Making Memories and Immersive Experiences on the Mother Road: My Route 66 Journey (So Far)
In the spring of 1997, I had a life-changing experience. One of the those nudge... nudge... push... SHOVE experiences that I have, ever since, stopped at the second nudge, at the latest.
This experience necessitated Starting Over, which left a bunch of wave possibilities that I began to collapse one by one. I could stay hundreds of miles away from everyone I knew, in a job I had outgrown. I could go back "home" to Jersey and pick up where I had left off 10 months earlier, albeit in much different circumstances.
Or I could try something completely new. My own version of Go West, Young Man! So I did... flying from New Jersey to Scottsdale, Arizona, where I worked with my long-time friend and mentor, Gerry Cullity. [I will be posting a Tribute to Gerry on this site in the next few days that I wrote when he unexpectedly passed away in 2005].
I spent 6 weeks in the Valley in AZ. It was a time of healing and New Possibilities. I hit golf-balls into cactuses and, one night, I "poised a pen on the edge of death." But then I met my soulmate, my wife of 27 years, Tonya and accepted a job running the Main Stage productions at the theatre, with opportunities to also act and direct.
Here's where Route 66 comes in. I went back to Jersey to get my things in order, packed the car and headed down the highway. In Oklahoma I picked up Route 66 and drove it all the way to Arizona. Along the way, I had many memorable experiences. I cried most of the way, mourning and exercising my Past Life to make way for my new one.
I loved the wide open spaces of Oklahoma and Texas panhandle and felt like I was in a cross between a Steinbeck novel and a Kerouac novel. I wrote a lot of poems in motels at the end of the travel day, including in a room in the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, NM.
I also remember driving through the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert at dawn on my final morning on the Mother Road and there beside me was the Santa Fe (formerly, as made famous in the song in the film The Harvey Girls, the "Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe"). Just breathtaking.
I am glad I didn't take any pictures, but it resides so clearly in my mind, 27 years later.
That's the power of the Mother Road.
After Tonya and I got married (after a whirlwind six-month romance), she wanted to move back to the East Coast, so we packed up our kids) and took the Mother Road toward Jersey. We stopped in Winslow, Arizona to "stand on the corner", which truly was a fine sight to see.
Fast forward. In 2019, I was hired to perform in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and my love affair with Route 66 was immediately renewed. I went to Cyrus Avery Plaza and saw some other sights.
Little did I know what an impact Tulsa's portion of The Mother Road (so named by Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath) would have on the coming years of my life.
Three years ago, I was hired as a consultant for an immersive experience production company and I began designing content for immersive experiences to celebrate the upcoming Centennial in 2026.
Last summer, I was a guest speaker at AAA Roadfest, where I not only did a solo presentation on Supernatural '66, but I got to share the stage with Route 66 luminaries Joe Sonderman and Jim Hinckley, whose books I had been reading for 18 months.
I am returning to Roadfest this year to do a presentation on Cyrus Avery, the Father of the Mother Road, who I will be portraying in a tour of the route in 2026, in collaboration with the Route 66 Alliance (Ken Busby, Executive Director and CEO, founded by Michael Wallis, who voiced The Sheriff in Pixar's Cars).
I am also working with the Route 66 Alliance and a museum design firm out of Dallas, Texas, to bring the Mother Road Irregulars experience to life.
There are millions of amazing stories about Route 66. This is mine. Thankfully, there are still many, many, many miles left to log.
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