell, these people are quite, quite crazy…

How they keep up their nerer ending cavalcade of jokes and japery is beyond me. Like full time comedians, their quixotic service puzzles, bemuses the uninitiated and bewitches those in the know.

The perfect, if confusing tonic for a hangover...

And after a cheeseburger with cheese and fries,, what we needed was a nice gentle drive to our next destination.

SELIGMAN, ARIZONA

We arrived in Seligman, Arizona at roughly six o‘clock. on May 1st.
Despite the town’s claims as the birthplace of Route 66, and the inspiration for Disney Paxar’s “Cars” it was a small dot on the map.

Population 456.

Nothing to see here.

Or so we thought…

On any other night of the year the population is 456, except every other weekend when Jed has custodial access rights of Jed Jnr. Jed Jnr is slightly retarded and wears one of them shoes with the really high heels on his left foot. Then the population is 457.

But on May 1st 2009 its… well a whole bunch of different.

Driving down El Chino, the main and seemingly only street was like moseyin’ up to a Wild West town. Not in looks or décor, but in feeling. This is Route Sixty-Kitsch at it’s best and any other day a little someone would have spent hours dragging me around bric-a-brac shops in search of more metal ‘66 roadsigns, mugs, thimbles and pincushions.

Hundreds of people had descended upon the town, but we had no idea why. Rockers in red, white and mostly blue of bandanas, beards and faded denim spilled out of a bar onto the street to hear and witness the mother of all bike engines. One unfortunate green-faced Wild Hog was positioned on the seat and made to rev before almost wheelying and plummeting the beast to the ground for a dead-cert broken jaw, if not from the tarmac, then from the bike’s black leather clad owner.

There was a mood of anticipation in the air, of excitement, of intense sexual appetite. For all we knew we had stumbled across a town full of Vamps, our life-force about to be drained by Hellish bloodsuckers, nothing but a life of immortality and blood-lust on the horizon. But who cares, you only live forever once; whatever was going on, we had to be a part of it. We scrambled the R.V. to the campground and registered what must have been the only spare site in the whole of Yavapai County. We showered and walked the fifteen minutes along the pitch dark road, trying to thumb a ride into oblivion from cars old and new but without luck.

In the distance what looked like blue lights atop cop cars flashed and sirens blared. We thought that the impromptu party was over. The town had been shut down by the lawmen. As we neared we recognised that the army of vehicles baring down towards us were not, in fact, black and white cop-cars but fire-trucks. They turned round in a lay-by ahead of us and we picked up our pace to hasten towards the fun

We drank the first beer standing at a makeshift bar selling cans of Bud. It was exactly Eight o’clock. I knew as I had it writted down on a piece of paper. The first of the cars rolled past exactly one minute later. We had fortuitously stumbled across first night of the 22nd Annual Kingman to Topock fun run. Not a fun run with Reeboks, sweatbands and St. John’s Ambulance volunteers but a fun run featuring eight hundred classic vehicles along 140 miles; the longest remaining stretch of Historic Route 66 since the I40 opened and decimated traffic levels overnight.

For the best part of an hour our mouths dropped as Thunderbirds and Chevy’s and buses, old army vehicles, motorbikes, three-wheelers, Tokyo Drift racers and even an R.V. bigger and older than ours all paraded passed on both sides of the street, shaking the ground and filling the air with bromide and air-horns. Spontaneous whoops of delight went up from the unrehearsed crowd, men, women, children, babies, great grand papa’s and enthusiastic wives watched on as all manner of vehicles turned around and zoomed passed again.

If we’d have known that the parade was open to any street-legal vehicle then we could have joined in. Though I doubt very much our behemoth was truly street-legal.

We drank more beer on the street and wandered down to the source of the most rowdiness we could find - The Black Cat Bar. After one drink, I needed cigarettes so walked back down the road and into the bar with the rockers. Only they weren’t rockers. They were Hell’s Angels. And this was a private party.

One of them grabbed me around the shoulder… Oh God, here we go again. I span round, fists clenched ready for action. I could tell from the smell of him he had evidently jogged here from the next state and drunk roughly fifty bottles of Jack Daniels.

Now I’m not one to back down, not even at a private party in a Hell’s Angels bar on Parade Day. Be brave Will I thought as I glared at him for invading my territorial bubble.

