Childhood Memories Both Kitsch and Authentic
by Kathleen Holt
Route 66 has legendary status in my family.I’m Kathleen Holt, born, raised and still living in Cimarron, Kansas, but my father’s family made their way from his birthplace in Oklahoma building parts of Route 66 during and after the Dust Bowl, sprinkling aunts, uncles and cousins from the Midwest to California where they made their fortunes building roads. What that meant for my relative-visiting family during my childhood was that we made the trek, my parents and the four of us kids, down the legendary highway every four or five years.
I loved Shing Yin Khor’s book because her drawings and memories paralleled mine, although from a profoundly different perspective, her having grown up in Los Angeles and me in a tiny Kansas town. I write today not as myself, but from my memories as an eight-, ten-, 12- and 14-year-old, a child who didn’t really understand the touristy nature of our stops on the iconic highway. Somehow, I felt the lure of the snake farms and giant statues, the puzzle and fun of Burma Shave signs, the wonder and strangeness of the petrified forest, painted desert and the Pueblos. I felt like all were elements of a periodic trek made especially for us by relatives with exotic names like Nugent, Ernest, and Jolley.
We mostly stayed on pallets on some aunt-and-uncle’s floor, but occasionally we took a room with one bed and two hide-a-beds in the Blue Swallow. And then there was the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook. If it weren’t for the fact that it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places today, I might consider it offensive, but as a child I would have given anything to spend a night in those concrete spaces. My dad refused, however, to even consider spending a night separate from my mother and probably --it was the 50s – with two kids on his own in one unit – my mom in another teepee with the other two kids. We stopped once to confirm the lack of space for a hide-a-bed, but oh how I longed to be able to stay there.
Today, I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents for introducing us to the BIG Texan, the Muffler Men, and the crazy ice cream store. I thank them for the lectures on respect and openness and understanding of those in the pueblo or the trading post where stoic women in long, decorated velvet skirts stared back at us. We were never allowed to spend money in the tourist traps but once spent the entire day in Flagstaff having arrived on the 4th of July in the mid-1950s in time for the Flagstaff All-Indian Pow Wow. We knew authenticity when we saw it.
Later in life, Lynn Boitano and I traveled the historic road from her childhood home in California back to Amarillo before veering off to western Kansas. We started at the Santa Monica Pier and were surprised to find that we hadn’t even left Los Angeles County that night when we stopped where else but the New Kansan Motel in Rancho Cucamonga. I’m happy to tell you that we did share one of those wigwams, although today we knew enough to put the kitsch into perspective.
So, thanks to our graphic artist and author for a delightful memoir and thanks to my parents for a childhood full of travel memories. For the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club, I’m Kathleen Holt.
