If you ever plan to go to the west, travel my way to the highway at the west, get your ticket on Route 6 and 6.
Get mine from Chicago today, more than two thousand miles all the way.
I get your ticket on Route 6 and 6.
I go through St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri, and Oklahoma City, and I'm mighty pretty, you see.
I'm a reload, gallop, New Mexico, black savers on it, don't skip it on a king,
and barbed-door saver, and if you know aren't you, get here till it's time to skip.
Get your ticket on Route 6 and 6.
Hey, good morning, I'm Don DeRose, and 7.07 at WRGN Radio, a civic media station, home town radio refreshed.
One of my favorite topics is coming up right now.
Route 66, my wife and I are members of the Illinois Route 66 Association.
She's called the, it's called the, the exact name, it's not called the Route 66 Association, it's called the Illinois Association.
Well, what's the exact name again, Dwight?
It actually is, the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
Yeah, okay, so I was smart, and didn't even know it.
All right, Dwight Cannon is the brand new president of the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
Congratulations on your election, first of all.
And Route 66, it's, it's Americana, it's history, and it's almost gone, but it's still there in some parts of America.
But you got to see it because a little bit each year, maybe you're voting, but not Illinois.
It's a, it's big business Illinois.
And do you know a little bit of the history of exactly right about here?
Do you know a little bit of the history of Route 66?
How it got started and a little inclinations on what went on with that thing?
Oh, sure. Well, initially a lot of the roads in the United States were essentially trails.
So you had the different roads were designated with names, and some of them very long.
Confusing couldn't get them on maps because the name was so long, and they decided, well, we'll just put numbered highways.
So starting in 1926, they had numbered highways running through the United States, and that would be, that would include US 66.
And initially it was going to be US 60, but there was some complaints from some folks out east that it did not actually run coast to coast.
And they had a highway that ran coast to coast that ran through them that wound up being 60, and they wound up using 66, which actually became iconic.
Of course, 60 still exists, and 66 does not officially exist, although it certainly exists in the hearts of many of us.
You got decommissioned. Not that long ago, really.
Most of it, most of the road became the interstate.
So if you were to drive down the interstate, it would share 66 signs.
And a lot of that happened around 77 or so, but it was officially decommissioned in 1985.
And it's now, instead of having Route 66 signs, they have historic Route 66 signs.
They're very obvious because they're brown and white, and you catch them immediately.
Now, there are several different Route 66s, because some were done in the early 20s, some were done in the 40s.
So you could travel Route 66, and we'll tell you the 1920-something version, the 1940-something version goes this way.
And in Illinois, you have that, too, where they change routes every once in a while.
They do it today, too. They change routes all the time.
So you have different versions of Route 66, even through Illinois, right?
Well, yeah, and you do have people that say, oh, 66 moved all over the place.
So there's not really any Route 66. It wasn't continuous.
And that type of thing. Well, they move the interstates, too.
Yes.
There was a huge section through Missouri that they rerouted.
So it was 66 same things.
So initially, let's you use Illinois as an example.
Illinois was the first state to be fully paved.
And the reason it was fully paved is that you state bond issue four, or what would now just be called Illinois four,
as the rooting for Route 66.
And you can still travel a part of that in the area south of Springfield.
Believing Springfield, you would stay on Illinois four.
And it does have a signage on it for the Historic 66.
That would have been for, I believe, 26-30.
At the time they were actually building the other 66, which was farther east.
And that was more of a straight path.
The interesting thing about the Illinois four south of Springfield is,
it took the way that a lot of roads did back then that went around everything.
So if there was, say, a farmer's house in the way or whatever, they just went around it.
So it's kind of zigzaggy.
The four that's in use today is pretty straight.
But if you keep your eyes open, you'll see signs that point you to 66, and you will turn off.
There's a couple of sections there that are famous, the Auburn brick road,
and also the turkey tracks, where when they poured the concrete, some turkey,
or turkeys decided to leave their imprint, and those are still there.
So that's from the way back in the 20s.
Even Joliette, say, that route was from 26 through, I believe, 42.
And then they bypassed Joliette and went through Plainfield.
That was pretty frequent. That was because of the traffic going through a town.
Sometimes it'd be detrimental to people's travels.
So at that time, Plainfield was pretty empty.
So when they went through there, it just made the traffic easier.
So yeah, there's a lot of that through Illinois.
And there is through many of the states, where there were three, four different routings of 66.
