Route 66 Barn Find Road Trip: Lost Collector Cars Along the Mother Road

447 Pages·2016·103.38 MB·English

by  Tom Cotter

ROUTE 66
BARN FIND ROAD TRIP
LOST COLLECTOR CARS ALONG THE MOTHER ROAD
TOM COTTER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
MICHAEL ALAN ROSS
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTES
NAVIGATIONAL NOTES
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 ILLINOIS
CHAPTER 2 MISSOURI
CHAPTER 3 KANSAS
CHAPTER 4 OKLAHOMA
CHAPTER 5 TEXAS
CHAPTER 6 NEW MEXICO
CHAPTER 7 ARIZONA
CHAPTER 8 CALIFORNIA
POSTSCRIPTS
BEST-OFs
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many folks made this ambitious book possible.
I always end these acknowledgment pages thanking my wife, Pat, so this time
I’m starting with her. Babe, thanks for letting me leave for nearly four weeks
while you handled all the household chores. I’m back now, so I’ll bring out the
garbage and make the bed for a while.
Thank you to everyone who helped us along the way: owners of cars we
found, folks who gave us leads on barn-finds, and those who sent us leads on
social media. We wouldn’t have found as many cars without your help.
Thanks to everyone at Motorbooks/Quarto Publishing—Zack Miller, Nichole
Schiele, Jordan Wiklund, and everyone else who in some way touched my book,
from editing to design to production, delivering, and warehousing. I can’t
believe that you keep endorsing these crazy book ideas.
Thanks to new barn-finding partner, Hagerty Insurance, who allowed Claire
Walters, Ben Woodworth, and Jordan Lewis to follow us with video cameras for
a new YouTube barn-finding series, Barn Find Hunter.
Thank you to Ford Motor Company, which gave us a brand new 2016
Explorer for Michael to drive as our support vehicle and luggage hauler. If I
needed to buy a new SUV, it would be an Explorer, without a doubt.
And thanks to you readers who believe there is always a worthy car around
the next corner. I promise to keep writing these books if you keep buying them!
Happy hunting!
—Tom
Two Ford SUVs, seventy-seven years apart!
PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTES
We’ve all experienced game-changers. For me, one of those moments was
asking Tom Cotter for five minutes of his time. It’s been a whirlwind ever since
—we’ve traveled thousands of miles, met hundreds of people, and found
thousands of cars. Hell, we’ve even partied with rock stars!
So when the phone rings and it’s Tom Cotter, you never know what could
happen next. It could be sharing a new story or the beginning of a new
adventure. After completing Barn Find Road Trip, the spiritual predecessor to
this book, Tom and I started thinking about our next project. One day Tom
called and said, “I’ve got it.” When he asked if I’d be interested in doing a
sequel on Route 66 from beginning to end, I went all in. As a seven-year-old, I’d
traveled Route 66 in the back of a ’59 Chevy station wagon and the memories
are still etched in my mind.
From playing the license plate game to counting hundreds of box cars with
my brothers, and certainly the look on my father’s face somewhere in Arizona as
he experienced his third flat tire in one day. The Mother Road is a part of me.
The opportunity of discovering Route 66 from beginning to end and to tell the
story with my camera was something I couldn’t turn down. We pushed every
day from dawn ’til dusk and then some. There is no rest for a “Cotter Spotter.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing trips like this, it’s that the most
rewarding thing is not the “best find,” it’s the people we meet along the way. We
heard stories from perfect strangers that touched us to the core, as if we’d known
them for years. Sure, the cars are cool, but without the stories and the faces,
they’re just another catalyst for a tetanus shot.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed that burger in Sapulpa,
Oklahoma, and experiencing dawn at the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. I
encourage you to go out and embrace this BIG gorgeous country. Bring a
camera, make conversation with a stranger, and enjoy the smile of a waitress in
the middle of nowhere as she serves you that last piece of blueberry pie à la
mode.
There’s nothing better than the open road to clear your head. Who knows—it
might just be your next game-changer.
—Michael Alan Ross
NAVIGATIONAL NOTES
Sterling Moss and Denis Jenkinson. Tom Cotter and Brian Barr. That’s a stretch,
but being a good navigator requires having a great driver. Tom has given me that
opportunity, first in Barn Find Road Trip and now in Route 66 Barn Find Road
Trip.
Most important is communication. This means being able to translate
directional instructions given in grunts, groans, hand signals, waving, nods, and,
sometimes, words.
A good map and atlas are essential. Invest in detailed versions. We used
