Route 66 Interview With My Father, Robert LaFortune, Sr.

ROUTE 66 INTERVIEW with Robert J. LaFortune (Annette’s Father)

Robert J. LaFortune was born in 1927 and just celebrated his 95th birthday on January 24, 2022. This interview was recorded on March 14, 2020. Annette acted as host during the interview and used a voice memo app to record her father’s responses. Robert J. LaFortune served as Commissioner of Streets and Public Property in Tulsa from 1964 to 1970. He served as Mayor of Tulsa from 1970-1978. Interviews help writers discover details about their content that is often lost in text books. This interview with her father helped Annette fill in some gaps as she researched Route 66.

LaFortune Family Portrait from 1932     
Mary Ann, Robert (age 5), Gertrude (Mother), Jeanne, Buddy

What do you remember about Route 66?

I remember the family trips that we took from Tulsa on our summer vacations to northern Indiana in the early 1930’s when I was 6 or 7 years old. I remember my high school days driving to Oklahoma City and Bartlesville. Cascia Hall had sports activities that went to those cities with our basketball team or our golf team. I remember my own family packing up a car. We made trips to Montreal, Washington, D.C., and New York City so I was familiar with traveling on the highways.

How busy were the state highways in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s?

I remember the 20’s and 30’s transition to the interstate system was a gigantic interest to the city of Tulsa because the interstate plan that was developed in 1958 under President Eisenhower became the expressway plan for the city of Tulsa. It initiated the development of all our expressways we have today: Keystone, Broken Arrow, West out of Tulsa, East to Joplin. That was a huge change in traffic for the city and the interstate system.

Tell me about Route 66 coming to Tulsa.

Route 66 came into Tulsa on Southwest Boulevard, across the Arkansas River on 11th Street, and went all the way out almost to the county line. 11th Street was an arterial street that had state HW 66 to begin with. Then it expanded to an Interstate (I244).

Let’s talk about road trips with your family in the 30’s and 40’s or you are taking your kids (my siblings) on road trips in the 50’s and 60’s. You used paper maps to plan trips. Why did you pick certain highways?

Before the interstate system, there were old 2-lane highways, were the basic travel routes that you looked for to plan your trip. When we went on family vacations in 1932 or 1933, we would go to St. Louis. We took HW66 and maybe take a different highway into Indiana. If we were going to Colorado, chances are you would take HW64 or HW33 which went out through the panhandle. HW64 went west to New Mexico.

What kind of car did your family have in the 1930’s?

We had a 4-door LaSalle. Before that we had Packards. Those cars, particularly the Packard was a big 4-door car with a trunk outside the car. There was a rack that laid down flat. In the 30’s we could put 3 suitcases on the rack. Everything we took for 2 adults and 4 children was in those suitcases. The spare tires were built into the left and right front fenders.

Do you remember having any surprises on your road trips? What do you remember about the filling stations?

There were filling stations about every 50 miles or so. The big travel problem I remember in the 30’s was flat tires. None of the tires would make the trip from Tulsa to Indiana. The tires could not last that long. The roads were not very good. Mostly I remember changing tires. We always had spare tires. There was an innertube inside the tires. We could also use the innertubes to swim in the lake. We saved our old innertubes, blew them up, and swam in them at the lake. They sometimes had a patch or two on them.

Do you remember the old filling stations? Did they have diners, too?

There were company corporate filling stations. Phillips had a good network of stations. I’m not sure about Shell. At one point Mid-Continent Oil had a retail service station chain. You could get gasoline in the big metal standards with a glass bowl on top that would hold about 20 or 30 gallons of gas. Gasoline would gravity feed down into your tank in the car.

Do you remember specific hotels you would stay in on your road trips?

For trips we took in the summer, which was one of the thrills as a little kid! We would go to Rolla, Missouri, about 300 miles from Tulsa. That was about halfway to Indiana where we went. At Rolla, there was a hotel system named Pennant. They had a Tulsa hotel, too, on east 11th Street, about at Memorial and Admiral. They also had one in St. Louis, Missouri. It took all day to get there. We’d have at least one flat tire and averaged about 40-45 miles per hour.

Was Route 66 popular in the 30’s? Why? Why not?

It was popular because the only alternative to Route 66 was to go due East or West. HW66 went diagonal from Chicago to St. Louis, then a 45-degree angle from St. Louis to Tulsa. From Tulsa to California was a straight line. There were no other vertical or North/South routes with straight access to California.

What do you think people think of Route 66 today?

I think Route 66 has a distinction today because almost anyone who made the trip in the last 50-80 years would have used part of Route 66. They could not have gone very easily any other route unless they went on HW40 to the southeast. The best way to think of HW66 is that it linked the cities you had to go through. You could stay on one numbered highway and go from Chicago to California.

Let’s talk about the reason people used Route 66.

I think the OKIE movement really identified HW66 as a main thoroughfare. There are many, many photographs that came out of the Depression in 1930-38, even up to the war ending. There was so much photography of families that were distraught from the Depression and giving up because of the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a significant, atmospheric event that caused western and eastern Oklahoma a great amount of poverty and distress. People lost their homes in the Depression and farmers lost land in the Dust Bowl. There were two very distressing things that caused people to move. If you were going to move to California, no matter where you were in Oklahoma, you would likely have taken HW66. The southern route went through Oklahoma City, further south and out West.

Tell me how the war ending effected travel on Route 66.

World War II caused military bases to use HW 66 to transport vehicles and artillery. Because of HW66 Oklahoma City and Enid got an air base.  Norman did, too. Not all were on Route 66, but they were close enough to use HW66.

Do you remember the 11th Street Bridge from your childhood?

That bridge was built in 1915. It was always there because I was born in 1927. The bridge that is in use today was a second bridge, a replacement for the first bridge. It’s now called the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge because Avery helped bring Route 66 through Tulsa.

A Little History of Route 66

Let me tell you about the magic on Route 66. These blog pages are dedicated to people, places, memories, and more that I have encountered on my travels on America’s scenic highway.

The History of Route 66

In 1927, small highways and some new ones were woven together from Chicago to Santa Monica. This road would serve as the Mother Road for those seeking new homes, jobs, and adventure.

Route 66 took travelers through eight states. If you started in the east you drove from Illinois, to Missouri with a quick stop in Kansas, and on to Oklahoma. Next, came a drive through the Texas panhandle, a long stretch through New Mexico and Arizona. Finally, the road entered California. The road was 2,244 miles long.

The two lane dirt roads and paved roads led families and business-minded people to places they had never seen before. When tourists came, restaurants opened. When serious travelers took their time on the new highway, motels awaited them. And there were thousands of cars on the road, which meant there were often empty gas tanks and flat tires.

What we call convenience stops today were filling stations in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. Cars and travelers kept coming. In the 60’s more hotels, more rest stops, more shops, more museums, more businesses supported the demands of curious tourists.

In the 1940’s, the nation’s highway planning began. There were roads being built that let cars go faster, reaching their destinations faster. There were larger hotels. Restaurants loved the crowds that gathered in front of their businesses.

In 2020, the Interstate highways became the preferred way of travel but those who treasured the magic of small towns, quaint businesses, historic museums, and familiar landmarks never stop visiting Route 66. The route is still very much alive and just as entertaining as it was 90 years ago.