Miss Route 66

by Michael Lund

  "Sure. You have to be where the customers will be. Think of Fanny's. It's on Route 66, see? A major east-west route, so plenty of out-of-state travelers have come by here."

  "Yeah. That makes sense."

  "Not only that, local people have a tendency to do their around-town trips along such a thoroughfare."

  "OK, I believe you. But I'm not so sure on that one."

  I didn't think of myself as a local girl any more, by the way. After my second year at Northeast Missouri State, I worked in St. Louis over the summers and kept my visits to family brief. I felt I'd never come back to live in Fairfield with its provincial mores and commitment to the status quo.

  "I watched my classmates," Sandy continued, "those who stayed on in town. They didn't want to leave the familiar, their friends and family. But even people who've lived here forever like thinking about the possibility of change. And they know how roads in town connect up to state and national roads. So they tend to go out of their way to end up driving those bigger routes."

  "Hmm."

  "So, Fanny's has always been in a good spot. Not a perfect spot, though."

  "How so?"

  "Well, when they built the bypass--and later the Interstate--no place had the same advantage of being in town and along a national highway at the same time. You were either in town or along the highway, except for those out-of-town folks who come into town to get gas or eat or something."

  "Fanny's still going strong, though," I noted.

  "It is, but not as strong as it might be."

  "You have a strategy for that?"

  "I do," said Sandy. It turned out, she had a strategy that would be far more successful than anyone had anticipated.

  As the two older ladies' heiress apparent at Fanny's, Sandy had implemented a program that sustained the operation through changing times and prepared the way for her own later business venture. The key to her plan was the symbol.

  Once the major highways had bypassed in-town establishments, Sandy reasoned, local people couldn't feel they were on nation-crossing paths during their daily driving. They would have to go out of town--say, to Jefferson City or St. Louis--to capture that connection to grander destinies. But they might feel connected if an establishment like Fanny's Dairy Delite emphasized its place on larger maps through symbolic representation.

  So Sandy changed the name of Mrs. Hamilton's and Miss Powers' place to Fanny's Route 66 Delite and began decorating the place with icons of the highway and its glorious past. She found and framed old magazine photos of cars and gas stations. She collected memorabilia from the Depression and the World War II era, especially roadside attractions like Burma Shave signs and "See Meramec Cavern" posters.

  She gave Fanny's a new theme, that is, and her timing was perfect. As America moved on in the turbulent 1960s, as two-lane roads gave way to limited-access superhighways, people wanted to retain a sense that they belonged, even if it was to an older order. Against the hurry and unsettled nature of the present, Sandy provided a nostalgic atmosphere of the good old days.

  The strategy worked so well Sandy later opened her own business--not a "Mom and Pop" operation, but a "Mom" one. Out on the western edge of town, where the business route connected with Interstate 44 (the highway that replaced old Route 66), she built her first Mom's Business Cafe.

  She catered to through drivers, who could see her advertising along the roadway, and to town folk, who were reached by word of mouth. Mom's did so well, Sandy soon had restaurants across the state, then across the Midwest, and now she's going national.

  Each Mom's re-creates the homey atmosphere of a family restaurant in a distinctly feminine mode, but it's run with the efficiency believed to characterize a masculine business approach. Decor and menu draw on both realms. Perhaps as important to success has been her choice of location--places that feel both local and connected by routes that go on to distant, well-known destinations.

  So Sandy analyzed the traffic and positioned herself to profit from it. I, on the other hand, have been settled in St. Louis for several decades, building a stable family and playing the flute. I'll tell you more about my music career in just a minute, as all the pieces of my story seem to be coming together here. Not in the way I had imagined, but perhaps in a satisfying pattern nonetheless.

  But here first are the key elements of the speech I delivered to all those Fairfieldians still interested in Miss Route 66.

  I couldn't, of course, go ahead with my declaration that the whole thing had been a sham, that winners were picked ahead of time by a close circle of old men. Mary had disabused me of that notion. But there I was on the program, committed to speaking as one of the hundreds of girls whose lives had been improved by participation in the process.

  And that's, in fact, pretty much what I ended up saying! I began with my impulsive purchase of a flute, saying that becoming a contestant must have been in the back of my mind all the time. I'd just needed a reason to explore my own potential for music, for a public life.

  The weeks of practice on my own and then during the final days of rehearsal were important steps in my development. And not just as flutist or as model for swimsuit or evening gown, but as young person emerging into adulthood. Even though school and church were working toward the same ends, the Miss Route 66 contest had given me an extra measure of self-confidence that had generated benefits for me ever since.

  Then I had to say that working with the other girls had not been a dog-eat-dog competition, but an effort in cooperation, shared experience, bonding with those who were trying for the same prize. When we teared up as Sally stepped forward to show her crown, it was not with jealousy or regret but with joy at her success.

