The latest addition to the Buzzy’s Country Store memorabilia art collection comes courtesy of Eric Brotherton:
Eric presented this to me just a few days after I had read this article discussing how a California Highway maintenance employee had visited Ocean City, Maryland and saw the following sign on the Rt. 50 bridge leading out of Ocean City:
After seeing that in Maryland, the California highway guy then decided that California should have a similar one and took action to have one installed there:
But back to Rt. 66 and Eric’s bottle opener/plaque. It made me wonder how then did Rt. 66 get to be such a thing and not Rt. 50 or some other U.S. highway that did span the entire east to west trip. Turns out that the song and the T-V Show by that title helped put Rt. 66 on the map so to speak:
As for how the song came to be, some people say a woman’s to blame (credit in this case.) The song’s author Bobby Troup set out to write it about Rt. 40 but his wife suggested the “Get Your Kicks on Rt. 66” title (click here.)
I always thought that Rt. 66 was a Chuck Berry song and in fact he did do a cover of it. However, I just learned that it was Nat King Cole who first recorded it. Fitting then that his daughter Natalie and company did this version of it at the 2000 R&R Hof induction ceremony.
Sad footnote – Rt. 66 has fallen on some hard times of late and is in pretty bad shape (click here for that story.) Maybe too many people got too many kicks on it back in the day.