(cheerful piano music)
♪
(narrator)
Since its inception in 1926,
Route 66 has been an icon
of the American West
and a defining element
of the American experience.
♪
From Chicago to Los Angeles,
the Mother Road
takes us on a journey
from the East
to the American West,
with its wide-open skies
and a mix of different cultures.
(Mary)
Route 66 has opened the gateway
to a lot of opportunities.
(woman)
You can still drive it?
I'm like, "Oh, my gosh,
how cool is that?"
(woman)
Where y'all from?
(man)
Germany.
(narrator)
International visitors
come by the tens of thousands,
hungry for
an American experience.
(mellow music)
(indistinct remarks)
♪
(woman)
But the most famous
person of all?
-Who?
-Me.
-Yay!
-They grew up
watching American television.
Route 66 with George Maharis,
Martin Milner.
And they're all here
to see America of yesterday.
(narrator)
Beloved television shows,
like the Route 66 TV show,
and films like Easy Rider,
have celebrated the road
from a male perspective,
in which women
are seldom in the driver's seat.
♪
(woman)
We forgot that women
were on those journeys.
We forgot that women
were working all along the way
in those businesses.
(narrator)
Despite its moniker,
the Mother Road,
little attention has been paid
to diverse women's experiences
across many different cultures
and almost 100 years of history.
(woman)
When I first got the motel
and they were
having a convention,
and they said, "Well, no--
a woman doesn't come.
There's no women."
And so,
they put this man beside me.
I don't know who he is,
but they just said,
"Well, no, you just--
just has to be a man with you."
It's a mirror
held up to the nation.
A road that can be really
a living classroom.
(woman)
She was entrepreneurial,
she was very business oriented,
and she allowed us
to live a very comfortable life.
(narrator)
From archaeologists
to politicians
and countless entrepreneurs,
women overcame segregation
and gender discrimination
to build fulfilling lives
for themselves
and generations to come
on America's most beloved road.
This is their story.
(vehicles whirring past)
Along the Mother Road,
women had spent
almost two decades
slowly building communities
along Route 66,
when World War II
launched the country
into a new era.
The first and fundamental fact
is that what started
as a European war
has (inaudible)
as the Nazis always intended
it should develop
into a war for world domination.
(explosions)
(newsreel announcer)
Overnight, we were at war,
a war we not prepared to fight.
Still fresh and bitter
are the memories of those days.
(jazz music)
(Heidi)
In the 1940s,
there's a dramatic shift,
because Route 66
is an important
transportation corridor
for both war materiel
and for war personnel.
You have soldiers
coming through,
you have equipment
coming through.
(narrator)
The war opened up
new opportunities
in the workplace for women.
Jobs that had previously
only been open to men
and required technical training
and expertise
were suddenly recruiting women.
(John)
Flagstaff at that time
was a small mountain,
tourist, lumber town.
♪
They decided
this would be one of the 16
new ordnance depots
that they would build
in the West.
Route 66 served
as a major conduit.
Workers from all around
could come into Flagstaff,
they would go over
the Arizona Divide,
they would just
drop down into Belmont,
and work was guaranteed.
The project manager out here,
a man named Captain Myrick,
knew that labor would be
at a premium.
He knew that Flagstaff
could not supply
anywhere close to
the 8,000 construction workers
that were needed.
So, Captain Myrick said,
"We have got to go out
on the Indian reservations,
and we've got to recruit
Navajos and Hopis."
Well, they approached
the Navajo and Hopi leaders
and said, "Listen, okay now,
what if we built
an Indian village
on the Army base?"
And both the Navajo
and Hopi leaders,
they thought that over
for a few seconds,
they said,
"That would be wonderful."
So, for the first time
in American history,
a large group
of Native Americans
moved onto
a U.S. Army base gladly.
(indistinct remarks)
I work at Camp Navajo
as an ordnance inspector.
That's my title.
I've been there at Camp Navajo
for 27 years.
I felt like I had a calling
to the military,
and I think it came from
when I was a child.
Here is my grandfather.
He was actually
the chairman of the tribe.
To me, I've always
looked up to my grandfather.
He also served
in the Army as well.
I have always felt a connection
at Camp Navajo,
because my people
have been there.
(John)
During the war,
there would be probably around
3,500 Navajo and Hopi families
that lived in something called
Indian Village.
So, the women came along
to help with the children,
but they really
weren't considered
for employment at that time.
When all
the construction workers left
in 1943,
they had to get women out there
for the permanent force.
You see women adjusting
the thin lock nut
on 500-pound bombs.
They did a lot of the, uh--
on the assembly line,
they did work with munitions.
Well, all of the information
that had to be stenciled
onto the green artillery shells
was done by Navajo
and Hopi women,
also Anglo women,
and they would take fuses down,
and they would
drop test the fuse
to see if it would explode
or not.
1.3 million tons of munitions
came in and out
of Navajo Ordnance Depot,
but the mission
was to store it here
until it was needed
in the Pacific,
and then they would
ship it to Los Angeles
or to San Francisco.
They were always
short of people,
and consequently,
there was considerable pressure
on Flagstaff women
through the newspaper
and through the clubs
saying, "You've got to come out
to the depot to work,
and we have
a good-paying job for you."
(narrator)
While the jobs at the depot
were civilian jobs,
to make them
more attractive to women,
a uniform was designed
that conveyed the importance
of their work and position.
