Oklahoma, the home state of Yours Truly, is endowed with an embarrassment of riches like none other in the Union. It is a place of natural beauty and mineral resources inhabited by people with a can-do industrious spirit who represent a very colorful tapestry of multiple cultures, lifestyles and faiths. As a hub of trade,…
Continue ReadingAuthor: Route66Kid
I am the Route 66 Kid! I was born and grew up within a block of Old Route 66 as it passes through what is now known as Midtown Tulsa, OK. I either walked, crossed or attended school along that segment of the Mother Road every day of the World as a youth. I served in the U.S. Navy at each end of America's Main Street at Port Hueneme, CA about an hour from its western terminus in Santa Monica and later at Great Lakes, IL about forty minutes from its eastern terminus in Chicago. I also lived along Old Route 66 while attending college in Oklahoma City. Driving the new ultramodern Interstates that parallel the Old Route, I became familiar with most of the roadside attractions of the dear old Mother Road on numerous treks back and forth from duty stations to home. I currently reside in my hometown and travel those ultramodern Interstates to work in Route 66 towns such at Vinita and Oklahoma City. With rare exception I have kept a personal daily journal since I was in high school. It will soon be in its 41st volume. This blog is an extension of that record. Thank you for stopping in!
Suffering the penalty of greed, excess and hubris
It has been said that the effects of alcohol when consumed to excess is its own punishment. A bad hangover may be a justly earned and fitting reward for one individual who, by choice, overindulged in drink. Fortunately for the rest of us who said “NO” to another round or to the bottle entirely, the…
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The end of the trail?
America has been a grand experiment. The very essence of its ideas were light years ahead of its time when the founders first thought them, publicly stated them and wrote them down on parchment nearly two and a half centuries ago. Democratic self-governance of a nation and nearly all that went along with it was…
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Demanding our right to not get shot
Few things set the United States apart from other nations like the Second Amendment. We may search high and low among other industrialized nations and not find anything in any other constitution that has had as many judicial interpretations guaranteeing any citizen the inalienable right to arm themselves with weapons intended for use only in…
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Our spring of inflation, alienation and a windfall
We now find ourselves in the Spring of 2022 and our World seems new, different, challenging, awesome and last but not least, expensive. It does not seem to matter that a seasoned public servant now resides in the White House. Even though executive decision making now places the nation’s interest above that of any individual’s…
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Cold War reheat & rehash
For literally the first half of my living and breathing existence, the specter of war between the United States and the nation once known as the Soviet Union was never far down my list of worst fears in this life. What made that particular nightmare so petrifyingly frightening was the potential likelihood of a nuclear…
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The State and the Union
In the two years since a lethal contagion forced us all into lockdown, much has happened in the World and the USA. Much has also happened along this the most conservative stretch of Old Route 66. We all who have survived a global pandemic thus far have demonstrated the ability to do what needed to…
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Finding joy in the divided house
All democracy is a work in progress. Despite its flaws and pitfalls, democratic governance remains the best thing going as a means to unify culturally diverse people and affording all with an array of available options to grow and thrive. In a country that guarantees so many freedoms, it is the responsibility of every person…
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Roe v Wade at 49
The Supreme Court decision that ultimately granted female citizens the privacy to assume control over their own reproductive health has been the law for less than half a century. In spite of this, there are more people living now who have never known America without Roe v Wade than who remember the illegality of pregancy…
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Volume 47: A cataloged first-person account of 2021 CE
Measurement of time in terms of days, months and years is a manmade metric, a means of identifying intangible benchmarks relative to and relevant only to the existence of the human species. These arbitrary milestones have long since become living universal fixtures in the lives of the descendants of those who invented them. The ceremonial…
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