  I mean to tell you, I laid it on, giving the citizens of Fairfield just what they wanted to hear. And the thing is, by the time I was done, I found I believed it myself!

  9

  Oh, well, not every bit of it.

  There are, I know, better ways to develop feminine self-confidence than through beauty contests. And as we've come to provide other avenues, we've moved forward as a society.

  Too, there's something fundamentally flawed about this subject-object relationship endorsed by a beauty contest in which men judge women. Women are subjects also, you know, thinking beings who look at the world even as the world looks at them.

  But, for me, the pageant began or continued some important changes in how I'd thought of myself, of what I wanted do with the rest of my life. I think I've always known that, even if I believed the thing had been rigged.

  Mary's explanation of the real plot--to get Pierce out of the way quietly--makes a fair amount of sense, though. She said that hers had not been the first complaint about the assistant principal. But while people like Mayor Rodd had at first dismissed such suspicions, Mary's testimony changed their mind.

  Her father, Marvin Dunkin, had also spoken to a lawyer, who'd talked with the chief of police. So it was decided that, in order to avoid embarrassment for the town, Pierce would be allowed to complete the current pageant. But he would lose his job as assistant principal after he admitted to unnamed "errors in judgment" in the carrying out of his duties. It was not a severe punishment, but it forced him out of education.

  The other key witness to the solicitations was Blind Bill Martin. He'd overheard enough of what Pierce said to me and, on other occasions, to Sally to convince any last skeptics among the powers that be.

  Not knowing all this, though, I was mad at everyone that night. And for days afterwards I kept thinking that Pierce had not been alone in a cruel effort to take advantage of Fairfield girls. But I didn't tell anyone except Sandy and--by complete accident--Larry Thornton. And I wouldn't have told him either if I hadn't gotten flustered in the family bomb shelter.

  You see, we had that date I'd agreed to shortly after the pageant. He became the first boy to take me out to dinner. We went to a family-style restaurant on old Business Route 66 at the west edge of town. He was a lot more restrained on this date th
an Randy had ever been, and he surprised the heck out of me when he suggested we come back to my house, watch TV with my parents or just chat. This pleased Mom and Dad enormously.

  "Larry, what are you going to do with your life?" asked my dad. He was surprisingly animated for a Friday evening, even turning down the volume on the TV so we could all talk.

  "I'm going to be a lawyer, sir."

  "Ah, the law. Yes."

  "I thought you would stay in science, Larry," I said. "After all your science fair projects, especially those worms."

  "The two things might be related," he explained.

  "What do you mean, Larry?" asked my mother. She was bringing a tray of cookies from the kitchen.

  "Everyone needs representation," said Larry, taking a cookie and a paper napkin. "Even animals sometimes."

  "You're going to be a worm lawyer?" I couldn't help asking, though I said it with a smile, amused but not as if I disapproved.

  "Probably not a worm lawyer," he chuckled. "But I might represent those farmers who care about the animals they raise. They don't always get the breaks when competing with other farmers. The small farmer has it especially hard, battling those guys that own lots of land and raise huge herds of livestock."

  "I think worms need representation," offered my dad, turning down the cookies Mom held poised before him. He'd actually lost a few pounds recently, trimming his pear-shaped middle enough for the women in his family to notice.

  "Oh? Worms?" wondered my mother.

  "You see, Larry," continued my dad, leaning toward my date as if the two were working closely together. "Years ago, I built a bomb shelter, set into the bank on the property here."

  "I've heard about that, sir. It's supposed to be quite sophisticated."

  "It is. And it's made me think about creatures that live underground, that know the earth from the inside, so to speak."

  "Worms live in the dark," agreed Larry. "And they're always at work in there, transforming waste material into foodstuff for others in the animal and plant kingdoms."

  "Yes, that's what I mean. Out of sight, quiet, but doing good. They should have lawyers!" he concluded with a laugh.

  "I'd like to see that bomb shelter of yours sometime," said Larry. And I knew we were in for it.

  "No time like the present," said my dad, popping up. "Grab your coat and follow me. You too, Susan."

  "I think I've seen it, Dad."

  But he wasn't to be denied. And I knew I had to stick with my date this evening. Mom was able to claim cleanup duties in the kitchen.

  Dad gave an informed tour, providing explanations of both the shelter's features and its construction. Larry ooh-ed and ahh-ed as any boy should in the presence of his date's father's creation.

  "Water stored here," said Dad, pointing to U.S. Army surplus containers.

  "Ah, handy to the sink and the stove."

  "Kerosene lamps here where you won't bump into them when the power goes." They were set neatly in little nooks in the wall.

  "Ooh, that's good thinking."

  I must have stopped paying very careful attention to this dialogue of mutual enthusiasm and began poking around in the books and magazines put away for reading in the days of Apocalypse. Neville Shute's On the Beach probably couldn't have been in my hands then, but somehow that's how I remember the scene.

  Then I became aware of Larry's saying, "You seemed pretty upset that night at the pageant."

  "I . . . uh. . . ." I looked around. Dad had left. The two of us were alone in the main room of the shelter, a dim light softening the look of everything. I don't know that there was romantic music, but in my memory Dad has left a radio on.

  "Sally's hard to beat," Larry offered.

  He'd told me this several times already, and I was ready to shrug, to move on to another topic.

  "You were cheated," Larry concluded.

  "I know it!" I burst out. "That Pierce, and the others, they got together."

  Larry hadn't meant this literally, however. He just meant that I didn't get the scores I deserved, that the judges didn't make good evaluations.

  "Oh, I don't know about that," he continued, a look of sudden alarm on his face.

  "I'm telling you they cheated me. And . . . and the other girls too. Sally, she did favors for the judges, like, kissed them and stuff."

  "What!"

  "I'm not going to talk about it. But it's unfair. I wouldn't do that thing Pierce wanted, you know. . . ."

  "You were asked to . . . um. . . ." Larry couldn't put this into words either. We young people didn't have a ready public vocabulary for such an exchange in those days. But he seemed to understand enough to get mad, to get red in the face, to puff and to blow. "That's . . . I . . . you. . . ."

  "I thought about challenging the results, pointing a finger at those guys. But I was all alone."

  "Let me represent you," he said.

  "What? Be my lawyer?" I laughed. He sounded so formal, so serious. "You're just starting college next fall, not law school!"

  "Let me represent you," he said again with a funny smile.

  "I'm all right. I'm not going to sue or anything. You don't need to represent me."

  "No," Larry said. And, suddenly, he put his arms around me. I started, but didn't pull away. "I mean," he concluded. "I mean, marry me."

  10

  Did I accept Larry's proposal? Well, of course not, at least not on the night of our first date out in the Bell family bomb shelter. But I did say yes to his request for a second date. And we were a couple through the rest of our senior year.

  A lot was happening then, changes in me and changes in my family. So, I wasn't ready to make any big decision about my life so quickly after the Miss Route 66 Pageant.

  Perhaps the least-changing figure near the center of my world was my older sister, Tricia. She remained on her course to stardom, standing out at Drury and landing a part in a summer theatrical group that toured the Midwest. We'd always felt she was destined to shine, and these accomplishments maintained that predictable trajectory.

  Tricia did not let her success overshadow my small triumph in competing in the local pageant, however. In all our family discussions she insisted I should have been one of the finalists.

  "And no matter what," she told me at dinner the next night. "You have to keep up your music. I only wish I could play the way you do!"

  She had asked that afternoon to hear me play everything in my repertoire, apologizing repeatedly for not having noticed in earlier visits how quickly I had acquired this skill.

  "Mom's the one you should listen to, though," I insisted. Mom joined me on a few duets, but reluctantly. I guess she, too, felt it was my time to get the attention.

  "Oh, I know she's good," Tricia went on. "Did she tell you about the orchestra?"

  "What orchestra? No. Mom?"

  "Oh, it's a little thing, and it may not even happen. I also didn't want to distract you the last few weeks as this project was taking shape. You had your own important things to see to."

  "Tell me," I insisted.

  "Oh, you know Madeline Powers, at the Dairy Delite?"

  "Sure. She's one of Sandy's bosses. Nice lady."

  "Well, she's also the leader of a group trying to start up a municipal orchestra. A small one, of course. But they would like me to play with them."

  "What a neat idea!" I said. But I was still surprised that I'd heard nothing about this before.

  "Yes, Mayor Rodd's been very enthusiastic. We think he can persuade the town council to give us a little help financially."

  My enthusiasm for the project lessened with this announcement, since I believed the mayor to be part of the plot that had kept me from being Miss Route 66. But Mom showed no apprehension about working with any town official or corporate sponsor. And I'm glad to think now that any worry I might have had about her vulnerability was unjustified.

  Now that I think back about it, I remember that Mr. Systrunk also helped in the early days of the Fairfield City
Orchestra, finding a temporary practice space for the group in the old shoe factory building on 7th Street, which had stood empty for a number of years.

  But Mom stayed with this fledgling musical group until she and Dad retired to Arizona, performing a series of concerts each year in Fairfield and occasionally traveling to smaller towns in the area for additional appearances. Other parents began asking her to teach their children, and she gave lessons at our home all the years I was away at college and then while my children were growing up.

  A new pastime took shape in my father's life at the same time as he became an avid golfer. It began as a way to get in shape (which worked), but he kept on playing when he realized he was pretty good at it.