Hello, everyone! From Pasadena, California, this is Jill Hunting with an HPPR BookByte. From the age of 10 until I left for college, I lived in Oklahoma City. Ours was a New England family relocated to the Midwest because of my father’s work, first as a schoolteacher in Lake Forest, Illinois, and then as a writer of flight manuals and exams for the Federal Aviation Agency. We were, you might say, in Oklahoma but not of Oklahoma.

The settlement of the American West often relied on ‘boom or bust’ events. Years of good weather could bring bumper crops that enticed would-be farmers to try their hand at homesteading, and the discovery of precious metals brought hoards of the hopeful to the gold fields of Colorado and California.

Hi: I’m Sally Shattuck from Ashland, Kansas and I’ve been reading “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like - The Life and Writings of Will Rogers:” by Joseph H. Carter. Route 66 is “The Will Rogers Highway”. It begins near his home in Santa Monica, California and ends in Chicago.

Humorist, actor, and social commentator Will Rogers was one of the most recognizable voices of early 20th-century America. A native of Oklahoma and a keen observer of American life, Rogers often traveled Route 66 as it emerged as a national artery.