Route 66 -- The Mother Road

Well, of course this is the road used by the Joads on their trip to California. It was the main road then, and it no longer exists now -- it was officially "decommissioned" in the 1980's. But it lives on -- in people's hearts, on the internet, and in stretches of highway -- some still used, some forgotten and decaying.

Here is one site that gives a good quick history of "The Main Street of America". Here's an excellent one from the National Park Service. And there are plenty of others.

Here's one: Ghost Towns of Route 66. Once the interstates came through, they sucked what lifeblood remained from the small western towns.

How about Route 66 in postcards?

One website will give you a Route 66 slideshow.

Route 66 even has a song written about it. You can watch it performed by Nat King Cole here, or watch the Rolling Stones cover it here.

There was even a tv show about Route 66 in the early '60's: "Two young men drive around the US in a now vintage Corvette, working at odd jobs, helping people, and searching for adventure. Ironically, the show was filmed on location all across the USA, but rarely near the real Route 66."

And this I did not know until just now: it is a cultural treasure akin the ruins of Pompei, the Andean city of Machu Pichu, as judged by the World Monuments Watch, which focuses global attention on cultural heritage sites around the world in dire need of preservation.

What Scarlet Letter?

I assume you all know who this is. But how about

this guy? What could they possibly have in common?

This.

The first guy, as you probably know, is the golfer Tiger Woods. He's won a lot of golf tournaments and hence a lot of money. And, as you probably also know, he recently had a nasty spat with his wife over his (repeated) infidelity. This past Friday, February 19, 2010, he made his first public statement regarding the matter.

To Robert Stein, this all looked familiar.

His pillory a golf-clubhouse lectern, America's most famous athlete staged his own public humiliation yesterday for a TV camera, the 21st century equivalent of donning the scarlet "A" for a bloodthirsty Puritan crowd.

Now if you're one of my current seniors, and you had Ivy Morrison as your teacher last year, you know what he's talking about: Chapter 1 of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne emerges from prison. Before she can take up her place in society, she must subject herself to an hour of public humiliation, standing before the good citizens of Boston town, wearing the symbol of her shame (adultery) on her breast -- the scarlet letter A.

It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,—so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,—was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.
“She hath good skill at her needle, that’s certain,” remarked one of the female spectators; “but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?”
“It were well,” muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, “if we stripped Madam Hester’s rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter, which she hath stitched so curiously, I’ll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one!”
“O, peace, neighbours, peace!” whispered their youngest companion. “Do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her heart.”

But I'm not here to tell you that story. I just wanted to point out that out there are -- in the "real world" -- people who know this story. And they find it relevant 160 years after it was published.

Furthermore, they assume that their readers -- as literate, educated Americans -- will recognize the allusion. If you don't -- and it could be your boss, or a customer, or a prospective boyfriend/girlfriend -- you expose yourself as, well, someone not of the first rank.