“Wheeeeerree you from?” he breathed on me
“London”
I surveyed everyone’s response.
With one word I’d done enough.
An acquaintance of Stinky Pete came over and tried to peel his arm from around my neck.
“It’s okay” I said, I had everything under control.

Eventually he let go, good job for him and I walked outside beaming from the knowledge only I could get into these kind of scrapes.

Meanwhile back at the ranch… At the Black Cat, Natalie had made a friend, a middle-aged man who had taken a fancy to her and her cowgirl’s gingham dress… He talked quite a bit as we tried to shake him off. Inside was a clusterfuck of giddy locals and car enthusiasts.

We drank Coronas with lime, played pool and talked to the locals and outsiders. Jeremy was from San Bernadino, California and was here in his shiny red car for the parade. We chatted until we met Jennifer and her forgettable boyfriend who had come all the way from Canada. Here was the vamp I was talking about. Covered in tattoos and sexy as Hell.


I guess she could have been Nat’s older, sassier, red-haired sister save for the fact that (on the subject of Jenna) Natalie whispered in my ear “I want her”

Somehow Jeremy heard and asked if we were into that sort of thing…

SELIGMAN PART 2

We all drank and laughed and messed around and chatted and after my five hundredth Corona we went outside to dance to the Country and Western band who were rocking the joint…

I’d never seen Natalie dance before as she tossed her head side to side, thrusting her hair in a seductive Gordonstoun Flick. If she wasn’t already mine and I’d seen her do that then well, she would be mine by the end of the night, cos if a girl can move like that on a dance floor… well, you know where that sentence was going.

I can dance, but not to Americana, I leave that to Jaworski, so I tried to learn some moves from my new friend and dance pardner Tammy…






While Natalie pulled a guy



I think he was must have been called Jed







Jenna’s boyfriend was so forgettable that I think even she forgot he was there...

As my vision blurred, the band reached a loud and brilliant crescendo and we went our separate ways.


Apart from Jeremy who showed us his shiny red car, collected a crate of Bud and followed us home… I think believing us to be swingers...










There was something about a giant chicken but I might have imagined that...

In short...

“BEST NIGHT EVER!”

LET’S TWIST AGAIN

We’re currently sat in a truck stop outside Tulsa, Oklahoma as there have been tornado warnings and softball-sized hail spotted nearby. According to CNN, eight people died in a tornado just up the road yesterday. Regardless of the fact we both desperately want to see a tornado, we have been ordered to hole up at Flying J’s as our RV will “definitely tip over”; the truck stop becoming our version of Dorothy Gales’ underground bunker. Some of the truckers have been holed up here for three days, begging the question what would they do without endless episodes of CSI, which jump seamlessly from Las Vegas to New York to Miami, keeping their coffee-addled, chocolate chip-sized brains entertained.

Just as the interstates have superseded old stagecoach routes, truck stops have become the lawless, sheriff-less towns of the Wild-West. Truckers cuss, whores make midnight calls by knocking on cabs and 52oz beakers of coffee replace shots of whisky.

I guess I’ll have to leave my Jan De Bont- inspired dream until I beg for a job from my friend George; a real-life storm-chaser. Until then we’re stuck here checking the news and watching a real-time radar image as the yellow band signifying a tornado gets bigger and closer, waiting for this twister to hit.

24 HOURS IN TULSA

You know you’re unwell when the noise that emanates from your arse is the same as the trucker in the next cubicle. Morgan Spurlock famously ate McDonalds for 30 days. While we ain’t been eating McDonalds, it’s near impossible to eat anything healthy in this country. May I respectfully suggest, Mr. Spurlock , that you try living in an RV with my girlfriend and no electricity, water or LP for two months.

When you do find a Walmart (preferred choice of 200,000,000 North Americans) that does sell fresh produce, it comprises one fiftieth of the floor space. Everything else is packaged and processed. Artificial. It’s not surprising that they never venture off their couches. Despite possessing some of the world’s most beautiful sights, in between them, America feels like an imitation of a country; every supermarket, every truck stop is built to the same specification; reflections of each other, which is as confusing as shopping in a hall of mirrors.

Outside the town of Foyil, OK is Ed Galloway’s world-famous Totem Pole Park. It’s a typical example of the kitsch tat I was talking about. In his infinite wisdom, Mr Galloway decided to dedicate his life and land to building, amongst ten others, the world’s tallest totem pole.

