"Eating Up Route 66" by T. Lindsay Baker

T. Lindsay Baker’s Eating Up Route 66 is not your typical Mother Road guidebook. It’s a history—with business notes, photographs, and recipes.

Baker, a retired history professor from Texas has written plenty about the American West. Twelve years of research went into his latest effort, and not just in libraries and museums. An antique-car enthusiast, Baker traveled the road in a 1930 Ford station wagon in 2017. Not just a day trip, mind you, but the length of the route--and back. 

In a few weeks, he’ll leave Chicago to be part of a nine-car convoy of classic cars to cover the route—to L.A. and back—at an average of 35 miles per hour, the typical speed attained on pre-WWII highways, he noted.

The history that Baker provides isn’t just a nostalgic account of a bygone era. Starting in Chicago, the book outlines places of interest, explains how they came to be, as well as how they came to an end. But all is not lost. Some 30 percent of the places Baker describes in the book are still serving food, he said.

Some of the traditions created for travelers on Route 66 carry on. Baker loves the horseshoe sandwich made famous by Joe Schweska in 1928 at the Leland Hotel in Springfield, Illinois. The secret was the sauce, said Baker. “While one cook is engaged in making the sauce, it is helpful for a second person to prepare ham steak, French fries, and toast,” he wrote.

Schweska has long left the scene, but the horseshoe sandwich is very much alive in Springfield today. Yes, the Cozy Dog Drive-in is also included among Baker's Springfield highlights.

Of the 20 recipes that Baker includes, his favorite is the old-fashioned navy bean soup originally prepared at the Bowl and Bottle Restaurant in Chicago, an eating place originally operated by the Fred Harvey Co., the firm that ran restaurants and hotels usually associated with railway travel in the West.

Baker’s listings tend to whet your appetite. Whether it’s the glazed strawberry pie served at Miss Hulling’s Cafeteria in St. Louis or the onion-fried hamburger at Johnnie’s Grill in El Reno, Okla., you want to settle into a booth and wave down a waitress. It’s not always fancy. Baker includes a recipe from the Old Riverton Store in Riverton, Kansas, for a baloney and cheese sandwich, for example.

You learn things in this book, such as the fact that the Black Cat Café in Commerce, Okla., was where New York Yankee star Mickey Mantle hung out as a teen. “It was the only joint in town that had a neon sign,” Mantle recalled.

While California summoned up images of sand and surf, the first encounter inbound Route 66 travelers had with the state was having to traverse a stretch of the Mojave Desert, no simple trek in the days when radiators often overheated and tires were susceptible to the sharp lava rock found in some places, noted Baker, adding that when Glen Campbell drove a 1957 Chevy across the desert in 1960, he tied water bottles to the car’s grill to refill the radiator.

If you’re looking for evidence of Route 66’s legacy when it comes to dining, consider the fact that two of our best-known fast-food operations—McDonald’s and Taco Bell—sprang up on the Mother Road in San Bernardino. Baker provides the details of the early days of both establishments.

Baker doesn’t shy away from identifying the double standard that existed along the road. “You can’t talk about cross-country travel without talking about racism,” he said. Baker points out that African Americans were often denied service at many of the businesses along Route 66 for decades. He mentions places that didn’t discriminate, as well as citing outlets like Alberta’s Hotel & Snack Bar in Springfield, Mo. where Margie Alberta Northcutt Ellis was “always looking for avenues to meet the needs of her African American customers.”