Forsaken

There’s a lot of time to think while driving along old Route 66 from Arizona to Illinois. Time to think about how vital a road U.S. 66 used to be for the people traveling it. Some drove it for pleasure and some sought a new start in life. Then there were those folks who made a living providing services to those people along their journey.

There’s time to think about the interstate highways that came through and bypassed so many thriving small communities, cutting off their life blood and condemning them to suffer slow painful deaths. Many of the carcasses of those communities are visible from the interstate. A few plucky ones continue to try to capitalize on their Route 66 heritage and invite motorists to pull off for a taste of history.

I found this fabricated cross sitting at a corner on a service road off I-40 that used to be Route 66 west of Amarillo, Texas. I’m not really sure why it was there – if it was a memorial for a traffic fatality, you’d think they would have made it prettier. At any rate, it seemed to fit in with a nearby grain elevator slowly dissolving into rust under the hot Texas sun, surrounded by the vast high plains of Texas under the big Texas sky. And bypassed by Interstate 40.

Forgotten, forsaken, left to die.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2006 James Jordan.