Paul McCartney Buzz and A 1920's Bridge on Route 66

Back at home now and waiting on several thousand 45's arriving by mail in the next few days. We spent Sunday retracing our steps to the bridge outside Ash Fork on the red clay alignment of Old Route 66. What is called "Old Route 66" is different from what is marked as "Historic Route 66". For the most part, Old Route 66 is the alignment dating from 1927 to the early 1950's, when a better road bypassed parts of the original alignment, the new road later to be bypassed by Interstate 40 (which sometime after I shuffle off this mortal coil will be bypassed by the Transportation Corridors).

Passing again through Seligman and later returning to Williams, we found that we weren't the only ones who had timed Paul McCartney's last sighting in Tucumcari on the previous Thursday to the possibility that he could be passing through on Sunday. But these ideas emanated from us tourists. The shopkeepers were either oblivious or pretending to be. The prospect of Paul McCartney at Delgadillo's Snow Cap didn't seem to phase grandson Delgadillo too much, his walls covered with autographed pictures of Willie Nelson and other celebrites. Along with his brother-in-law, he carries on the needs-to-be-experienced clowning that his grandfather made famous. I had the pleasure of getting the full clown treatment from grandfather Juan in 1991, and the Snow Cap is one of many businesses along Historic Route 66 now run by people in their early twenties. The crowds were plentiful and I think this means something beyond nostalgia for this road. Most of those people to whom this road means true nostalgia either aren't moving any more, or aren't moving much.

So into the cow pastures and on to the bridge I missed earlier in the week. Finding the oldest alignments of any road is a passion of mine and my family endures it, be it 66, 60, or Lincoln Highway. Here is a picture of the 1920's bridge outside Ash Fork and an album of the pictures we took: