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| Celebrating 66 With 66 On 66! To celebrate her 66th birthday, my wife thought of the idea of renting a car and getting our “kicks” by driving on old Route 66. We looked at the map and decided that the section of the “Mother Road” between St. Louis and Albuquerque would be perfect for the week we had to spare. I embellished the idea by thinking I could add 66 new beers to my log while traversing 66. Before we left I started looking up breweries at which to stop and discovered such websites as “The Ten Best Breweries in Springfield, Missouri” which generated questions in my mind like “10 best?”, “How many are there?” and “What about the ten worst”. At any rate, with information like that at the ready, we flew to St. Louis to begin our journey, and as an added benefit, picked up brew #1, GOOSE ISLAND NEXT COAST IPA, aboard the plane. This turned out to be the least expensive beer of the trip because the credit card machine was inoperative. Observing this, I slyly popped the top on the can while the flight attendant was fooling around with the card reader lest she ask for it back. They don’t accept cash and she was benevolent: I got the can on the house. After arrival in St. Louis we went to pick up our reserved SUV and discovered that the rental company had a brand new (only 900 miles on it) Mustang convertible available for a couple of hundred dollars more. I thought “why not do 66 in style?” and agreed to the upgrade, a wise choice since the weather for the next week looked perfect and there’s no way to summon up pre- interstate appreciation of America than by seeing it in an open ragtop. We checked into our hotel to freshen up before heading to dinner at the Urban Chestnut brewpub, a German beer hall type pub which ultimately became my favorite of the trip. #’s 2, 3, and 4, ZWICKEL BAVARIAN LAGER, BEARTHDAY BOCK, and OXNBRAU DOPPEL- BOCK perfectly complimented the bratwurst and kraut I had for dinner. I picked up a 4 pack of #5: URBAN CHESTNUT DORFBIER BAVARIAN DUNKEL to take back to the hotel. We arose early the next morning and , after breakfast, made the mandatory stop at the St. Louis Gateway Arch. I hadn’t been there since 1970 when I played a few tunes under it with the Quantico Marine Band and remembered nothing except that it was very big. It was a warm day with some oppressive St. Louis humidity, so I was elated when walking back to the car we found the Morgan Street Brewpub, with it’s pleasant outdoor tables, only fifty yards away. Their MAIBOCK, BLACK BEAR LAGER, MARZEN, RIVER OTTER PALE ALE, GOLDEN PILS, and HONEY WHEAT became #’s 6 through 11 of my 66 beer quest. The Route 66 trip then started in earnest as we headed southwest and passed the St. James Winery in St. James, Missouri. I wasn’t the only person making the trip so a stop was made to slake my wife’s thirst with gratis tastings of six of their twenty or so available wines. How convenient that directly next door, sharing the same parking lot, was the Public House Brewing Company. I wasn’t about to get that close without popping in so #’s 12 through 17, ROB’S CREAM ALE, BIRD and BABY MILD, HIDE and SEEK HEFEWEIZEN, FRISCO 1501 AMBER LAGER, ELUSIVE IPA, and LEVEL 2 Fall Risk Imperial IPA went down the hatch. Old Route 66 seemed to disappear , so we hopped onto I-44 to Springfield, Missouri and dinner at the Springfield Brewing Company. PAUL’S PALE ALE, GREENE GHOST IPA, WALNUT STREET WHEAT, CLOVE HITCH HEFEWEIZEN, BULL CREEL BROWN ALE, and MEX-y-CALI COPPER ALE became #’s 18 through 23. A little better than a third of the way to 66 on day two! After breakfast the next morning we did a mandatory touristy stop for photo ops at the World’s Largest Fork. I figured if Clark W. Griswold can entertain his family by traveling a hundred miles out of his way to view the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, the least I could do was stop at the fork, which was right on the way to that evening’s destination in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This was the most interesting part of the ride, since so many relics of old 66 still remain. We stopped at an old Sinclair station at which the pumps displayed the price of 23.9 cents per gallon, probably the accurate price for the ’48 Ford sedan that was parked at them. A ’46 Nash police car, a ’53 Packard, a Model A Ford, an old Studebaker truck, and several other automotive examples of Americana were parked around the property. Vintage Coca Cola machines, Mail Pouch tobacco and Burma Shave signs added to the decor. The proprietor took notice of my Marine Corps veteran cap and turned out to be a former Marine sergeant himself. When my wife asked the price of a Route 66 pin she wanted to buy he said “No charge- from one sarge to another…Semper Fi”. A few miles up the road we came across a relic leftover from the days after the repeal of prohibition. On a vine covered cement block building you could just make out the faded lettering “We have 5% beer”, apparently a 1930’s big beer after so many years of prohibition followed by 3.2% suds. Continuing on the old “Ghost” part of 66, we went through Joplin, Missouri, then Mickey Mantle’s hometown of Commerce, Oklahoma, which looked exactly like I imagine it did in 1935. The next town we passed through was Miami, Oklahoma which only a day or so before had been completely under water. It was depressing to smell the water logged air and mud and see the streets full of people’s ruined possessions, but spirits picked up when we found a roadside table to refresh with a glass of wine and #24, BOULEVARD PALE ALE. We got a beautiful room in a Holiday Inn Express in Tulsa, had a dip in the hot tub (GOTTA get one of those things) and went to dinner at the Bricktown Brewery where brews # 25 through 31 were added. OLD KING KOLSCH, (love that name!), BLUEBERRY ALE, WILEY’S ONE EYED WHEAT, MILLIE MAC FADDEN’S RED RYE ALE, THREE GUARDSMEN IPA, SINGLE STRING STOUT and a guest beer, SANTA FE HAPPY CAMPER IPA, served