Now you have a dead man's curve to an Illinois where it makes a very sharp left turn
if you're heading south.
And it's called dead man's curve.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting because if you look into this back in the day,
there were no speed limits.
So it was just what they called reasonable and proper.
And of course everybody has their own interpretation of what that means.
But you didn't have signs on the way saying say 55 or 60, whatever is just whatever you find.
And I believe it's Tawanda.
And it would be rolling down the highway at 60 miles an hour.
And suddenly there was a 90 degree turn right in front of you.
And unfortunately, not everybody made that turn.
There's also, and this is part of it's Illinois, part of it's in Missouri.
It's the Chain of Rocks Bridge.
That's another bridge that's got like a, I don't know if it's 90 degree turn in the middle of the bridge.
But it's really sharp.
And yeah, I think it's around 30 degrees or something.
It was a very bad for trucks.
Very bad for humans to make that.
And I remember one time it was closed to auto traffic and the Route 66 Association of Illinois
got special permission for us to take our cars over the bridge and back again.
And I have videos of it.
I have still pictures.
I dropped my ticket through my wife out of the car so I can get a picture of her on the bridge with all the cars out.
I took a few that you got back in again.
And so when you belong to the association, it's those kind of things.
You get little bonuses where the ordinary people could not get on there.
We got special dispensation to do it.
Let's take a trip on Route 66 in Illinois.
And it starts off in a very busy area right in downtown Chicago.
Yeah, you can actually see beginning and end signs still up there for historic.
They tend to get stickers all over them and they clean them off and they get stickers again.
But they're at Jackson and Adams.
Now initially that was one road.
But when they switched those to one way, then they had to have two different routings of 66
because you couldn't go east on the westbound one way.
And you can still go down there.
We actually, years ago, the motor tour would start downtown.
We tend to bypass Chicago, the routing through Chicago, Cicero, Burwin,
and all that tends to be a little detrimental to their traffic flow.
But we are attempting to see if we can do that for the Centennial celebration coming up in a couple of years.
But yeah, it starts in Chicago right at Michigan Avenue.
And then it flows all the way down to St. Louis.
Now, when you get out of downtown Chicago, what's the first big stop?
Oh, boy, there's a lot of them.
And you know, in downtown Chicago, of course, you have Luma and Odys.
It's been there for a very long time, the Berghof.
Leaving downtown, I guess one of the bigger draws would be Delray's chicken basket.
Oh, stop right there.
Let's not go another say Delray's chicken basket.
My wife and I drive down from recene to Delray's all the time, even during COVID.
We went down there because we had to have their chicken.
And I was nervous about being sitting in the room with other people at the time.
And they said, how would you like to have the banquet room all to yourself?
Oh, very nice.
And so they sat us in the banquet room.
No one else was allowed because they knew we felt a little nervous about it.
It was well worth it.
Their chicken is made fresh when you order it.
You got to wait.
It takes a while because they make it in deep fry when you order the chicken.
So when you get it, it is delicious.
We go there all the time to Delray's chicken basket right there on Route 66.
And then you got to mention the other chicken place right down the road.
White fence farm.
White fence farm.
Yeah, one claims to have the most delicious chicken.
One claims to have the best chicken.
Well, the thing I like about white fence farm is they give you these hush puppies.
And you can have all you want.
And they both have their pluses and no minuses.
But they both have a lot of pluses.
And white fence farm is huge to huge place.
Oh, yeah.
But yeah, Delray's is a little smaller.
It's been there basically grew from a gas station.
And it's not in the same location.
They built a restaurant.
But it's still relatively small.
Certainly small compared to white fence farm.
But it is good.
I enjoy going there on occasion.
It's a little hard to get to.
So you have to look it up and find it.
It is on still on 66.
But that's one of those areas where a lot of 66 is under the interstate.
Right.
The section there on is still there.
But then it immediately goes under the interstate.
So you have to basically go back through a shopping center.
And then kind of wind around and then you'll get there.
It's worth the effort.
You know what we haven't memorized?
It doesn't matter.
We get off the interstate.
We know the exit and everything.
We go to Delray's chicken baskets.
Good.
And then we switch off occasion.
Go to white fence farm because they're both very good.
But you mentioned that for a second.
All of a sudden I started drooling all over the place.
It's that good.
Wow.
Okay.
Now we're going to talk.
We're going to take a break here.
Dwight Cannon is here.