Route 66: The Map Series by Jim Ross and EZ66: Route 66 Guide for Travelers,
by Jerry McClanahan. Both are excellent and give pre-and postwar routes.
While technology is a not a necessity, it can enhance the Route 66 experience.
As the hobby evolves, it makes sense barn-finders use the best technology
available to them to find future stashes of rusty Vipers, WRXs, and Mustang
GTs.
We used MyTracks GPS Tracking App. Dropping pins at every location so
we had the GPS coordinates made it easy to identify sites and track mileage.
Google Earth and Maps let us look beyond the highway when our instincts were
low or topography blocked our view. We pinpointed our social media leads and
used GPS to find them.
Technology has been with us through every journey we take. After all, Jenks
created the first rally route navigation tool from a roll of toilet paper… just
saying.
—Brian Barr
PREFACE
A few days before leaving for our trip, Michael Alan Ross, our photographer,
sent an email half-joking that we should buy a snake-bite kit because we’d be
spending time in the desert. I sent an email back saying that we’d only need a
snake-bite kit if we discovered a Cobra.
Then I remembered last year when a pit bull clamped his jaws around my
knee while I was looking at a Falcon Ranchero in West Virginia. I thought he
was going to tear off my kneecap.
“Good idea, Michael,” I later wrote. “Yes, let’s buy one, just in case.” We
had been planning the Route 66 Barn Find Road Trip for months. During the
spring, my copilot, Brian Barr, and I drove my Cobra from Charlotte, North
Carolina, to McPherson, Kansas, for the annual McPherson College advisory
board meeting. During that trip, we went out of our way to drive about 50 miles
on Route 66.
During that trip, we met a dynamic English couple that had flown from
London to Austin, Texas, and picked up their recently purchased 1974 Starsky
and Hutch paint scheme Ford Torino. They told us they would be living the
American dream by driving Route 66 from Chicago to LA for the next three
weeks.
At the end of our Kansas trip, I called my publisher, Zack Miller, and told
him I thought Route 66 might be an ideal follow-up to Barn Find Road Trip. I
felt it would not only be a car-finding book, but also a travel guide for folks who
desired to drive the famous route.
As we did before our previous trip, Brian and I visited the Bagel Bin Deli in
Huntersville, North Carolina. We ate hearty breakfast bagels and hit the road
toward Chicago before 7 a.m. on Friday, October 30, 2015.
We hit the road from Chicago on Sunday, November 1, letting America’s
Highway be our guide.
As is our tradition, Brian Barr (right rear) and I again began our road trip with a hearty breakfast from Bagel
Bin in Huntersville, North Carolina. “Bin Girls” Vanessa Hughesman (bottom left) and sisters Ronetta (lower
center) and Tameka Nelson wished us good luck.
INTRODUCTION
Route 66—the Mother Road. One of the most storied roads in the world, Route
66 has been represented for more than fifty years in books, television, music, all
dedicated to that famous stretch of pavement.
If that road could talk, what could it tell us? What famous people traveled that
road? How many families from the East began new lives on the West Coast by
making a pilgrimage on Route 66? And which makes and models of old cars
remain on or near Route 66 in the small towns that dot the route, now that
various interstate highways have put many of those towns out of business?
Michael Alan Ross and Brian Barr—my friends and cohorts in the book Barn
Find Road Trip—were game to find out.
My ’39 Ford Woody wagon hit the road on November 1 for a trip totaling
nearly 6,000 miles. We scheduled fifteen days to drive from Chicago to the
Santa Monica Pier, then three days to return back to Chicago along the interstate
system.
I am still amazed that one ribbon of road connects the hustle-and-bustle city
of Chicago to the vacant deserts of New Mexico. It’s an amazing transformation,
from chrome-and-glass skyscrapers to sixty-year-old art-deco gas stations and
hotels, all leading to the pier in the Pacific beachside town of Santa Monica.
We met amazing people and heard amazing stories along the way. We found
an amazing number of cars. Most of them are for sale, some are restorable, and
some are drivers as-is. And, alas, some are so rusty or stripped they can only be
classified as parts cars or yard art.
Even though I don’t need another car, there were a couple that easily could
have followed me home. But I’d need to find a new place to live if I dragged
home another barn-find…
It was an amazing adventure for a couple of old car guys. Sorry, there was not
enough room in the Woody for you to come along for the ride, but hopefully this
book will feel like you were sitting in the passenger seat.
Buckle up and enjoy the ride—it’s a great country!
—Tom Cotter