(John)
Hundreds and hundreds
of young Hispanic women,
they went out to the depot
and got a good-paying job
at a very good wage
for the first time
in their lives.
(melancholic music)
(narrator)
The dangerous work at the depot,
handling all kinds
of ammunition
from 50-pound bombs
all the way down to artillery,
took its toll.
One of the most hazardous tasks
at the depot
was digging explosives
out of a shell
-using a wooden tool.
-So that gunpowder
could be saved
and used in other shells.
(narrator)
Women were frequently involved
in serious accidents
that required hospitalization,
and they had to juggle work
with their role
as wives and mothers
in a way that the men of the era
did not have to do.
♪
(Joe)
You know, Molly,
I've been thinking.
(Molly)
Yes, Joe?
(Joe)
Maybe some of those women
and girls coming into the plant,
well, maybe they have
home responsibilities, too.
(Molly)
Could be.
(Joe)
Maybe--maybe they really do
need time off.
(narrator)
Over 19 million women
worked during World War II.
What made
the Navajo Ordnance Depot unique
was the high percentage
of Native American women
who were integral
to its success.
(Mary)
Here, the reason why
I put them there like that,
to me, it's like
me as a Native American,
and me as a--an Army person.
In the Navajo way,
they have a saying
about changing woman.
Changing woman, she had to adapt
through certain things,
you know.
She had to change,
and you know,
as a girl, you change
to become a woman.
These photos right here,
I was very sad when I left,
and this was
my first deployment,
and at that time,
you know, my children
were crying after me,
um, my son wouldn't let me go
in this photo,
and we had a lot of casualties
in the first deployment.
I put this up here because...
(uplifting music)
...I greet the morning
every morning
when I get to work,
and there is the chapel
at Camp Navajo.
I've always felt blessed
that I'm able to stay
near the reservation,
even though I'm away from home,
and every time
I look at the sacred mountain,
which we call Dok'o'ooslid,
I've always
remembered my prayers,
and, um,
and always had that connection
that I am home.
Route 66 has opened the gateway
to a lot of opportunities,
especially to
the Navajo reservation.
♪
(narrator)
World War II
invigorated the railroads,
which were
of paramount importance
to the war effort,
and run parallel to Route 66
in the Southwest.
This created additional
job opportunities for women
from many different backgrounds.
(Stephen)
You have
an enormous number of troops
that are going through
the Southwest,
so the restaurants, which are
these very high-level
restaurants,
where everything's
supposed to be perfect,
and the tables have white linen
and really nice china
and all this kind of stuff,
they basically
take the restaurants apart,
put long boards
over all the tables,
and they turn them
into dorm eating
for as many people
as they could fit in there,
and then everybody
they can't fit in
they serve through
the windows of the cars.
It was run more like
a culinary army
than a restaurant chain.
(Katherine)
I was a Harvey Girl
at El Navajo
in Gallup, New Mexico.
A girl from Acoma and I
were making these sandwiches
for the troop trains.
(honky-tonk piano music)
So, the next year I went back,
and I actually got a job
in the coffee shop.
(narrator)
The Harvey Girls, who were part
of the civilian workforce
during World War II,
wore an immaculate white uniform
that commanded respect.
(Rose)
And then, they had
a little black bow
and they had their number
on it in silver,
and my mother's number was four.
My mother's father
came from Japan,
and her mother came from Mexico.
(Virginia)
I remember working
with Mary Montoya in the '40s.
Her Japanese name was Toki.
And we've been friends
since before we started there.
I started making beds,
and the--
then the second morning,
the bedrooms were upstairs,
and I was making up the bed,
and I guess I have
a lot of electricity in my body,
and it shocked me,
and it threw me
clear across the room,
and I almost
went out the window.
So, that frightened me
and I ran downstairs,
and I told them,
"I'm through, I quit."
And so, the manager, he said,
"Would you like
to work in the kitchen?"
I said, "Sure."
So, I started making salads,
and then one of the girls
didn't show up,
and we were short,
so he put me out front,
and that's where
I started my career,
working as a Harvey Girl.
I worked a lot
of troop trains, yes.
(mellow music)
A lot of 'em, they came
one right after another.
And we had to have the--
the tables all set
when they came in.
When we were a Harvey Girl,
we had recognition
from a lot of people,
because all the troop trains,
you know, that come,
I got a lot of mail from them.
(Rose)
They had everything ready to go.
They honored 'em so much.
Well, with the train,
they--they just saw everybody.
♪
These guys knew these were
probably the last women
they were gonna see
before they went off to war,
so they were always
sneaking them notes,
and asking
if they could write them,
and you know, the women
were overwhelmed by this,
because it's just like,
you know, it's like 50 guys
ask you to be
the last person they're with
before they go,
a day.
They also served prisoners.
I mean, Japanese prisoners
being taken to
prisoner-of-war camps
came through these towns
and had to be served
by the trains.
At that time,
it was pretty rough
for the Japanese people.
When we were in grade school,
my sister and I--
and they--they knew that,
you know,
my grandfather is Japanese,
so we were taunted a lot.
But, believe you me,
my sister stood up
and she fought.
(narrator)
Farther west, prejudice and fear
resulted in Japanese Americans
being incarcerated
for much of World War II
in what were called
internment camps.
(Rose)
Our American citizens
were put in camps.
(contemplative music)
Anybody that was
half Japanese on
would be placed into a camp.