He's the president of the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
And we're going to take you to where they filmed a couple of movies.
We're going to take you where they filmed the Blues Brothers.
Where they filmed trains, planes, automobiles, a whole bunch of all the places.
There's a place on Route 66 in Illinois where they actually invented a cure for drunkenness.
And I'm going to take you there.
I mean, this is what's on Route 66 in Illinois is amazing.
And plus we're going to tell you how you can join the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
Coming up to get a great magazine a couple of times a year.
You get to meet a lot of ice people on their banquets and on their road trips.
So I'll come it up here at WRGN Radio.
I'm Don Rosen, 719, hometown radio refreshed.
A civic media station stay where we are.
The time turns me off and I don't know maybe.
Nine to five a.m. is taking me where I'm bound.
When it's going to run out to see my baby.
We get through that when my son goes down.
I thank the Lord for letting me down.
At 720 at WRGN Radio, my guest Dwight Cannon, the president of the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
And Dwight, we were talking about the chicken places on Delrays and also the White Fans Farm.
And they do.
They have their own Route 66 soda bottles.
And we have them at home and they're displayed in our kitchen.
The Route 66 soda bottles.
It's like every other soda, but it's a Route 66 bottle.
There's no difference.
Okay, now that was in.
We were those in the chicken places.
We're in what town now?
They were.
Willowbrook for Delrays and then Romeoville for the White Fans Farm.
Now, Joliet Prison is on Route 66.
And this is the famous Joliet Prison.
Now they do have a museum there where you could take a tour.
Right.
And we actually went in there and bought things that prisoners have made.
You can.
It's like a little store and we bought some things that they made.
And the prisoners get the money.
But this is where they filmed the Blues Brothers at Joliet Prison.
Yeah, it's not inside, but I think on the outside of the prison,
so you can drive up there, take a picture of yourself standing outside the prison.
And go to the museum, which is very interesting right on the grounds there.
Right.
Yeah, that's where he's released and it shows him walking from the gate.
Yeah.
So that's in Joliet.
There's so many other things to do in Joliet.
There's a you go through downtown.
There's an old movie theater there that was around back in the day.
So that's pretty good.
Braid.
Wilmington.
Is there anything in Wilmington I should know about?
Wilmington's got several things.
It's got the famous Gemini giant.
Yes.
A lot of people like to get their picture taken there.
Of course, Wilmington itself has a, I believe it's called the island city.
The river runs through it and there's a little island in the middle of that.
So a lot of little mom and pop places along there along the road for speaking of eating.
Good eating there.
So there's a little bit there in Wilmington.
There's a little restaurant there where the Gemini giant is.
And we'll explain what that is in a second.
And they were closed down for a while.
And we were looking at the menu and it said all different varieties of salads in my wife said,
well, that's what did them in.
They should have stuck to hamburgers and hot dogs on Route 66 and cut out the salads.
They were still being business.
The Gemini giant was to promote mufflers, I guess.
Yeah, they had these throughout and there's several of these along Route 66.
And we have our fair share in Illinois.
We actually have a museum that is of recent input.
It's in Atlanta that has a lot of these and they did more than these.
But the most famous ones are basically called the muffler men.
And not all of them hold mufflers.
Many of them have been altered to hold other things.
So there's one that's in Atlanta that is not part of the museum called Paul Paul.
And he was actually holding a hot dog.
It still is to promote a hot dog place.
And I believe it was Cicero.
Cicero or Burwin, somewhere in that area, bunions was an even that restaurant.
And they purchased that and it wound up in Atlanta.
The Gemini giant itself was also a muffler man.
But he was altered back in the days of the space race.
Right.
He was holding a rocket.
And he's got a helmet.
Yeah, he has a helmet, which is supposed to be a space helmet.
It actually kind of looks like a welding helmet.
But he's iconic.
He's known all over the world.
You know, you're right.
It does look like a welder's helmet.
That's a look like a space helmet.
I never thought about that.
And you can get your pictures taken and they are pretty big.
I mean, they're huge.
And they have the mouth throughout the country on Route 66.
A lot of people have them.
But yeah, they were originally meant to hold mufflers.
And they found other things to put in the guy's arms.
Okay.
When you get to Bradwood, there was a motel there called the Bradwood Inn.
Later became the days in and became now the sun motel.
And that's where they filmed trains, planes, automobiles.
And there's an iconic photograph, which was on the movie poster for the film.
