The Forgotten Road

by Richard Paul Evans

  My guidebook said that there are 180 of these statues still in existence. The original giant statues held an ax, but they can be found holding just about anything from giant hot dogs to mufflers. I could fully imagine some future civilization uncovering these hulking creatures and concluding that they were gods our people worshipped.

  This giant Paul Bunyon (purposely misspelled with an o instead of an a for trademark reasons) was brought to Atlanta, Illinois, after the closing of Bunyon’s Hot Dog establishment in Cicero, a suburb of Chicago and home to mob boss Al Capone, who moved to Cicero to escape the reach of Chicago police. There is no evidence that this giant fiberglass statue was in trouble with the law.

  I continued walking, and two and a half hours later I reached Lincoln, Illinois. Interestingly, the city was named for Abraham Lincoln even before he became president. Lincoln is not a large town but big enough to have a Mel-O-Cream secret formula doughnut shop, where I stopped and ate a plain glazed doughnut. A mile later I passed the Route 66 Chapel. A sign on the door read,

  Knock and it shall be opened to you.

  Unfortunately, the building was locked with a padlock and when I knocked, no one opened, which pretty much summed up my belief in and experience with God.

  One thing that Lincoln, the town, is famous for (aside from its namesake) is the Railsplitter Covered Wagon. The twenty-four-foot-tall covered wagon, driven by a twelve-foot fiberglass statue of Abraham Lincoln, is the largest in the world, as attested to by the Guinness World Records certificate proudly displayed next to the wagon.

  The wagon is a latecomer to the Route 66 attractions. It was built in 2001 and displayed along 66 in the small Illinois village of Divernon until 2007, when a Lincoln man purchased the wagon and donated it to the local tourism bureau. Two years later it was moved to its current location in the parking lot of a Best Western Hotel, where it was voted the number-one roadside attraction in America by Reader’s Digest magazine.

  I walked into the Best Western and booked my room. The clerk spent more time than I liked looking at my driver’s license and had trouble running my credit card, making me wonder if it had finally been flagged. But a few moments later he checked me in, apologizing for their system, which he complained was notoriously slow.

  I ate a light dinner, then stayed up late watching a documentary about the making of Citizen Kane and the war that ensued between genius actor and director Orson Welles and billionaire newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who was famous for his yellow journalism and the line, “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.”

  The fallout from the battle of egos caused irreparable damage to both men and all but left Welles a broken recluse. Sadly, to most generations, Welles’s legacy became his stint as pitchman for Paul Masson wines, with the memorable line, “We will sell no wine before its time.” Welles was said to be inebriated during the recording.

  The documentary left me thinking about my own life and legacy. These two men were world changers, men at the top of their games, dealing with fame, fortune, power, and glory. And they, like so many others in their situations, self-destructed. A long walk could have done them some good.

  The next morning I lay in bed for a half hour before getting up. It was my birthday, May eighteenth. I shared the date with Hollywood director Frank Capra and Pope John Paul II. May eighteenth was also the day that Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned emperor of France. I always took that as a good omen.

  I remembered that Amanda had celebrated my birthday before I left Chicago. Had we not, I wouldn’t have been late to the airport and would have made my flight, making it my death day. I needed to remember to thank her for that when I got back.

  I left the hotel before eight, following my map west on Lincoln Parkway. The road looked like an interstate and I walked along it for nearly three miles before spotting the original 66 running perpendicular to the highway.

  There wasn’t much to see on my walk. I passed three towns, including one called Broadwell, where a large granite rock bearing a plaque announced THE PIG HIP RESTAURANT 1937–1991. The restaurant was now a museum. I continued on, wondering if anyone ever stopped at the place.

  After more than five hours of walking in solitude I came to Williamsville, where the Route turned off into a suburban neighborhood past a deserted Route 66 attraction called the Old Station—a simple gas station decorated in Route 66 memorabilia.

