ASSYIFFA TAMARA H.

18202241002.

The car is the cornerstone of modern American life; yet cars need roads, and so the
road too is a cornerstone. But while cars have regularly been raised to the status of cult
objects in song, poetry and film, roads have tended to keep a more prosaic image.
Occasionally there have been exceptions: Bob Dylan named one of his most famous albums
for a road — Highway 61 Revisited — and Jack Kerouac gave pride of place to a highway in
his classic novel On the Road. Yet in the culture and history of twentieth century America,
one highway stands out from the rest; and although it no longer exists, except in small
sections here and there, "Route 66" is without the shadow of a doubt the most famous
highway in the United States of America.

Steinbeck, who knew it well, called it "the Mother Road". It was the road taken by the
Joad family in the Grapes of Wrath; for them, as for hundreds of thousands of real-life
dustbowl refugees, Route 66 was the road that led from the hell of dusty Oklahoma to the
paradise of California, where the peach trees and vines were always laden with succulent,
luxurious fruit, just waiting to be picked. At least, that was the popular myth.

Those who like listening to American music may have heard the song Route 66, originally
recorded by Nat King Cole, and since then re-recorded dozens of times by a bevy of artists
including The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Depeche Mode: the words of the song detail
the full itinerary of the US Highway 66, which "winds from Chicago to L.A., more than two
thousand miles all the way."