Also, I think it was also on the VHS box or the DVD box.
And it shows John Candy and Steve Martin sitting on their luggage.
And they're sitting in front of a science as Bradwood Inn.
And that's where they filmed trains, planes, automobiles right there.
In front of now, it's the sun motel.
I don't know why they would have changed the name.
Because there was a woman who did an entire log of her trip through all of Route 66.
And she said, I stayed at the sun motel.
And she said, sun motel.
That's the Bradwood Inn.
And she didn't realize it.
And she would have taken a picture in that spot because they changed it.
I don't know why people would do that.
I mean, it's famous for that name, but they do.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm not really sure.
I mean, in some of these cases, you know, maybe it's part of the sale where the original owner wanted to maintain the name.
It's their motel now.
You have to give it a different name.
No telling why they changed it.
Or some people just think that's an old name.
Let me give it a new one to refresh it.
Unfortunately, we run into that a lot in 66.
Where people think, I want to refresh this and I want to give it something new.
And what happens is sometimes iconic structures are destroyed so they can build a new and better.
But especially our visitors from overseas and we get a lot of them.
They're looking for those old things.
They want to see the relics.
They want to see the old mom and pop places and the old tourist traps and all that.
That's what they're looking for.
That's what I'm looking for.
I want to see the old stuff.
I don't want to see a new thing.
I can see a new thing down the street from my house.
We're going to give you a website later on.
There's a website.
I'm going to get its roadside America.
I'll tell you all about that.
And they'll tell you every site you can see on Route 66 across America.
It's a very good site.
I had the gentleman on the air with me once from roadside America.
And this summer, I hope to have him back with me again when vacation times kicking again.
Now we're in Gardner, Gardner, Illinois.
Yeah, that's a little town that has a couple of iconic things.
So driving into Gardner from the north, you'll pass on your left a sign that says Riviera.
There was a roadhouse there and it had been there for a very long time at a restaurant bar.
That type of thing.
Unfortunately it burned down several years ago.
So the sign's kind of a placeholder to show you where it was.
And aside from the Riviera itself, they had a little diner.
Now I know that people probably have seen these, not really sure what they are when they're passing by.
But they look like little trolley cars.
And they basically would go in these and they were little bitty diners.
And they would have a grill or whatever in the back.
And a few seats.
And there was one of those sitting at the Riviera.
Well that is now actually in Gardner.
So you can still go see that diner.
And it's next to the two cell jail that's in Gardner right next door.
So you can visit both of those just walk to each one.
They're worth seeing.
I have a picture myself in that jail.
It's a right to two cell jail.
And you can take a picture of yourself behind bars if you'd like.
If you folks back home the chance to see what you look like behind bars just in case.
Now I'm going to hold off on this next one because I have a story that goes to it.
It's your name saying Dwight Illinois.
And I've got a story there about, I guess back in the day,
they came up with a cure for drunkenness.
There's a whole great story behind this.
And it's in Dwight.
Yeah.
So we'll talk about that coming up in just a moment.
My guess this morning, I love talking about Route 66.
Speaking about Dwight, Dwight Cannon, the president of the Route 66 Association of Illinois is here.
And we're going to talk about how you can get involved in the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
That's coming up.
I'll give you that website, by the way, later on, Roadside America.
I think it's RoadsideAmerican.com to check out everything.
Plus the Route 66 Association's of Illinois website.
That's all coming up 729 WRJN, hometown radio refreshed, a civic media station.
Thanks for joining us this morning.
We're in Fortes right ahead.
Stay where you are.
Right into the personal stuff.
I'm a single guy.
I'm single and I just turned 50, which means I'm ready to cut a deal.
Sorry.
Maybe you have a nut job sister-law, you're trying to shove off on someone.
I'll take a look.
You know, whenever I say that, men laugh and women go, what about Carol?
Every woman has a specific nut job friend.
They immediately think of their single guy.
Carol's due for releasing a few weeks.
What's the range on her ankle monitor?
Please, I don't need you.
I don't need help meeting crazy women.
I've got that lockdown, trust me.
That's my core demographic.
I thought love was only true in fairy tales.
And for someone else, but not for me.
Our love was out to get me.
That's the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.
Then I saw her face.
At 736, WRJN Radio.
I'm Donald Rosen.
Thanks for joining us this morning.
My guest is Dwight Cannon.
He's the new president of the Wisconsin Association of Illinois.