♪
It was around 1942
that the FBI,
via the Monrovia
Police Department,
knocked on the door one evening
and took my grandfather
to be interrogated
to the camp in New Mexico
in Santa Fe,
where he was interrogated there.
They took mostly the--
the leaders
of the Japanese community,
or businessmen.
There were posters
that were plastered
on telephone poles that,
"If you are Japanese
that live from this street
to this area,
you will report to Santa Anita
with just what you could
carry by hand,"
your suitcase,
one suitcase, that's it.
(newsreel announcer)
Santa Anita Racetrack,
for example,
suddenly became a community
of about 17,000 persons.
The Army provided housing
and plenty of healthful,
nourishing food for all.
(quirky music)
(Keiko)
My cousin Bacon
was there in Santa Anita,
and he remembers
the horse stalls
that some of them
had to be housed in
before the barracks came,
and the smell was just horrible.
When my mother
and my grandmother
went past Santa Anita,
and they noticed barbed wire,
the guards facing in,
and all of these Japanese.
(somber music)
♪
For my mother
and my grandmother,
when they went to
the Pomona Fairgrounds,
waiting to be processed,
my mother remembers
how humiliating it was.
At that time,
she was about 18, 19,
had just started
at Pasadena City College,
and my mother--
they had a ceremony,
"Goodbye to the Japanese."
(narrator)
In Route 66 communities
across Southern California,
many Japanese-American families
lost what they had
worked so hard to build.
♪
(Keiko)
My grandfather had a gas pump
on the property,
and Mr. Good
was a representative
for Standard Oil,
but he was just a lovely man,
and my grandfather and Mr. Good
just really hit it off
and became very good friends.
And when the executive order
that Roosevelt had issued,
because of the Japanese
being a threat,
he most likely
contacted Mr. Good,
and gave him power of attorney.
Mr. Good rented out
the property,
and during the time
that my mother
and my grandparents
were in the concentration camps,
he sent them the monthly checks.
But many families
lost everything.
(somber music)
(narrator)
Wartime work
on the domestic front
was dangerous.
Between 1941 and 1945,
in the Air Force alone,
there were almost
14,000 fatalities
within the continental U.S.,
often leaving women bereft
and with the responsibility
of mourning the dead.
♪
Miami is right here
where we are.
World War II, in many ways,
has become a romantic era.
We look back on it
as a golden age of ethics,
a golden age of sacrifice.
The war is also
a pressure cooker for romance
in the sense that
you have relationships
between individuals
who may not
see each other again.
Well, a little slice
of Britain right here.
-Mhm.
-Yeah.
(Andrew)
For all intents and purposes,
this is British soil.
(Nancy)
The British were here to train
because the skies
were so dangerous there.
There were so many fatalities.
They--they're--
while they were training,
they would get,
you know, shot down,
and they were losing
so many cadets
before they could ever
get 'em trained.
So, the United Kingdom
made arrangements
with the United States
to place training facilities
here in the States
for their boys.
The most intriguing part of this
is the--the way
the city of Miami
just reached out
to these cadets
and embraced them
with open arms,
and welcomed them,
and welcomed them
into their homes,
and, you know,
took 'em to church,
and had Sunday dinners
with them.
(Andrew)
Here we are
on Route 66 behind us.
You had a--RAF soldiers
living here
amongst this small town,
and the small town took to them,
like, it was unbelievable.
In fact, one of the stories is,
the boys were busy
every night of the week
with constant invites.
In fact, if you look through,
there's a nice advertisement
for "The Coleman Theater
welcomes the RAF pilots."
(narrator)
Some of the young Brits
who traveled to Miami, Oklahoma,
were confused
when they got there,
having thought they were
on their way to Miami, Florida.
(engine whirring)
♪
Frances Hill's story actually
is fairly well known to Miami.
(Nancy)
Her daughter fell in love
with one of the British cadets.
-Wow.
-And he finished his training,
got his wings, and then, um,
from that point, you know,
he left and went on to war,
and it wasn't but just
a very short time after that
he actually died.
-His plane crashed.
-In the English Channel,
-correct?
-Yeah.
So, it devastated her daughter,
and she also, in the meantime,
had grown such a fondness
to all the British kids,
you know, British cadets,
because they--
she would welcome them
into her home,
and gave them
that little piece of home life
that they missed
from being over here.
(Andrew)
Most of the deaths,
obviously, are accidents.
I think I read
some of them were at night,
but do you--
is there an overarching...
(man)
We've had some at night.
We had two planes
actually crash into each other.
(Nancy)
Mhm, and killed all four.
Whenever they,
you know, would pass,
she would always go
to their funerals.
She would walk
the railroad tracks
that run along through here
from her house,
and carry flowers
from her garden,
and come out
and decorate these graves.
(mellow jazz music)
(man)
She tended it--them
up to her death.
She was awarded, uh, a medal.
-The King's Medal
-King's Medal
from King George VI
for basically
taking care of these boys
for 40 years.
(Andrew)
"Frances May Hill of Miami--
Miami, buried alongside
voluntarily tended
these 15
British airmen's graves,
and helped their loved ones
from 1941 to 1981."
(Nancy)
I believe they called it
a selfless human action.
♪
(narrator)
Even after paying
the highest price
for one's country, however,
soldiers were not guaranteed
equal treatment.
(Judith)
The ultimate sacrifice
was, of course, the death of--
of Juvenal,
uh, in the Second World War.
