Route 66, Here We Come!

A few words about our upcoming trip, plus a final note on my matzo ball experiment

A mural from a diner in Joseph City, Arizona that we visited in 2021. Sadly, when I checked, it’s now permanently closed. In recent years, some parts of Route 66 have become less traveled, but maybe publicity for its centennial will help revive it!

My multi-decade adventures with husband Jefferson Graham began shortly after we met when we decided to go on a monthlong road trip just for the fun of it. The original goal was to traverse the continental U.S., but for some reason we turned south after reaching Montana, continuing through Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico and then heading back to California.

Jeff standing on a corner in Winslow, AZ,playing the classic Eagles song, “Take It Easy,” on our last Route 66 trip.

Since then, we’ve taken many more such excursions across portions of the U.S.—plus a few in Canada. Now we’re about to embark on yet another—Route 66, the “Mother Road,” so named by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, his seminal 1939 novel about the Joad family, poor tenant farmers who are forced to leave their home in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and strike out, along with many other refugees from the Dust Bowl, for California in search of new opportunities. My friend Margaret Moon just wrote about her love of this book, the controversy that once surrounded it, and its continuing relevance in her latest post on her Substack blog, Book Chat. You can find Marg’s story here. And here’s the Steinbeck quote from Chapter 12 that gave Route 66 its nickname:

“66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”

I found a 1967 reprint of the novel and plan to take it with me on “the mother road, the road of flight.” I wonder if we’ll meet folks experiencing that same sense of desperation that motivated the flight of the Dust Bowl migrants in the ‘30s—perhaps different sorts of refugees are out there now.

We’re beginning at the start of Route 66, in Chicago, some 700 miles northeast of Tulsa, our first stop in Oklahoma, the state where the derogatory name for Dust Bowl migrants, “Okies,” originated. In Chicago, we plan to visit one of the city’s great treasures, the Art Institute of Chicago; the lithograph “Departure of the Joads, from The Grapes of Wrath,” by Thomas Hart Benton (below), is in its collection. In 1939, Twentieth-Century Fox commissioned Benton to create six lithographs, to be reproduced as billboards to promote its 1940 film of the novel, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda.

“Departure of the Joads, from The Grapes of Wrath,” by Thomas Hart Benton (Photo via The Art Institute of Chicago)

Jeff, as usual, is the instigator of this three-week, 2,448-mile trip to celebrate the centennial of the road, which opened as U.S. Route 66 (alternately U.S. Highway 66 or US 66 or Route 66) on Nov. 11, 1926. He’ll be putting together episodes about our journey for his PhotowalksTV channel (Scripps News, Sundays at 3 p.m. ET, and on YouTube) using only his iPhone—and sometimes mine. Unlike our early road trips, this one has a sponsor—Best Western.

Me and Jeff on Route 66 in Winslow, Arizona.

And what will I doing? I’m the wingman (okay wingwoman), providing photographic and moral support. I’m told there will be many opportunities en route for sampling local and regional specialties at restaurants, diners and cafes—plus a few museums, shops and attractions. Sadly, we’ll be breezing through many towns at a rather rapid clip, but I’d be open to any suggestions you might have, food-related or otherwise.

The itinerary will take us to all the cities named in the popular standard “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” and a few more besides (see below):

Here’s our schedule. If you happen to be living in or visiting any of these places or have some thoughts or tips, please do let me know! It would be great to get together too if you have time! Meanwhile I’m super jazzed to be meeting (finally!) one of my longtime Substack heroes and friends, Jolene Handy of Time Travel Kitchen, in Chicago. Hurray!

About those matzo balls…

As promised, I’m ending with a note about the two types of matzo balls I made last week for Passover—with and without baking powder. In case you missed the post, here’s the link. If you recall, I made and froze the cooked matzo balls, then tossed them into the soup right before our seder meal.

I filled two big stock pots, an overabundance for a dozen guests, as it turned out, but the soup was popular at the seder and good for days afterwards—and it was difficult to tell the difference between the ones made without baking powder and those that included it! Both were floaters—none were sinkers.

Later, I made some more matzo balls using a mix (from Streit’s). Many people use a mix—and it really works just fine. Inspired by a suggestion from my cousin Tina, who in turn was inspired by her mother’s recipe, I added fried chopped onion, grated almonds, and some nutmeg—plus some chopped dill, which I happen to love. These came out just as tasty and light as the others (see picture, above).

Conclusion: However you make them, matzo balls are delicious—though next year, I’ll have to try to make some that actually sink!

One thing I served and will definitely make again is a lasagne-like dish, with matzo (sometimes spelled matza or matzah) standing in for the pasta. Said to be a dish served at Roman seders, it included layers of ground beef and spinach, marinated artichoke hearts and mushrooms. I based it on a recipe I found in a Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America (yes, yet another Joan Nathan recipe!). I did end up changing it a bit. Please let me know if you’d like me to to include a recipe in a future post—after we get back from Route 66!

Scacchi, a Roman-style Sephardic seder dish similar to a Turkish mina, includes layers of meat and vegetables. On top are pine nuts, fresh basil and mushrooms.

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If you’re celebrating Easter today, I wish you a happy, delicious and meaningful holiday!

See you soon!

Ruth