We're talking about Route 66 going to Illinois just down the block.
From us here, you get a nice tour.
You want to make a date trip.
You can do that too.
Or you can spend it overnight and do the entire Route 66 to Illinois.
It starts in Chicago.
Goes right down the Springfield.
Then the chain of Rocks Bridge.
And we're in your namesake town now.
Dwight, Illinois.
Home of the Keeley Cure.
What'd you tell us about that?
Sure.
There was an institute that was founded and actually quite some time ago.
I believe it was back in the 1870s, maybe late 1870s, 1880s.
And basically what they would do is they had a cure for alcoholism.
So there was an entire institute there.
And people would come from all over to be treated.
And it must have worked, at least to some extent,
because they were around until, believe it or not, 1965.
The Keeley Institute itself, the buildings are still there.
They're obviously not Keeley anymore.
But you can see them in downtown.
And they also had some other facilities scattered around Dwight.
What really got me was you can see pictures there of the lines of people
and couldn't famous celebrities took the Keeley Cure.
And it said a cure drunkenness.
But yet there were people that went there time and time again.
So that doesn't make sense.
Now, here's something interesting I found out there.
They didn't want people copying it.
So they never wrote down the formula.
The two people involved knew the formula in their head.
So what people were doing was they were actually taking the bottles
and selling it.
But they copyrighted one thing.
They copyrighted the label.
So you could not sell the Keeley Cure with the label on it
because it was copyrighted.
And nobody knew the formula.
So when these two guys died, the formula died with them.
I don't know what was in there, Kool-Aid or, you know, Dr. Pepper.
Yeah, there was apparently gold in it.
I don't know how much and maybe powder or something.
But it was called the Keeley Cure.
Or they're alternately the gold cure.
So it actually had gold.
I don't know what else it could have been Kool-Aid probably.
Dr. Pepper.
Okay, we're coming to two different two important towns now.
Odell, which we have a couple of stories about.
And we're coming also to Pontiac.
Now let's start with Odell.
Odell, actually one of the highlights of Odell.
And there are a few.
It's an old standard oil station.
And at one point, that station was in, shall we say, disrepair.
It was in pretty bad shape.
And our association stepped in and helped these guys out in Odell.
We brought it up to where it could actually be, who's just a visitor center.
And Odell runs that now.
You can visit.
It's a very popular place.
Again, a lot of visitors from outside the country stopped there.
Other pictures being taken.
There's a pump that's out in front.
It's an old gravity fed pump.
You can go inside.
There's a gift shop.
And it's a really nice stop along the route.
And just to the north of that, there's the remnants of an underpass.
And the story on that was the Route 66.
This is one of those towns where you had multiple alignments.
And Route 66 used to run a little bit farther to the east through Odell.
And they moved it.
Well, when they moved it, there was a little bit of a problem
in that there was the folks that lived on one side of 66.
The kids had a school on the other side of 66.
And as you can imagine, 66 is a very busy highway.
So very dangerous for kids to try to cross.
So they actually put a tunnel under Route 66
so the kids could get across there to the school.
You can still see the guard rail from the entrance,
but it has been filled in.
It was probably in its later years of being a little bit dangerous.
But you can still see that.
Yeah, Odell is not alone in that.
There were other towns that had those two.
But it is kind of curious to see that and see the remnants of that underpass.
Yeah, you can see where the railings were.
But it's all filled with peak gravel now, so you can't get into it.
But you could see where it was on both sides.
And it's kind of kind of spooky and interesting at the same time
knowing these school kids had to go into this tunnel to get across the street.
But it was bumper to bumper traffic going across Route 66.
And those days there was no way to state.
So this was the only way to get across the country.
And this is what they did.
And that was in Odell.
Pontiac is one of my favorite stops because there you have the Route 66 museum.
Right there in Pontiac.
Right.
That is our museum in Hall of Fame.
You can go in there.
You can spend depending on what you're looking for.
You can spend hours in there.
We have lining the walls and in a couple of cabinets in the middle
are Hall of Fame members.
And those can be people or businesses that exist now or at one time existed
relics from some of these places.
We actually have some Burma shave signs hanging up towards the ceiling.
All kinds of things like that.
A lot of interesting things.
And it's free.
Of course, we appreciate donations.
But there's no charge to go in there.
And I will add that there are several museums in Pontiac.
We're not the only one.
And they're all free.
You have an actual trailer in the back that was used by an artist to travel Route 66.