(Ruth)
I remember
I was in a dead sleep,
and all of a sudden
I heard my mother screaming
and hollering and crying,
and I got up, and, uh,
it was a phone call
letting my mother know
of the, uh,
death of my brother, Juvenal,
and I remember jumping up
and going up there,
and my dad was there
with my mother,
and they were both crying,
and I didn't know
what was going on.
He was a cadet
in Des Moines, Iowa,
in the Air Force, and he died
in a boating accident.
When his body was brought home
to San Bernardino, California,
and arrangements
were being made for his burial,
my father went
and made the arrangements
for the funeral.
My father was fair-skinned,
so they thought
he was maybe something else
that he wasn't.
My mother comes
to make the final selection
of the coffin.
My mother's a bit darker.
And according to my mother,
they asked me, "What are you,
are you Mexican?"
And she said, "Si."
And they said, "Oh, we're sorry,
Mexicans cannot be buried here."
There's another section
for Mexicans,
which was behind the fence.
So, my father,
he was strong-willed person,
principled man,
fought for what is right,
and he said, "If my son
can't be buried here,
we're not burying him,"
and we took
my brother's body home.
I remember he was
in our living room.
-Oh, yes.
-It was just, kind of you go by,
and there's, you know,
your brother
sitting in a coffin,
open coffin.
Um, it seemed forever,
but I guess it was
maybe a week or so.
It was just unusual,
but then I also understood
at that young age
the courage that my father had,
because my mother
wanted him buried
at a certain spot,
and he was not allowed
because he was Mexican,
and he had to be
in another part of the cemetery.
So, I--I was really proud
of my parents
taking that position.
And then, Mike, you remember,
he contacted Harry Sheppard,
our congressman,
so then Harry Sheppard said,
"Okay, we'll take him
to Arlington," right?
Arlington in Washington.
My mother was devastated.
She says, "No, no, no,
I want my son buried here
in his hometown."
So, he was not buried,
he--he didn't go to Arlington,
and ultimately
he integrated the cemetery.
And the parents
who lost a son in the war
received a Gold Star.
So, my mother
was a Gold Star Mother,
and this is the letter
that she received
from Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
who was the president
at the time.
"Freedom lives,
and through it, he lives
in a way that humbles
the undertakings of most men."
Signed President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
My mother treasured this.
(Ruth)
I was so stricken.
I do remember
saving my--my money,
and, uh, wanting to do
something very special
for our veterans.
(ghost of a soldier)
The value of these things
can't be measured
in ordinary ways,
but must be paid for
in dollars and cents,
and sometimes in lives.
Freedom comes high.
(Ruth)
And so, when I had enough money,
I remember asking,
"Do I not have enough
for a bond?"
And, uh, I remember being told,
"Yes, you do."
And so, I was in school
at that point,
and I remember these reporters
coming to the school,
and they had me put my--
my piggy bank there,
and they wanted
to take pictures.
And so, as a result,
there I am, there,
ready to, uh,
break my piggy bank,
which is that one,
to get this special bond for--
to help our veterans.
(narrator)
The end of the war
challenged the advances
women had made in the workplace
along Route 66.
(mellow rock music)
(announcer)
Each trip upstairs
is the equivalent
of lifting
her own weight 12 feet.
And at the rate
of 20 trips a day,
that's lifting
about 12 tons of weight.
Who said "weaker sex"?
(narrator)
Women were expected to resume
being full-time homemakers
so that men
could take back the jobs
they had previously enjoyed.
♪
(Lyndia)
My uncle joined
the United States Army
just before Pearl Harbor.
My mother, she ran the business
until the end of World War II,
alone.
She was chronically exhausted.
It was such hard work.
She was in the store
seven days a week.
She had to take trips
to New York periodically
to get merchandise.
She was dealing with people
who didn't have very much money,
so that was layaway.
During the summer,
she would store fur coats
in a separate building
that was cold storage,
and it was the Dust Bowl,
so she had to clean
the shop every day,
clean the dust off the windows,
which was a lot,
and then manage her household
when she came home from work.
Her brother, he met a woman
in New York City
as soon as he came back
from the war,
so he returned to Amarillo
in 1945
with a wife.
Now...during the time
he had been gone,
my mother,
even though she was
running the business,
really didn't have access
to credit in her own name.
She was doing everything
on behalf of her brother.
As soon as he came home
with a wife,
he looked over the books,
and said, "Thank you
for taking care of the business
while I've been gone.
I'm going to take over now."
He decided how much
her half of the business
was worth,
he wrote her a check,
and he gave her
a one-way bus ticket
to her father in Los Angeles.
(honky-tonk piano music)
My mother was not really happy
about the way her brother
had negotiated
the "sale"
of her share of the business.
In spite of being
a decorated war veteran,
my Uncle Saul could not join
the various
veterans' organizations.
He was excluded from
the chamber of commerce.
There was major anti-Semitism
in Texas.
There were some stories
about loans
either not being available
to maintain the business,
or his interest rate
being higher
than it would've been
if he had been
a church-going man.
And that was similar
to what would've happened
if he had been
Hispanic or Black.
(newsreel announcer)
All this can't keep a fellow
from putting down his ideas.
Something is going
to add up here.
(gunshot)
His own air conditioned castle
with a deep freeze,
cooler for beer.
(narrator)
While the Nazis
had been defeated,
anti-Semitism had not.
Despite this obstacle,
along the Mother Road
in Albuquerque,
there was a well-established
Jewish community,
in which women entrepreneurs
played a prominent role
in business.
