“What’s that?” she asked, as we pulled out onto the road.
“A Corvette,” I responded, looking closer at the car ahead. “More precisely, a 1963 Sting Ray.” The driver accelerated in a cloud of smoke. “The best Vette ever.” I smiled, sinking back into the seat.
It was 1963, the third season of the “Route 66” TV series. Two young men without funds are driving Route 66 in a convertible Corvette taking odd jobs to pay for gas. Each episode was filmed at a new stop with a new cast of supporting actors and a new story. In 1963, the two are seated in a brand new green Sting Ray Corvette. You can’t tell the car is green, because the show was filmed in black and white; and you have no idea how two vagabonds with almost no luggage or apparent means of support managed a new Vette; but they did, and you pulled closer to the set as the adventure unfolded before you. It was the early days of TV, every automobile in that show was a Chevrolet, and credibility was not a concern to a good story with a great car.
I squinted as the Vette disappeared over a hill. “Those were the days,” I sighed. “On Route 66.”
“That’s an old highway. Right?” she asked. “It’s not around any more.”
“It’s not.” I breathed deeply.
The road disappeared in 1985, replaced by the new Intestate Highway System — everything all nice and straight, east and west, north and south . . . not wandering around from town to town, gas station to motel, stop to stop. It was the old Will Rogers Highway from Chicago, Illinois the Santa Monica, California. Established in 1926, the lanes ran for 2,448 miles through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
On TV, they drove its hills and turns in that Corvette.
“A good road for a Vette,” I murmured.
“Why?” she asked, looking over.
I laughed. “The Corvette is the quintessential American sports car. There are newer sports cars, fancier sports cars, maybe even faster sports cars — though I’m not conceding that, but there is no more American sports car. Sports cars love the feel and turn of a good road, and the Corvette is most at home on an old fashioned American highway, close to the hard surface of the pavement and the good folks who live along its length. That’s where a Vette belongs, and that was Route 66.”
“You sound like a song.”
“I know a good one.”
“Really,” she said.
I fumbled with the CDs in the center compartment.
“For your musical entertainment. A bit of Austin sound from a group that’s never ‘Asleep at the Wheel.’”
I slid the disc into the player.
“Rhythm, rhyme and ride along Route 66.”
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vifUaZQL8pc[/embedyt]