Westworld Alberta

S ince I discovered U.S. Route 66 as a teenage hitchhiker, I've travelled it by Greyhound bus and tractor-trailer, by RV and Corvette and, once, by bicycle. Recently, when I wanted to return for another look, I headed straight for my favourite section, in Arizona, stretching from Winslow west to Topock on the California border. The last 250 kilometres of that route constitute one of the longest surviving stretches of the original 3,862-km highway. I'm happy to report that Route 66's obituary – written repeatedly since 1984, when the opening of I-40 enabled motorists to make the trip from Chicago to Los Angeles on five connecting interstates – was premature. What John Steinbeck called the Mother Road had been reborn, not quite Route 66 is a quintessential home to all (previous page, clockwise from top left) An iconic Route 66 flag flies at Hackberry General Store, Arizona; autographed dollar bills adorn the restaurant at 109-year-old Oatman Hotel; Seligman marks a historic stop on Route 66; Hackberry General Store owner John Pritchard sells Route 66 memorabilia; (this page, clockwise from top left) vintage signs grace the Hackberry General Store exterior; a vintage car pulls up outside the store; a golden stretch of Route 66 runs between Kingman and Topock, Arizona; Angel Delgadillo, living legend of the highway, poses in front of the Route 66 Gift Shop in Seligman. with the character it once had, but with enough vitality to ensure its survival. When I reached Seligman, I called Angel Delgadillo at his home. He set his tenor sax aside to pedal his bike the few blocks to his barbershop and settled into his hair-cutting chair, a cup of coffee in hand. "You know," he said, "even the Greyhound abandoned us" after I-40 opened. "So I sit here today and say to myself, 'It's 44 W e s t w o r l d p42-53__Route 66.indd 44 >> may 2013 pretty unreal how we've brought 66 back to life.'" Seligman has 500 residents – and 13 souvenir shops selling Route 66 memorabilia. "We've got a tour bus pulling up," his daughter Myrna shouted from the adjacent gift store. Delgadillo, who is 84, bounded out of his chair, wearing a smile as wide as a crescent moon, and rushed to greet a group of German tourists, shaking hands and slapping backs. "Good morning, good morning! Welcome home." Home? They gave him a quizzical look, not understanding that to Delgadillo, Route 66 is a quintessential home to all the world's wanderers, even though he himself had never strayed far from it. The tourists loaded up on postcards, Route 66 bumper stickers, road signs shaped like shields and black-and-white photographs of dusty Ford Model Ts chugging through Seligman in the 1930s, canvas water bags slung on their hoods to keep radiators from overheating. I asked one of the visitors, a 40ish man named Helmut Wiegand, why in the world a foreigner would choose this road (top) iStock, Catherine Karnow 13-04-12 1:18 PM

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