Events
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Signs of life returning to Times Beach
You won’t find Times Beach on any up-to-date map of Missouri. A
nd all referen
ces to it have been taken off signs on Interstate 44, the major east-west highway that replaced old Route 66 in this part of the country.
But 25 years ago, Times Beach, located about 25 miles west of St. Louis, was Missouri’s best known — the right word is notorious — city after the waters of the nearby Meramec River rose more than 20 feet above flood level, inundating homes to near ceiling level and spreading an oil that the city had sprayed on its unpaved roads.
Unfortunately, that oil, applied to keep the dust down, wiped Times Beach off the map.
The city contractor had used waste oil contaminated with a toxic chemical called dioxin. Even before the flood in late 1982, researchers were scrambling to figure out why animals in town had been dying mysteriously. But by the time the lab results came back identifying the culprit, the waters of the Merrimac had tuned what might have been a manageable clean-up into a full-scale environmental disaster.
Snapshot from St. Louis: Oh yeah, thats what traffic looks like
If like us you travel Route 66 the wrong way round the vast majority of people take the trip west for the true highway experience then once you leave Los Angeles there are no major cities until you reach St. Louis in Missouri.
And the traffic on the roads reflects that. There is nothing reminiscent of the broad, clogged highways of Los Angeles until you reach St. Louis though even then St. Louis is nowhere near as busy as Los Angeles.
Hazelgreen, Missouri detour for glimpse of old Route 66
Less than 20 miles east of Lebanon, Missouri on old Route 66, there is a section of no more than a couple of miles that gives travellers a glimpse of the iconic highway as it once was.
First, you come across one of the metal arched bridges that are often associated with old U.S. and in particular Route 66.
Another Route 66 museum but this ones free!
If youre driving west along Route 66 and still do not feel satiated by the two museums dedicated to the highway in Oklahoma, you could do worse than stop in at the museum in Lebanon, Missouri.
It is smaller than the other two, so there is less to see. But there is a mock old-fashioned gas station, an old diner and a rather shabby looking fake motel room, plus two Route 66 armchairs that any true aficionado of Americas Main Street might eye with envy.
And what this museum lacks in size it makes up for in generosity. Thats because this museum is free of charge, courtesy of the people of Laclede County,
to which Lebanon belongs.
Everything that fits is at Steve’s Sundry in Tulsa
On the outside, Steve’s Sundry, Books & Magazines on South Harvard Avenue in Tulsa’s midtown neighborhood, doesn’t look like much. But just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, don’t write off Steve’s because of its modest curb appeal and its location in an aging strip mall.
Step inside, and you quickly discover why, in an age of Amazon.com, Borders, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, locals love this quirky, 60-year-old independent bookstore.
Different state, different town, same problems for Route 66 motels
Like a number of towns along what was Route 66, the motels here in Lebanon, Missouri thrived on the through traffic. And like many of those same towns, when Route 66 went away the motels were among the first to suffer.
Here in Lebanon they line old Route 66 away from the center of town, on what feels like a near-forgotten stretch of road. The signs are faded, but they are still in business.
Checking in with Carlton Pearson – who doesn’t believe in hell – in Tulsa
Carlton Pearson doesn’t believe in hell. And he’s pretty uncertain about heaven as well. Which wouldn’t be all that exceptional, really — except Pearson is an ordained Pentecostal minister and a former protégé of Oral Roberts, the Tulsa-based televangelist. So when the Route 66 Team passed through Tulsa this week, we spent an hour with Pearson in his offices on the 29th floor of a downtown skyscraper.Â
Pearson, 54, wasnt always so unsure about core doctrinal issues. In the 1980s and 1990s, he ran Higher Dimensions Family Church, a Tulsa-based megachurch that hewed to a much more unforgiving and traditional view of the afterlife.
Galena, Kansas: Old mining town gets that ol sinking feeling
              
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This town was made for lead and named for lead. Occasionally, bits of it still sink into the ground because of lead.
This is what made this town what it once was, said Ken Oglesby (left), 52, owner of the Main Street Deli in the center of town, shaking a small glass jar nearly full of small scraps of bluish-grey lead.
A brief jaunt along Kansas 13.2 miles of Route 66
There are, or were, only a few miles of old Route 66 in Kansas, down in the far south-eastern corner of the state, but this short stretch of road is considered by many fans to be about as close to the original state of the road as you can get.
But be advised to take a good map with you and watch where you are going, as the dozen or so miles of Route 66 still here 13.2 miles, to be precise is also notorious for getting people lost.
Linking family with sepia images from the Osage American tribe
On June 2 1907, the Osage American Indian tribe divided up the land on their reservation, an event that had held up Oklahomas bid for statehood for a decade. This June 2, the tribe will open an exhibition on those who received that land.
The allotment of 2,229 plots of land to divide up the reservation, which the Osage had bought in 1870, was eventually forced by an Act of U.S. Congress in 1906 to bring the tribe in line with the rest of the aspiring would-be state (Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907).
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The Wall