Yeah, we have.
There was a man named Bob Waldmeier.
And he was noted for his artwork.
He did some beautiful stuff.
A lot of pen and ink, watercolors.
And you can get postcards that he did.
And we actually have in the museum his microbus.
He had a VW microbus.
So you can see that.
And if you've seen the movie Cars, I believe the name of the character is Fillmore.
It's a microbus.
That was actually modeled after that bus.
But Bob had a thing about big corporations and all that.
So he was in a big fan of Disney.
So they couldn't.
I think they wanted to call it Waldmeier initially.
But he wouldn't allow that.
So that's Fillmore.
So that was his little microbus.
And then behind the museum is the land yacht or road yacht.
Depending on.
People call it by different names.
But it is a converted school bus that Bob did himself.
And it's basically a house on wheels.
So it's an old school bus on the bottom.
And then you'll see there's a lot of wood on top.
He had a, I guess you could call it a sun deck on top of the bus.
And you can go in there.
There's a, believe it or not, a sauna in there.
We have it open.
I believe it's the third Saturday of each month.
Unfortunately, it's very, very small inside there.
So getting people through it can be difficult.
So we have a docent that's out there on that one.
Third Saturday of the month.
And it's worth seeing.
It's really something.
And again, he built that himself.
I've been in a lot of times.
I really think it's, it is unique.
I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.
It's very busy inside.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah.
He's got, he's got a lot of stuff that he had in there.
And then his family after he passed added some more things.
So there is a lot in there to see.
Also on the outside, you have the wishing well from the famous wishing well motel.
The wishing well is out there as well.
You have a lot of memorabilia from Route 66 that people want to get rid of.
And you guys said, whoa, we're not getting rid of anything here.
We'll take it.
Right.
And it's outside.
And there are murals outside as well across the street from the museum.
You could see it's just, it's a, it's stepping back in history.
And it's so well preserved.
And you said it's free to go in.
Right.
And we bought, I bought some t-shirts from there.
We bought some stuff from there.
And it's in Pontiac.
It's, it's right.
I think it's, it offered 66.
I think it's offered.
You get it down, go down a few roads to get to it.
But also in Pontiac are these homes that were made with these tiles.
And it begins with an L.
And I can't think of the name of the tiles.
You know what I'm talking about?
Oh, no.
I bet.
They with these.
Really certain.
Yeah.
They with these tiled homes.
Luxures.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's a few of them left in America.
Couple, two of them are in Pontiac.
And one, one of my good radio friends lives in in Wisconsin.
He bought one of those homes.
They used with those tiles.
Really?
And he's got one.
It's my friend's sly.
And he works in the radio in Madison.
And he bought one of those, those homes with those tiles on it.
And he knows all about the history of it.
And he knows about them being in Pontiac, Illinois.
Now, coming up next is Chenua.
And there's a drugstore there.
And I, when I wanted to get my wife a gift one day, I saw it there.
But I didn't want to get it when she was there.
So when I got home, I ordered it through the mail.
And it's a piece of Route 66.
When they chopped up the original road before they put the asphalt down,
the original road, people saved them.
And I have a piece.
And they put a plaque on it, mentioning this is the original Route 66 road
from 1920s or 30s, whatever it was.
And we have it displayed at our house.
But you can buy from the Chenua drugstore sells them.
And we did it by mail.
I mean, you don't have to go pick it out yourself.
But we did it by mail.
Pretty heavy.
Well, it's a little thing.
It's not more than about four inches long and two inches wide.
It's very tiny.
But yeah, it's the original road.
They have it sliced and diced in little pieces.
So you can actually own a piece of that.
And it's worth noting since you mentioned the old road.
If you're driving down through that area of Illinois,
there's a lot of places as you're driving down historic 66
that you'll see on the west side,
more road that you can't drive down.
And that is part of 66 when it was a divided highway
before the interstate that is no longer maintained.
You can't drive on it.
A lot of the bridges are out.
It's old concrete that was basically crumbling.
So you can't drive on it.
But I find it interesting just to see that.
And you can see it's the old concrete.
It hasn't been overlaid with the asphalt or anything.
And you can see that road,
how it looked back in the day.
And I remember, you know, as a kid driving down six
or I wasn't driving, my dad was.
But going down 66,
you're hitting the control joints in the concrete.
Now there's a place that we can actually walk part of it
instead of driving.
And I forget what town that is in.