(Helen)
I was born
and spent my first 18 years
in Albuquerque,
and I lived very close
to the Downtown,
which was my, uh, hangout.
(mellow piano music)
(Ann)
We moved here in 1940,
and had a store
Downtown Albuquerque.
(Sharon)
This became
an important spot for you.
-Now, why is that?
-Well,
this was Everitt Jewelers.
(Ann)
We bought it from
the original Mr. Everitt.
We sold jewelry.
We still had
a dollar-down,
dollar-a-week type thing.
So, you got to know
your customers pretty well.
Oh, I washed the glass windows
in the morning
and swept the floor
and kept the books
and waited on customers.
Did a little of everything.
(Helen)
Well, my parents moved
to Albuquerque in 1933.
It was the height
of the Depression,
and my father went to work
for Maisel's,
and he worked for Maisel's
for several years.
(Sharon)
This building
was created in 1939,
and it was in its time
the largest trading post
on the route, and it is
particularly distinguished
on the exterior for the murals
that were painted
by the young students
at the time
of the IAIA,
the Indian art school
in Santa Fe,
and many of the best-known
Indian artists,
people who went on to become
groundbreaking Indian artists,
actually painted these murals.
This is the only building
on the Mother Road
decorated by Native Americans,
and among the murals
that are here
is one by Pablita Velarde,
who became the matriarch
of a very, very well-known
Indian artist family.
(mellow music)
(Helen)
My father turned out to be
a wonderful salesman,
and with a real knack
for Indian jewelry,
and he opened his own store
about a block away,
across from the KiMo Theater,
called the Navajo Indian Store.
There were several
Jewish merchants
in Downtown Albuquerque.
One of them was a woman,
Mary Cohen,
and, uh, they had a wonderful
women's dress shop
in Downtown Albuquerque
called Jordan's,
and that was the main store
where I did my shopping,
and bringing things home
on approval.
And then, there was a woman
named Jean Marcus,
and she and her husband
had moved to Albuquerque
from New York,
and she had a store
on Central Avenue
called Accessories by Jean,
and it was all costume jewelry
and handbags and accessories.
And she was a woman
of great style,
and the fact
that she was from New York
was very impressive to me.
(narrator)
Success and business on Route 66
did now, however, translate
into being able to buy
the house of your dreams.
Discrimination by banks
against women,
and anyone who wasn't
considered white,
-was commonplace.
-Then, in 1953,
Second Street became
Eastbound Route 66,
and just to the north of that,
Third Street
became Westbound Route 66.
Historically, Winslow did have
a degree of
de facto segregation in housing.
Banks would only make loans
to people of color
to live in
certain parts of town.
(Spencer)
A realtor wouldn't sell
the property to my dad
unless we went around
to all the neighbors
in about a three-
or four-block radius,
and asked if it was okay
for a Chinese family
to move into the neighborhood.
At that point, though,
I think there were
probably about 14 or 15
Chinese families in Winslow.
My mother Linda
moved to Winslow,
uh, with my father
shortly after they were married,
right after World War II.
It was an arranged marriage,
and so they came over on a ship
in, uh, 1947,
I was born in 1948.
Route 66 was a source
of livelihood for the city.
Brought in all the tourism.
The railroads
had a big maintenance yard
in Winslow.
So we grew up,
um, in a grocery store
that was on First Street,
which was right across
some railroad tracks.
My dad was already
a naturalized citizen
through his service in the Army,
and so I remember
coming home one day,
and my dad said, "Okay,
your mother's
gotta speak English.
No more Chinese at home."
♪
So, one of the first things
that they did was the--
uh, they enrolled her in school.
My mother's sitting
in a 6th grade class,
learning English,
and so she learned English
for about--
I think she stayed there
for about a year.
She passed citizenship test,
naturalization test,
with flying colors, and, uh,
she would sometimes help out
in the grocery store.
My parents were determined
that all four of us kids
were gonna go off to college.
My dad realized that
working in a grocery store
wasn't gonna cut it,
so he took a gamble,
bought some property
and built a drive-in restaurant,
a hamburger stand,
Freddie's Drive-In.
And so, he said, "Okay,
I'm gonna work at the store,
and Mom is going
to run the restaurant.
Next thing I know
my mom was trying to figure out
how to cook hamburgers,
how to cook tacos,
how to make French fries,
uh, you know,
this whole thing, and then--
and how to manage people.
Remember still seeing the ads.
"Three for a dollar."
And you can buy that
and a 16-ounce drink
for 15 cents.
She actually made
a really good go of it,
and, uh, to this day,
she invented
something called
Freddie's tacos,
which is considered a classic.
So, that helped fund
my college education,
helped fund my brother's
and my sister's,
and then--but my dad said,
"You know,
we're still a little short."
So, then he--right next to it
he built a laundromat,
and so my mother
would sort of watch out
with the laundromat,
and the, uh--
and the--and the restaurant
and do the cooking there.
Their--their businesses
got a lot of traffic,
got a lot of tourism
along Route 66.
(traffic whirring)
(narrator)
Despite increased mobility
after World War II,
segregation was still
very much part of the landscape
on Route 66.
(soft guitar music)
(Larry)
The Spicer family
arrived in Monrovia in 1947.
My dad came here on Route 66.
My dad was able
to send for my mom.
