Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [102]
I started to wish there was more Route 66. Two and a half thousand miles suddenly didn’t seem quite enough. Because one thing I had learned on this trip was that Route 66 was cut up into bits and pieces – some of it tragic, some of it inspiring, most of it fascinating and all of it interesting. All along the Mother Road, I’d found people working very hard to bring it back to life. Something as simple as painting a few murals or making delicious pies could wind the clock back a bit. But despite all of their efforts, Route 66 didn’t officially exist any more, so anyone who went in search of it had to find the fragments and piece them together to make their own Route 66. That was one of the things that made it so special.
13
You’ll Wanna Own a Piece of Arizona
I had a great start to the week in Williams. A further two hundred miles down the road towards California and the coast, this was the last place on Route 66 to be bypassed. On 13 October 1984, the final stretch of Interstate 40 opened, but Williams didn’t go down without a fight. It held an official day of mourning when the freeway took over. The next day newspapers in America reported the demise of Route 66; and a year later the road was officially decommissioned.
A lovely wee rural community, Williams was named after Bill Williams, a trapper and hunter. Although it was nice to name a town after a trapper, I’d hoped it was named after Hank Williams – but then I’m disappointed quite a lot. I’d come to Williams to catch a steam train to the Grand Canyon. As you can imagine, I couldn’t wait to see the world’s biggest hole in the ground, but I was equally excited about the steam train because there’s nothing I like more than a wee choo-choo.
Bores of my age have never stopped going on about how lovely steam trains used to be back in the day, and I’m no different. They have played such an important part in my life that I have nothing but fond memories of them. Everything that I remember as being great about my childhood involves a steam train. Some of the loveliest holidays I had as a kid were spent in Rothesay, and all of them started with a steam train ride from Glasgow’s Central Station. I can remember it as if it were yesterday – passing through the barrier from the public area to the ticketed platform, the engine right there in front of us, a lovely olive-green colour, hissing away. My sister, brother and I would walk with our cases, our wee bags and all our things along the platform until we came to the bit where the engineer, with his shiny cap and a blue cotton suit, was hanging out of the window, saying hello to the passengers. He had black marks on his hands and on his sweaty face, and behind him the engine was warming up with a cacophony of whissshes. As we passed, we would hear the fireman shovelling coal. It was magical.
Taking our places in the carriage, we’d be beside ourselves with excitement, waiting for the steam engine to start its countdown to our holiday. Like an orchestra tuning up, there would be a steady increase in random noises, culminating in a whistle, and then the engine would start pumping – shooosh, shooosh, shooosh – as it struggled to push the carriages out of the station. It was like a countdown from ten to one. By the time we reached one, the shooosh, shooosh, shooosh had become shusssh, shusssh, shusssh and the wheels had started to go dickety-da dickety-dee, dickety-da dickety-dee on the rails. We could soon see Glasgow disappearing underneath us with a shoossssh. Then the River Clyde: shoossssh, shoossssh.
We were heading west, to the seaside, miles away. The train would take us to Wemyss Bay, down on the coast in the Firth of Clyde. Shoossssh. On the train, there was very little to do. No connecting carriages,