But it's like a walking path.
And they have map of the entire Route 66
on their painted on the road.
But it's a walking part where you don't take your car,
you park it and you can walk it.
And to me, just knowing that that's where the history
took place of this country when people were moving west,
that was the only way to get west on Route 66.
And it started that as a dirt road in parts of the country.
And later they had a pave.
They used to have people that would pay to get your car out of the mud.
I mean, just, yeah.
Which is, you know, you, we can't fathom that today.
But that was life back then.
You know, your car got stuck behind.
Yeah.
I guess the famous one is called the Jericho gap.
And it's in Texas.
And it was a section where it was dirt.
And if there was any kind of rain or anything,
it turned into very, very bad mud.
And you can see pictures of this.
You could probably do a search on the weapon
and find these, there's pictures of these old like Model A's
and that buried in this mud.
You know, it way past the bottom of the tire up in there
and they were stuck.
So the farmers in that area would actually come out with their horses
and pull the cars out.
The rumor has it that some of these farmers
would actually go out and water the road.
And so that people would get stuck
because it was a source of income.
They later bypassed that.
And it, of course, got paved
so that source of income disappeared.
But I'm sure that Jericho gap was not the only place
where that happened because a lot of 66 to the west
in the Southwest through, say, Texas,
the Mexcares on that was not paved.
They were dirt roads.
So if you had any kind of weather, you were in trouble.
We're talking Route 66 in Illinois
with the president of the Illinois Route 66 Association.
Actually, the Route 66 Association of Illinois.
We're talking to Dwight Cannon,
more with Dwight coming up in just a moment.
It's 749 at WRJN Radios.
There we are.
We're talking to Dwight.
We're not going to finish this today.
We're not going to travel Route 66 through Illinois.
So Dwight's going to have to come back
and we're only getting through half of it today.
There's so much to go,
including Springfield,
the home of the United States.
We're going to have to go back
and get out of the way.
We're going to have to go back
and get out of the way.
We're going to have to go back
and get out of the way.
We're going to have to go back
and go, including Springfield,
the home of Abraham Lincoln.
We're going to get to that as well next time.
But let's talk about what we can talk about now.
We're in Lexington.
And the reason I bring this up, Lexington is
because I have this pictorial history of Route 66
is two editions.
I think you know the one I'm talking about.
There are two coffee table top books
and they have the Lexington sign in there.
And that's just,
that's why I always think of Lexington.
What's in Lexington?
Oh, before we go then.
Where is the place?
It's a, it was a, I think it was a,
it was called the pig something or other.
You know what I'm called?
The pig hip.
The pig hip.
Where was that?
Broadwell.
Broadwell.
That was Ernie Edwards head restaurant
there for years and years called the pig hip.
And supposedly the name of it came
because I had care remember which side
but he said the left or right side
or whatever the pig hip was the most tender.
So that's all he made his sandwiches
from.
How much of that was hyperbole?
I don't know.
He started out as a teenager building this place up.
Yeah.
Yeah, so he had a little restaurant there.
We actually, after it had closed one of our motor tours years ago
since he mentioned the motor tours we stopped there.
And he actually made lunch for us.
Sadly, Ernie's not with us anymore.
And unfortunately the pig hip itself burned down several years ago.
Yeah, I know.
So you can see where it used to be.
And there's not really,
Broadwell's not a really big town.
But that's where the pig hip was was in Broadwell.
Just between the interstate
and the historic 60s.
I think you made it into a museum at one time.
Right.
That's when we saw it when it was a museum.
And then the next time I went by there
it was empty.
The sign was there but it was empty.
It was just burned down.
And that's sad.
Right.
Because people remember that as part of Route 66.
There was also something called the hand.
What was that?
The hand restaurant or something?
Oh, you know, I'm not familiar with that one except
that I have heard of it as well.
Yeah.
And I'm not certain even where it was.
Yeah.
I think of it the name of it.
But what my wife and I,
we bring the picture books with us.
If the pictures in there,
we have the owner or the manager of the restaurant
or business sign it.
So we've all these signatures in our book.
And you know, people are going to die.
Buildings are going to be gone.
But we have the signatures in our book.
I can't think of the name of the hand something or other.
They're all across the country too.
They were at least.
I don't know if they're still there.
We had lunch there.
Again, I don't know if it's still there or not.
It may not be.
But, you know, these places come and go after a while.
We're in Tawanda.