(engine whirring)
From Walnut Street
to the railroad tracks,
on the north and south side,
and from Myrtle
to Mountain,
that's where
all the African Americans
were located in Monrovia.
♪
We started traveling back
to Mississippi in '65.
Traveling on Route 66,
prior to us leaving,
they would put this
burlap sack bag in the front,
because back in those days,
you know, the cars
weren't as good as they are now,
so that you needed
to carry some water,
and they would hook it
on the front of the car,
so if the car ran hot,
you had your water.
And so, we would ask my dad
about that all the time.
You know, we were very curious
about the things
that he was doing,
and he would tell--
he would call my mom--
her name was Geneva--
"Geneva, come get these kids,
I'm trying to load up the car
and stuff," you know.
We was--we were excited.
My mom prepped all the food,
you know, the clothing.
She took care of everything.
My mom would drive,
but my mom, man,
she had a heavy foot.
She drove too fast,
my dad didn't like that.
My mom would
get on down the road,
so he would drive the most.
We always traveled
with another family,
the Barneses,
so it was two families
driving behind one another
on Route 66 the whole time.
On convoy, we would get to
these gas stations.
My dad would take my sisters,
you know, so they--
'cause he didn't want them
going out in the bushes like us,
and, um, he would go
and stand out there,
you know, him and my mom,
but he made sure
that he would gas up the car,
and then he would park the car
over by the bathroom
so he can see us.
You know, he didn't wanna
leave us alone.
A couple of times, you know,
the people were
using the N-word
just over and over.
My dad was just polite,
keep his head up,
got in the car,
and then he would talk to us
while he's driving, you know,
about how bad people can be,
but you have to overlook it
because there's better people
in the world.
(narrator)
It was a new era,
and the American family,
united after years
of Depression and separation,
were eager to explore the West.
They took Route 66 to do it.
(Cynnie)
Yeah, I haven't seen
these pictures for a while.
(Jamie)
Well, my favorite thing
are the little socks.
(Cynnie)
Little socks--they were
loafers probably, right?
-Yeah.
-My thinking is,
they wanted
to come to California,
and it was February,
so it's cold.
-Right.
-Um, and Route 66
was the way
you get to California.
My mother was a debutante
in society of Philadelphia.
This Embassy Club
in Philadelphia,
they hired her
as the debutante of the dance.
She wasn't a trained dancer.
My dad at the time
was at The Mask and Wig Club,
and he wrote songs
and danced and sang
and all that stuff at the club.
He's at the Embassy and he wants
to ask her to dance,
because she's,
you know, the star,
and he walks over
and asked her to dance,
and she looked at him
and she went, "No."
And then he left,
and someone said,
"Come on, do you know
that that's Bobby Troup,
he's starring in The Mask."
"Oh," and she marches
over to him and says,
"Okay, let's dance."
That's the kind of guts she had.
No, I--I never called, uh,
my granddad "Grandpa"
or anything.
He was Bobby Troup.
And then my grandma,
I call her Namok.
The classic Route 66 story
that I know
was that Bobby Troup
and Namok were driving,
you know, they're in the car,
they're ready to come
to California,
and they have a map,
and Bobby Troup is gonna--
you know, he's thinking
of songwriting,
you know, he's got that
in his mind, so he's gonna write
about--a song about Route 40,
and she's like,
"No, that's not a good idea,
'cause, like,
it's only this long," right?
So, she suggests, "You should
write about Route 66."
And then, she leans over
and says,
"Get your kicks on Route 66,"
and he's like, "Ah"--
like, that's how I imagine,
so you know, in my mind,
as a kid, like,
he had a lightbulb,
and she's there.
You know, it's like
this perfect little partnership.
And here's the book she wrote.
Once I Was a Debutante.
Cynthia Hare,
she uses her maiden name.
"Driving across country,
I studied the road map
while Bobby drove the car.
We followed Route 40
for a long time.
I said, 'Why don't you
write a song about Route 40?'
'That's silly,' he said,
'we'll be on Route 66
most of the way to California.'
Silently I tried
to rhyme words with 'six.'
Six, mix, picks, kicks.
A lyric writer I'm not,
but I came up with
'Get your kicks
on Route 66.'"
And of course he used that line,
and she always thought
she should've been on
the, um, sheet music,
that she--songwriting credit,
but she didn't.
Yeah, Jamie,
you--you've seen this map,
and one of the fun things
I--I love about this,
and it kinda describes
their personality.
If--you know--you know,
well, she's so not artistic,
-me either.
-But she clearly is.
(Cynnie)
She is not, I mean, pasted--
no, I mean, come on.
(Jamie)
Look, she--she marked
where they started.
(Cynnie)
Well, no, where the--
where the lyrics are...
(Jamie)
Oh.
(Cynnie)
Yep. "Oklahoma City
looks mighty pretty..."
I mean, these are the--
you know, they're 10 cities.
The map is called
"the song map."
She obviously made it
from a road map,
must've just cut the bottom out,
and where Route 66 was,
traced it with a crayon.
(Jamie)
She's pointing, I think,
just to California.
-Oh, sure.
-I wonder where that sign is.
(Cynnie)
It must be
where you come in the state.
(Jamie)
Well, it's the state line,
yeah, so that's exciting.
(Cynnie)
They're here, they made it.
When they got here,
and he'd written some of it--
-Mhm.
-And then,
they got to meet Nat King Cole,
and they went down
to Music City,
and went into, like,
a record booth thing.