in a can, made the list. The house beers were average to even good, about what you’d expect from a chain, which I later found out Bricktown is, with fourteen locations throughout Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The next morning we headed for Oklahoma City and a very moving stop at the Murrah Building Memorial. The main theme of the memorial is row upon row of iron chairs, positioned where each of the 168 people who died in the 1995 bombing were at the time of the blast. When I questioned the park ranger about why some of the chairs were smaller, he said they represented the 19 children who died in the day care center that was part of the building. After that sobering experience we stopped at the Anthem Brewery for #’s 32, 33, 34 and 35. THE RED KIND SAISON, RAD HOMBRE LAGER, OK PILS, and IPA made up a flight I thought I might never get. There were only two other patrons, two girls who couldn’t make up their minds about which beers to order on their flights. They kept saying “may I have a taste of the coconut saison?”, which the bartender would dutifully pour, and they’d sniff, swish around in their glasses and their mouths before making a negative decision and asking for another taste of something different. At one point, the mango pale ale or some other such concoction kicked, forcing the bartender to disappear while he went in search of another keg. Remember, these agonizing decisions were only for a flight, not a pint, and I was sitting there beerless for what seemed like a half hour while all of this played out. Finally, their eight beers were selected and poured, allowing the man behind the bar to turn his attention to me. I said “just give me the first four on the board”, downed them and was out the door in less than two minutes, while the girls were still sniffing and swishing. We stopped at a table by a lake to have the leftovers from the previous night’s brewpub and #36 ANTHEM RYE’D or DIPA, a canned version of the brewery’s double IPA. Arriving in Shamrock, Texas , we checked into another Holiday Inn Express before heading into the only venue in town for having dinner, Big Vern’s Steakhouse. As the name would indicate, Big Vern’s features mostly steaks, but the specialty of the house is Texas Fried Calf Fries, a dish we did not opt for. Some call them mountain oysters and some call them fried balls, but whatever you call them they’re still testicles. I had a gigantic glass of #38, Shiner Bock and a bottle of #39, Lone Star, which would have been a perfect beer for pairing with Texas testicles had we ordered them. An early start the next morning brought us to our next destination, Amarillo, which, when arriving from old 66, makes Route 1 in Elizabeth look like a tropical paradise. Although we paid a few hundred extra for a convertible, we seriously thought about putting up the roof and locking the doors. This was definitely not a nice looking part of town. However, we eventually made it to downtown and a light lunch at the Six Car Brewery, so named for the #6 streetcar line that once ran in front of the building in which the brewery is located. The lunch was accompanied by #’s 40 through 44, MAKE CHOICES IPA, SUD PUDDLES KOLSCH, THUNDER BOCK, STONED WHEAT HEFEWEIZEN, and LOCAL AMERICAN LAGER. On the road to our final destination we stopped in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. The desk clerk at the Hampton Inn informed us that “Joseph’s” was really the only place in town to get dinner and drinks so it was off to Joseph’s, which offered #’s 45, 46 and 47, RED DOOR VANILLA CREAM ALE (terrible), LaCUMBRE ELEVATED IPA, and a bottle of ABBEY BIG MONK’S ALE. Abbey beer comes from a monastery in Albuquerque, which sadly, no longer admits the public to tour and sample its excellent brews because the crowds distracted the brothers from their monastic life. Another dip in the hotel’s hot tub reminded me again that I’ve gotta get one of those things! The next day we noticed signs for “pre 1937 old 66”, which led us to Santa Fe even though it was out of the way to Albuquerque. I’ve previously written about our beer experiences in Santa Fe so I’ll not say too much more except that a stop at the Noisy Waters wine bar enabled me to have #48, LaCUMBRE SLICE of HEFFEN HEFEWEIZEN while my wife sampled and left her undrinkable sweet berry wine. We had lunch at the Blue Corn Cafe, downtown outlet for the Blue Corn Brewery, located on the outskirts of the city and which we had visited some years ago. The Southwestern taco lunch was accompanied by #’s 49 through 54, ATOMIC BLONDE LAGER, 40K HONEY WHEAT, ROADRUNNER IPA, END OF THE TRAIL BROWN ALE, GOLD MEDAL OATMEAL STOUT, and GATEKEEPER IPA, all good but not particularly noteworthy beers, except for the stout, which, as the name implies, won two gold medals at the GABF. The drive to our final destination took us through Bernalillo, New Mexico, home of the Bosque Brewpub which brought my quest for 66 on 66 up to sixty. The BOSQUE LAGER, SCOTIA SCOTCH ALE, IPA, BREWER’S BOOT AMBER LAGER, SUMMER IN HALLERTAU PALE ALE, and PISTOL PETE’S 1888th ALE were all excellent and true to style. We arrived in Albuquerque with me six shy of my 66 on 66, and dinner at my second favorite brewery of the trip, the Quarter Celtic Brewpub, afforded only a four beer flight. #61, an IPA was excellent, #62, a HELLES was even better, #63 a MARZEN was also excellent as was #64 COAXIUM IPA. I explained to the waiter about my quest for 66 on 66 , told him I was up to 64, with no days to go, and he brought me two flight sized pours of #65, DORTMUNDER and #66, CRIMSON LASS RED ALE (outstanding). Success was achieved: #66 0n Route 66 only 6 hours before our scheduled flight back to Newark. (The standby flight to Denver and standby connection to Newark went off without a hitch, enabling me to make my regular Thursday night stop at the Gaslight for a couple of new additions to the log. But that’s another story.) Cheers! Dan |
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