Tawanda.
Now, there's something there because I remember stopping in Tawanda.
What's there?
Well, I guess the thing that you can most recognize from Tawanda.
Besides Dead Man's Curve is a little outside of Tawanda.
And this isn't on 66, although you can see it from 66.
There's a big farmhouse sitting outside of Tawanda.
It's like a three-story tall brick farmhouse.
There's a lot of stories about it.
Most of them not true.
Somebody said it was actually on the Underground Railroad and all this.
But it was actually built after the Civil War.
So that wouldn't quite hold true.
But the interesting part of that is one of the...
If you're familiar with the anthology series Fargo.
Yes.
Yes.
One of the Fargo seasons had that in it.
And it was kind of like a two sisters owned it.
And the each sister decorated her half differently than the other.
They didn't get along very well.
And when you go in there, they apparently came in and they actually decorated all that
and would then restore it back to its proper appearance.
But that is that building.
And it's the fascinating building.
It's sitting all by itself.
There's nothing around it.
You can see it from miles away.
It is a big old farmhouse.
So that's, to me, an attraction.
I've driven by it several times.
I believe that they're using it as a venue for weddings and that type of thing.
Where's Funks Grove?
Funks Grove is a little bit further south.
And Funks Grove is on the alignment of 66.
There's a town called Funks Grove.
In north of that is a town called Shirley.
In both of those towns, the Funks actually had property through there, a lot of property.
And they have still a facility there outside of Funks Grove where you can buy maple syrup.
S-I-R-U-P.
It's excellent.
It's spelled differently.
Now, both times who went there, they were closed because they were out of syrup.
And we went there both times we drove up and they were closed.
And they said, how do you know in this place?
No, but they run out of syrup and they close.
That was it?
They're very popular.
So if you don't get there, it's gone.
So you have to get there in season and preferably towards the beginning of the season to make sure
that you don't run into what you ran into.
There's nothing to sell.
And I've got to get the story someday of why they spelled syrup S-I-R-U-P.
Instead of S-Y, like the rest of the human race.
Well, years ago, apparently the one of the ladies that was involved in it,
that was she said it had to be spelled that way because their syrup had nothing at it.
It is pure maple syrup.
You know, some of the other ones are safe, fortified or whatever was sugar or whatever.
There's nothing in this but maple syrup.
So she said that that was the spelling because these other guys were just imitation syrup.
Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know.
But, apparently, back in the day, that was a spelling that was in the dictionary.
You had both S-Y-R-U-P and S-I-R-U-P.
The S-I-R-U-P obviously has disappeared over time except in Funks Grove.
Now, normal burling, a normal of Bloomington is huge.
So that's big. That's next up there. What's there?
The university's there, right?
Yeah, there's quite a bit.
So you have normal. That's what the town was named after because back in the day,
that's what they called colleges where they taught teachers, normal schools.
So it became normal Illinois because of the school.
But it is a rather large pair of cities that are sitting right there.
And there is a lot in there. I don't know that I could cover it.
No, we have the time we have left.
Right. There is a lot in those two towns you can go through on 66 and just off of 66.
I believe that's where the David Davis Mansion is and all these different things that are in there.
It is a worthwhile stop on 66.
When you join us next time, we're going to talk about my tornado and Bloomington,
where we ran into a tornado.
The only time I've ever done that in my life.
And so we'll talk about that. Give the website out for the Illinois Route 66 Association there.
Oh, it's IL66ASOC.org.
And we have a lot of information, including the different stops that you can go to along the route in Illinois.
And if you join the Association for $30 for the year, you get this great magazine a couple of times a year.
With pictures of people taking their own pictures and submitting them, it's really good.
And don't forget roadsideamerica.com, roadsideamerica.com.
If you have trouble remembering that website for the Illinois Association, just go Google it and you'll find it.
Google Illinois Route 66 Association of Illinois.
Dwight, you got to come back. We're only halfway done.
I thought we could finish it today. Who knew Dwight Cannon, who's the president of the Illinois Route 66 Association.
Thank you very much. You got to come back.
Okay, my friend. Hang on the line. Don't go anywhere.
Thank you. Stay there. Stay where we are.
All right. I'm Don Rosen. We'll do it again tomorrow.
6 a.m., right and early.
They're at home to honor radio refresh to Civic Media Station.
WRJN 1400 AM, 99.9 FM and 98.1 FM in Kenosha Starriar.
Don't move.