Route 66, lots of significance.
What it did for the family,
for money and support,
it, from what I understand,
is my mom always said
it bought the house
that we grew up in,
and I've reframed the map now,
showing the back of it
where she wrote,
you know,
that it bought the house,
and how much the house cost,
and what the taxes were.
(peppy piano music)
She didn't want the divorce,
she was only 35.
She dated some,
but nobody ever--
you know, he was
the man in her life,
I mean, until the day she died.
♪
You have the end of rationing,
you have the end of--
of men being posted
away from their homes
who wanna spend time
with families.
And they have
improved automobiles,
and--and everything else,
so they pack up
and they go on trips.
People wanna go vacation and see
the great national parks,
pop in the car,
and take Susie and Johnny,
and go for those long day trips
out in the desert,
and a lot of times
you had to drive at night,
'cause nobody had
air conditioning back then.
(Betty)
Traveling in August,
the hottest month of the year,
my father always wanted to leave
at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning,
so he could--the--we could
pass the desert early morning,
but it never
worked out that way.
We would leave maybe 6:00, 7:00.
But, getting ready,
my mother did all the wash,
the ironing, the packing,
she would fry chicken
so we'd have something to eat,
and we'd be on the road.
It was six kids
plus my parents
in my dad's 1956 Chevy.
(Hilda)
This is my oldest daughter,
her name is Diana,
and this is Anna,
the youngest one,
and this is, um, uh, Betty.
We used to go to New Mexico
every year, too,
and we would take Route 66.
It was a two-way.
One this way, one that way.
It was--there was a lot
of crosses on the street
that accidents had happened
and people had died.
(Betty)
One of the games
we used to play in the car
is "counting the crosses,"
'cause there was
crosses on the road.
My father,
he drove nonstop practically,
so when he would say,
"I'm getting tired,"
he would say,
"Betty, you be my eyes,"
and I always sat behind him,
standing up,
you know, and the wind
in my face.
And especially at night,
it was so dark on Route 66,
and everybody was asleep.
He would say, "Talk to me."
I had this relationship
with my father on the road.
Of course I was exhausted
in the morning,
but I stayed awake
with him all night.
(Hilda)
We weren't
a very religious people either,
but, um,
what I remember in my mind
I would say
for the Lord to guide us safely
to our destination,
and we did for years
and years and years.
(narrator)
Even though Route 66
was known as "bloody 66"
in more dangerous parts,
there were always women
forging new paths
for themselves,
unwilling or unable
to stay home.
(JoLynn)
I met Joy when I was working
for the Hobart Tribune
as a reporter,
and she was a transplant
from Rhode Island.
In the '40s, she had polio,
and she came out here
for her health.
They had a friend
that had a ranch
over in the Heber area,
and, uh, she was getting better,
and that's when she started
her Stockmen's Supply company
in an old shaggy van truck,
and it was, like, 1951, I think,
um, and she went
all over Arizona with her truck.
There was lots of ranches
that are not there now.
She was an exceptional person.
She was from Rhode Island,
she went to
the Gloria Vanderbilt School,
or something to that effect,
but she said
they didn't finish her off.
She had to come to the West
to get finished.
I would say probably
late '50 into maybe '60,
whenever Dee was born, you know.
I don't know how old Dee is.
But, um, anyway,
she had married Dotch.
He had a ranch
out at Dead River,
which is adjacent
to the Petrified Forest.
Today part of that
is Navajo land,
but anyway,
they had a ranch out there,
and, uh, a trading post
up on 66,
and that's where
some of her experiences
with tourists on 66
came into play.
Of course they sold gasoline,
and cold ice, beer,
soda pop, snacks,
uh, curios, you know,
Route 66 flags,
or lots of
kitschy little stuff back then.
She figured out that
that plane was flying low
'cause he was, you know,
signaling or whatever,
and so she sent somebody
to stop traffic at the one end,
and he landed going west,
and just short
of the river bridge,
Dead River Bridge,
right past her place,
and they filled him up
and he took off.
She picked up on stuff
that other people
wouldn't pick up on anyway.
I see a pattern arise
when you look
at the different women.
These women contributed
to the financial success
of their families.
They were able
to put a Christmas present
under the tree that
might not be there otherwise.
(mellow music)
(Marshall)
Today we're in, um, my hometown,
Ash Fork, Arizona,
right here on Route 66.
And when we moved up here
in October of 1947,
I was eight years old,
and, um, my dad
was new to the railroad,
so he was not--he was
unemployed most of the time.
Dad was gonna have to
provide food,
and we didn't have enough money
for, uh--for meat,
so Dad wanted a hunting rifle,
and Mom,
she decided to get a job.
She was a farm girl,
so she had never worked,
always been a housewife.
She had three boisterous boys.
She was in a family way
when she was 16.
So, by the time
she's about 22, I think,
she had had four children.
And all of a sudden now
she's working in a restaurant
and had a job,
and it was really neat,
'cause she put on
a lot of makeup,
and she really looked great.
And she wore
this fancy waitress dress.
If you'd left L.A.
and had gone through
Barstow and Needles
and Kingman and Seligman,
by the time you got to Ash Fork
to eat,
you're ready to kill somebody,
and they didn't leave much--
much for tips.
She always had in her--
in her apron pocket,
was--it was always
full of change,
and me, a nickel
was a lot of money,
and I'd come in and bum
a nickel or a dime off of her.
