Get Your Ticks On Route 66

St. Louis Community College asked me to write up a proposal for a bus tour of Route 66 this summer.

I am up for the task.  Route 66 passes through the town we live in; so, I went exploring the route as it goes west into central Missouri.

I found Route 66 ruins: buildings that barely stand and are no longer in use.  

Surely people on a Route 66 bus tour will want to see ruins, such as John's Modern Cabins, which were modern in 1941. Some of John's wooden cabins still stand.  Some lean.  Some lean further, and the rest are just piles of timber now.

Surely people on a Route 66 bus tour will want to see the ruins of the Stony Dell Resort, a place where Mae West once stayed.  

These ruins do not lean, because they are made of stone.

In central Missouri, Route 66 follows the Cherokee Trail of Tears for many miles, and people on a bus tour will want to see Larry Baggett's Memorial, which is now slowly turning into ruins because Larry passed away in 2003.

Many years ago, Larry built a retaining wall in his yard.  After he built the wall, he started hearing people knock on his door in the middle of the night.  He would open the door, and find no one there.  Oddly, his dogs, who slept near the door, did not notice the knocking.

Then Larry was visited by an old man.  According to Larry, this man looked like he was 150 years old.  He informed Larry that the retaining wall was built across the Trail of Tears.  Because so many Cherokee died on the Trail, the spirits still walk the Trail at night.  However, the spirits cannot get over Larry’s wall and they are knocking on his door to complain.

Larry built a set of steps over his wall, and the knocking stopped.  Larry was so impressed, that he went on to build a Trail of Tears monument at the end of his driveway:  

People on the bus tour will want to see these Route 66 ruins, and they will clamor to get off the bus and photograph them.  I cannot let this happen.

The main reason to keep people on the bus is timing.  

The tour will be eight hours long as it is.  If I let people get off the bus to photograph everything of interest on Route 66 --- not only ruins, but a giant rock in the shape of a frog, the Wagon Wheel Motel which is still in business, the bridge over the Big Piney which had so many accidents that the route earned the nickname of Bloody 66, the cafe where Jack Kerouac had lunch --- then the tour will be eighteen hours long.

Somehow I must convince people that they do not want to get off the bus.

I have a plan, based on summertime in central Missouri.  I will canvas the people on the bus: 

How many people would like to get a painful poison ivy rash?  

How many people would like to have parasitic chigger larvae feeding on their skin?  

How many people would like to get bitten by a snake when the bus is an unknown number of miles from the nearest anti-venom?  

How many people would like to have ticks crawling all over them?

Aha, that should do the trick.  People will be glad to stay put and take photos out the bus windows.

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Pixar's animated tribute to Route 66 is called Cars.  The Cheetah Girls are on the soundtrack of the movie, and here is the Cheetah Girl's video showing that they know how to get their kicks. (3.5 minutes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R8SOuusFc4

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.