  It was late afternoon when I reached Sherman. I walked a few more miles into town, then stopped at the Pioneer Motel. I had put in a long day of nearly twenty-five miles. It was the one time that I would have gladly splurged for a massage if I could have found someone other than a truck driver to give it. Surprisingly there was a decent Thai restaurant nearby, where I told my waitress that it was my birthday. She brought me a complimentary dish of coconut ice cream with a candle in it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A man once said to Abraham Lincoln, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to shoot you.” “Why is that?” Lincoln asked. The man replied, “Because I made a promise that if I ever saw a man uglier than myself, I would have pity and kill him.” Lincoln replied, “Shoot away, sir. If I’m uglier than you, I don’t want to live.”

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  The next morning I entered the teeming city of Springfield, Illinois, the sixth-largest city in Illinois and the largest in central Illinois. Again, I wasn’t looking forward to the crowds but I was ready for some creature comforts, and I had already decided to take a break once I reached the town. I walked just half a day, checked into the Springfield Hilton, took a hot shower, and set about doing my laundry.

  The hotel was only a few blocks from the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices Historical Site, where Abraham Lincoln and his partner worked from 1843 to1852.

  Across from the law office is the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln wrote and delivered his “house divided” speech. It is also where his twelfth and final funeral was held before he was buried. At that time, the city of Springfield had a population of twelve thousand, and more than a hundred thousand people attended his funeral. His twelfth. I lived in a city of nearly three million people, and only seven showed up to mine.

  The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum was also only a few blocks from my hotel, so I decided to play tourist. The museum is designed with a circular plaza with different wings depicting different times of Lincoln’s life, from the early log cabin years to the White House and the Civil War, replete with actual Lincoln family artifacts.

  One exhibit showed a display of Lincoln political cartoons. I was surprised at how callously he was mocked by the papers of his time.

  I reflected on the Citizen Kane documentary I’d watched a few nights earlier. Like both Hearst and Welles, Lincoln too was a man driven by ambition. Yet in Lincoln’s case, that was what allowed him to endure his painful string of failures and defeats. He learned to turn a deaf ear to mocking and focused, instead, on the matters at hand.

  Lincoln’s goal was not, like Hearst’s, to build an empire or to further fill his overstuffed pockets. Nor was it like Welles’s, to further inflate his own ego. Lincoln’s priority was to serve his fellow man. And in deflecting self-aggrandizement, he received far more acclamation than Hearst or Welles could have ever dreamt of—a national monument in Washington and his face carved into a mountain by a grateful nation. Not surprisingly, more books have been written about Lincoln than about anyone else in human history except Christ.

  There was one more thing about Lincoln I found interesting. It was something I already knew, but seeing the pictures of his funeral made it more real. Lincoln had dreamed of his death just a few days before it happened. What I hadn’t heard is that Lincoln’s cabinet recalled that, on the morning of his assassination, Lincoln had told them that he’d dreamed of sailing across an unknown body of water at great speed. It reminded me of my recurring dream. And here I now was, walking the road.

  It was refreshing not having to reach a destination. I to
ok my time, “sauntering,” as Thoreau called it, walking around the town with no purpose other than to nourish my mental state. I felt remarkably light.

  I ate dinner at the “famous” Obed & Isaac’s Microbrewery. At my waitress’s recommendation, I ordered the local special, the horseshoe—an open-faced sandwich on thick-sliced toasted bread, with grilled sirloin and cheese sauce topped with french fries. It was pretty much a heart attack sandwich and I loved every bite. It’s one of the benefits of walking as much as I was. You don’t have to watch your calories—just the traffic.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We all have two stories—the journal of our life events, and the fiction we tell ourselves about them.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  As much as I enjoyed my brief respite, I was back to walking the next day. The next four days were uneventful, so there wasn’t much to write about. I checked off a few Route 66 attractions: I ate catfish and coleslaw at the Ariston Café—the oldest café on Route 66—and passed the Soulby Shell station. But my most memorable stop was in Staunton, Illinois. There was an old, defunct gas station and a sign along the side of the road that said,

  HENRY’S RABBIT RANCH

  The ranch had a large yard with various attractions, including a poor man’s version of the Cadillac Ranch—six Volkswagen Rabbits buried hood-first into the ground.