The Depression
was still kinda going on,
and after--after the war,
uh, at least for us.
When you walked downtown,
you saw businesses,
there was a post office,
um, a movie theater
that had films
four nights a week,
and, um, let's see,
then there was a barber shop,
and a drugstore, and, uh,
after the drug store
was the old opera house,
which was now a cafe
where my mother was a waitress,
and one of her waitress gigs
was there.
Then, there was
a little alleyway,
and then there was another cafe,
and that was
the Dewdrop Inn Cafe.
The other hospitality place
was--was down by
the railroad tracks,
and that's where, um--
that's where the, um,
the--let's just call it
hospitality
for single girls.
I delivered papers there, too.
I had no idea,
I was only 11 or 12 at the time.
That was one of my other jobs,
I was a paperboy.
(paperboy)
Football scores!
Morning paper!
Morning Star!
Paper, mister?
But, sometimes at night,
the--the bus came from Flagstaff
that brought the newspapers,
and they dumped 'em off
at the Arizona Bar,
and so I'd wait down there
till the bus came in,
and if it snowed in Flagstaff,
boy, on Route 66,
it was just
a two-lane road then,
and I mean, those roads
were really dangerous.
They, uh--and these buses
would be late,
maybe two or three hours late.
I imagine myself
trudging through the snow
on a bicycle
and delivering papers,
and the people all saying,
"Oh, Marshall,
we were so worried about you,
we didn't think you'd make it."
They were asleep
and didn't care.
Council buys park!
Scouts find lost girl!
Morning Star!
Except at the--at the little--
the other hotel,
and, uh, it was al--
the lights were always on,
and she would bring--
madam, the madam
would bring me in
and give me chocolate.
I did not know until
my mother told me one day,
we were walking down the street,
and the madam
had bright red hair.
I said, "Hi," and she said,
"Hi, Marshall, how are you?"
I think my mom thought I was
a regular customer there
or something, I--she said,
"How do you know her?"
And I said, "Oh, I was, uh--
I'm the paperboy,
I--I deliver papers there."
(upbeat music)
'47 and '48 and '49,
they had some
of the most brutal winters
in Arizona history.
Dad was able to buy
an Army surplus tent.
We slept in there
with just blankets
and no heating, nothing.
And the next house
we lived in here,
it was the rock house,
and, um, it--it had plumbing,
but the bathroom didn't work.
My mom, she was
salutatorian of her class,
and, um, real smart,
and she had a hard life,
and she could've had so much.
(melancholic music)
♪
People's hopes and dreams
are not always realized,
and if the road
symbolized opportunity
and mobility and hope,
sometimes it brought
disappointment
and devastation and death.
There's--there's
no doubt about that.
(narrator)
As more Americans
took to the road,
the case for an interstate
became clear,
prompting changes
that impacted women's lives.
(broadcaster)
Though we have
the greatest highway system
in all the world,
it can't carry...
(dramatic music)
♪
(narrator)
Not all communities' needs
were considered equal.
(Mark)
In the 1950s,
San Bernardino embarks
on a freeway-building project.
Off-ramps are built
directly exiting
only into the eastern part
of San Bernardino into Downtown.
This directly cut off access
into the west side
for motorists traveling along
the new freeway.
There's a very willful neglect
of the Mexican merchant class
and their livelihood.
(bright piano music)
♪
The freeway was a concern
of our family,
'cause my mom thought
that it would
bring the business down.
(Lucy)
In the '50s, '51, we had
everything on Mount Vernon.
We had a drugstore,
we had beer bars,
grocery store, theater,
a mortuary, a pharmacy,
two markets.
It was very lively then.
Now it's very different,
very different.
Today the Mitla Cafe
is really one of the--
the only surviving businesses
that's left
from this once powerful
Mexican merchant district.
(peppy music)
(Patti)
I think the secret
to the success of Mitla Cafe
is that we try to stay
as authentic as we can
to the recipes
that my grandmother had.
She established
an atmosphere of family,
which we try to maintain.
We know our customers' names,
you know,
we know their problems,
we know their hardships,
or whatever in life
that they're going through,
you know, we know it,
and we reach out to them.
And we've employed a lot
of people in this community.
♪
(Judith)
I was recruited
to run for mayor.
My argument was
that we needed to right
and correct the system
that we had in San Bernardino,
which was tantamount
to freeway apartheid,
and they say, "Apartheid?"
Yeah, I said,
"That's a strong word."
You say that,
that gets everybody's attention.
I said, "Yes, and I need
the support of all the mayors
and supervisors there,"
and they all supported it.
Consequently, we have
this crosstown freeway now.
It has the exits,
and the slow lanes
go to the left,
and then the fast lanes
stay on the right,
then on the way back, so it--
it's the way it should be,
the way
it should've been all along,
and so we won that battle.
I wasn't conscious of
I was following the legacy
of my family and my father.
Uh, it was what was right
and what was best
for the community,
and what we needed to do
to right the wrongs
of the past.
(upbeat music)
(narrator)
Almost 100 years
after her birth in 1926,
Route 66 is truly
a living history classroom.
(woman)
My grandmother's recipe,
it's got three ingredients:
butter, flour, and sugar.
♪
Then, we went
to the movie premiere,
and from the time it started
I just started crying,
because never
in a million thousand years
did I think they were gonna,
like, tell my life story
on a big screen.
(overlapping remarks)
-You still get emotional.
-I do.
(peppy piano music)
♪