And it doesn’t get any better than ol’ “Ruby the Deerslayer”, does it? Anyway, I digress…so we took the exit off the 1950s 66 and found ourselves on the 1920s 66. The earlier version is about the width of a typical 2 car-wide driveway in suburbia and has a dangerous lip at the edge that sticks up a couple of inches. The road is made from early Portland cement that has held up to the last 80 years with surprisingly few cracks. Not many stretches of the early 66 remain, so you have to keep your eyes open while tooling down the “new” version if you want to see the “old” highway. We stopped at a very narrow
iron bridge (see photo)
with red brick decking. Hey, that sounds safe…red bricks don’t get slick from rain, do they? Hmmm, on second thought. Try and imagine meeting a 1930s semi in the middle of that bridge on a dark, rainy night…it sends chills down your spine, doesn’t it?
That stretch of old 66 also went past the “Midway Drive-In”, now defunct. A little further on we came to
a
viaduct that was built in 1925 (see photo). The first stretches of 66 made
wild turns as they followed the land’s contours (see photo), and I’m sure many lives were lost trying to negotiate these turns during bad weather, at night, etc. Keep in mind that cars in the ‘20s and ‘30s were traveling with big trucks on this narrow road, and that those cars had 6-volt headlights, no seatbelts, skinny tires, mechanical brakes, no safety glass, no turn signals, one tail light, and metal dashes. No wonder there were so many fatalities back then.
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Dan and I stopped a couple more times to look at old bridges on the original stretches and a 1907 railroad locomotive shed east of Bristow (see photo), but precious time was slipping away and we still hadn’t had breakfast. Probably the most famous eatery left along the Tulsa-OKC portion of 66 is the Rock Café in Stroud (see photo). It dates back to 1938 and remains largely unmodernized. Our waitress was Mildred, a woman in her late 20s with a name from the late ‘20s…ironic, no? Breakfast was the typical eggs, bacon, orange juice, toast (Texas-style), and coffee, and we left satisfied.
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There are a couple of outstanding gas stations left between Stroud and Oklahoma City.
A Texaco station from the 1930s (see photo) sits in the sleepy little town of Davenport, and
a
1927 Phillips 66 station makes an excellent photo op (see photo) in Chandler. But my favorite is
a
giraffe-stone covered station dating back to 1916 between Luther and
Arcadia (see photo). It has the feel of history about it and tons of character. The builder incorporated a couple of stones in its construction that are shaped like Oklahoma and Texas…cool. It was heated by a wood-burning fireplace…when is the last time you saw a gas station heated that way?
After stopping to take a photo of
the
famous Round Barn in Arcadia we were pushing Ruby to get to Guthrie (on the far north side of OKC’s metro area). Guthrie is famous for being Oklahoma’s first capitol and is full of beautiful old buildings (by-the-way, you can see the town in the movie “Rainman”…it’s where Tom Cruise stopped to find a psychiatrist for his brother, Dustin Hoffman). Dan and I stopped at Vic’s Place, a business that sells petroliana and gas pump restoration parts (Dan’s company makes gaskets and grommets for old pumps). We also stopped at the Blue Belle Saloon, a famous watering hole, for a beer before hitting the road (note…neither of us would ever drink and drive…Ruby knows Oklahoma so well that she drove herself…heh, heh, heh). The Blue Belle has been visited by many famous people over the years; Humphrey Bogart, Tom Mix, and President Theodore Roosevelt among them.
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"Restoring Old Dreams"
Owner
and Operator, Mr. David Mars
Serving the community since 1991
Email: david@texastransams.com
4588A Kennedale - New Hope Rd.
Fort Worth, TX 76140
Phone: 817-563-2121
©2000
- 2004 Texas Trans Am Service and Restoration
All rights reserved. Duplication only with prior approval.
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