  Four signs hung above the station:

  WASCALLY WABBITS

  GET THEIR KICKS

  MEETING FOLKS

  ON 66

  The station had four weathered gas pumps. The pumps were more recent than many I’d seen at the vintage gas stations I had passed on my way, but not too modern. The price of gas was $0.63, and the Total Sale numbers only had one space for dollars, meaning the most you could spend on gas was $9.99. I guess back then they couldn’t comprehend a tank of gas costing more than that.

  A sign on the building advertised souvenirs and cold sodas, which sounded like a good enough reason to go inside. A brass bell clanged as I entered and the spring-loaded door slammed shut behind me. The room was about as cluttered as the yard, with Route 66 paraphernalia, maps, and books filling every available space.

  A man wearing a white-collared shirt with suspenders stood behind the counter. He was holding a large rabbit, softly petting its short, brindled fur. The wood counter was half covered with brown shag carpet, the rest with a yellowed road map of Route 66. On the wall behind him was a framed, handwritten sign that read,

  Please

  No Discussions on

  Politics or Religion

  on Route 66.

  Rabbits, that’s okay.

  Ironically, there was a political bumper sticker stuck to the front of the counter: a picture of a black rabbit next to an American flag, with the words

  VOTE FOR MONTANA FOR PRESIDENT

  I was looking at the sticker when the man spoke. “First time here?”

  I looked up. “Yes, it is. Nice rabbit you’ve got there.”

  “His name’s Henry.”

  “Is the place named after him?”

  “Nah. He’s not that old. I’ve only had him a few months. He was one of them rescued animals. Animal control took him from a woman who was a pet hoarder.”

  “I’ve heard of hoarders, but not pet hoarders.”

  “Same thing, only they do it with animals instead of old cans and junk. Crazy biddy. They’ve raided her home and taken her pets three times in the past three years. When I got Henry, here, she had one hundred ninety rabbits. Most of them damn near starving. Officers said the place stunk to high heaven.”

  “He looks well fed now.”

  “Oh, he’s well fed, all right. Fat and sassy. Thinks he owns the place.” He held the rabbit up by its torso so its legs dangled. “Look at that figure.” He looked back at me. “But you probably didn’t stop just to yak. If you did, you come to the right place, but what can I get you? I got a whole table of Route 66 patches over there, look good on that pack of yours. You out walking the Route?”

  I nodded. “Westbound. I started in Chicago.”

  He petted his rabbit. “Thought so. You look like a Route walker. Not a lot of you out there, but I see you from time to time. Tell you what, I got pins too, if that’s your thing. A lot of people like to collect ’em. ’Specially the younger folk.”

  “Thanks, but I just want something cold to drink.”

  “Got some cold sodas in the fridge. Guess that’s redundant. If they’re in the fridge, they better be cold. Ever heard of Route Beer, the route spelled with a u like Route 66?”

  I nodded. “I had some back in Joliet. Is that what you have?”

  “No, don’t sell it. I got some colas and ginger ale.”

  “I’ll take a ginger ale,” I said.

  He walked over to a refrigerator, which was the kind you’d find in a house, not a public stop. It was white and covered with dirty handprints. He crouched down a little to look through it, then brought over a bottle of Fanta Orange soda. He set it down on the counter in front of me. “Here you go. Icy cold and satisfying.”

  “That’s not ginger ale,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m out of ’em.”

  “I guess I’m drinking orange soda.”

  “It’s good, you’ll like it. I had some Europeans in here a while back. Nothing unusual about that, I get more Europeans in here than I do Americans—Americans don’t know what they got in their own backyard—but these Europeans told me they got orange Fanta in Europe, but it isn’t the same as it is here. They say it’s sweeter here.