I guess it’s these kinds of sights that make Route 66 what it is. As the light faded fast, just down the road we stumbled across The Blue Whale of Catoosa.

It is the remnant of a water-park where hippies in the Seventies used to dive into a lake from. High on L.S.D. naked yet covered in mud, with long tits and muffs down to their knees, no doubt.

TOO MUCH FIGHTING ON THE DANCEFLOOR

What I would call ghost towns, are somehow still inhabited.

Like Afton, Oklahoma.

Tumbleweed actually blows down the main streets and long deserted red bricked banks, fire-stations, bar-brawl saloons and ballrooms are now served by one still-open grocery store.

We walked into one to ask for directions and an autograph book was thrust in our faces. A man with long, dyed-black hair, a double-digit broken nose and covered head to boot in denim (even his eyes had a stonewash blue hue) asked where we were from…

“England” I replied.

“You wanna buy a meat grinder?” he enquired, holding one out with his left hand as though it was the most normal question in the world.

THIS AIN’T KANSAS

Route 66 is full of kitsch tat, leftovers, curios and bric-a-brac. Exactly the kind of shit that Natalie loves.

Antique shops full to the brim with rusted old school lunchboxes, old licence plates, signs, 78rpm records (like the ones my mum gave me as I’m the only one in the family with a working “gramophone” - you know, the ones which you can’t play unless you have a hole-extension) dolls, gollywogs, broken bikes, kid’s cowboy pop-guns, 1940’s games and hundred year old photographs which make you think about dead people’s lives and just how ugly women were at the advent of photography. In actual fact I do quite like looking at all that stuff, but not all the time… for me the geography and people of the land are more important… The Knight Rider lunchbox was pretty cool though, but maybe only as it reminds me of my own Hasslehoff-like, thousand yard stare when I’ve had too little sleep, which is becoming nearly every night.

And we all know what happens when my insomnia hits…

Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, the year that Natalie was born and replaced by five Interstates, or Superslabs. Sometimes we take the replacement interstate and sometimes the old Mother Road which arcs into Kansas briefly. We hopped off Interstate 44 and onto the 400 to follow Route 66 passed a banana bridge constructed in the 1920’s; before the road came into being. We whizzed passed it at high speed.

In Kansas, we stopped in Gallena before making our way into Oklahoma, unfortunately missing the Spook Lights of Joplin. Strange balls of light that levitate above roads. Not cos we got lost, but because we arrived in daylight. However, that said sometimes the old route is not signposted at all, leaving it to your own imagination and internal compass. As a result we have taken wrong turns and bumped along farm tracks, while dark storm clouds gather over coloured carbon copies of Aunt Em’s farm.

If we saw a Tin Man, he would definitely feel at home in our giant baked-bean can. If he was searching for a heart, the lion for courage and the scarecrow for a brain, then what the hell am I searching for?

I’ve come to think I’m searching for something to search for…

Or something worth finding.

I think I found her.

Is that just plain old crazy?

Need.

Sleep.

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS

Missouri begins with the city of St. Louis, where the famed Gateway Arch overlooks the Mississippi like a giant advertisement for a new fast food restaurant… NcDonalds.

Think about it, you'l get there in the end.

We got lost on the confusing intersections and drove through the hood once again to get our bearings. Although we are in the Mid-West, it feels like we were back in the Deep South. People sit, occasionally waving at us from their wooden porches as we pass and Creole-sounding street names have reappeared. They say this is where the South begins, and it really rings true.


We drove miles out of the way to get petrol and stopped at a famer's market for bread, cheese and oranges. That's all we need; food, petrol, map, each other and the sun.

Some miles along the road we stopped at antique shops in the hometown of the first battle of the Civil War, Carthage.

In the west of that town lies the Route 66 Drive-in theatre, which was showing The Fast and The Furious later that Friday night, but was closed when we pulled up; slow but still a little miffed.


We stopped in Carterville, Missouri, home of the Route 66 Superman Museum.


But it was closed.

In the town of Webb City, north of Joplin, we happened across a small-town fair, complete with funfair rides, candy floss and a real Indian selling dreamcatchers and T-Shirts emblazoned with Native Americans and reading “Homeland Security… Protecting America since 1492”

On a stage in the town square a local barbershop quartet crooned to a crowd of twenty five, all seated in school chairs. They were pretty good. It was the kind of town funfair that pregnant teenagers wander round on that weekend every year and every year it is rained off.

Will they never learn?