  “Never been to Europe, so I couldn’t tell you that for sure, but wouldn’t surprise me. Americans are addicted to sugar. We eat more of it than anywhere else in the world. I read somewhere that the average American eats a hundred and seventy pounds of sugar a year. That’s the same as the average weight of an American woman. Course it used to be a lot less.”

  “The weight of women or the sugar consumption?”

  “Both,” he said. “And you can be sure there’s a connection there.”

  “I’ve been to Europe,” I said. “But I couldn’t tell you if the Fanta tastes different.”

  “I’ve got no reason not to trust the Europeans. ’Cept the French. Still, you’d think they’d keep the soda all the same.”

  I took a sip of the drink. “You would think so.”

  “Don’t know if you read about it in the paper, but a few years back I ran one of my rabbits for president of the United States. I figured she had a shot. She was the perfect candidate. Black like Obama, female like Clinton, and old like McCain.”

  I smiled. “This is your campaign bumper sticker?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “How did the campaign go?”

  “I don’t need to tell you she lost. Two-party system, an independent rabbit doesn’t have a chance.”

  I nodded. “I look forward to the day when a nonpartisan rabbit can sit in the Oval Office.”

  “You and me both,” he said. “You and me both.”

  I grinned. “Politics aside, how’s business?”

  “Good. And heating up. Always heats up with the weather. One day last summer I had twenty-two cars stop in one day. I think that’s some kind’a record.” He set down the rabbit. It took two small hops to the edge of the counter and stopped. “Don’t worry, he won’t jump off. Rabbits don’t like heights.” He looked at me. “Fascinating creatures, rabbits. Do you know what a baby rabbit is called?”

  “A bunny?”

  “Kittens. The proper term is kittens. I’m a living encyclopedia on rabbits. I know all sorts of useful facts about ’em. Many not so useful as well. You probably didn’t know that more than half the world’s rabbits live in North America.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t know that.”

  “They’re a big part of American history. Around the time of the Great Depression, jackrabbits darn near overran a few states. It was apocalyptic. They traveled in herds and reproduced every thirty-two days. They
wiped out entire farms in a day.

  “The farmers and ranchers who settled the land had chased off all the coyotes and wolves, so there was nothing to keep the rabbit population from growing. By some estimates, they figured there were ten million rabbits just in western Kansas.”

  “That’s a lot of rabbits,” I said.

  “You said it. At first the government put bounties on the hares’ heads, but it about bankrupted them. Then farmers took to selling rabbit pelts, but pretty soon they were more plentiful than bad drivers in Missouri and the pelts wasn’t worth the cost of the bullet they shot it with.

  “So the people started jackrabbit drives. Townspeople would gather in a big ol’ circle and start yellin’ and stompin’ and close in the circle until they got a few thousand rabbits in one big pile and then they’d club ’em to death. One drive had more than ten thousand people making that circle. Killed every rabbit in an eight-mile square.”

  “Sounds brutal,” I said.

  “Yeah, everyone cries brutality until it’s their problem. People outside the area called the farmers barbarians. But the farmers just said, ‘Fine, we’ll just send them your way.’ Well, that shut ’em up real fast. People still that way, finding motes in people’s eyes when they got a castle stuck in their own.

  “Ya know somethin’ else that’s peculiar about rabbits? Their teeth never stop growing. If they didn’t grind them all the time, they’d have tusks. I’m not making that up. Fact is, I had a rabbit with tusks. Called him Woolly, like a woolly mammoth, ’cause of the tusks.

  “He wasn’t even that old either—and rabbits live upwards of ten years. Wish I still had Woolly. People would pay handsomely to see a rabbit with tusks.

  “Speakin’ of tusks, ya know, some scientists are on the verge of bringin’ back the woolly mammoth? They found some mammoths up in ol’ Siberia, frozen in ice; that’s where they got the DNA. They’re gonna splice and dice it, then do what they do with a modern elephant and whammo, instant mammoth. Scares me some. You never know when they’re gonna start makin’ elephant people or ratmen or some such nonsense.”