Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--February 8, 2026

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This year was the time for another occasional visit to LA to visit family. We dislike flying so much that we decided to drive it again. We might have to rethink that before next time.

It’s a familiar route for us following old Route 66 from St. Louis to Los Angeles. For much of the trip the Mother Road was visible alongside the newer interstates 44 and 40. Stopping at night we were frequently right on the old road with its collection of motels and service stations crowding the pavement to compete for the attention of drivers in the 1950s and 1960s.

It’s also a nostalgic journey for me every time. Just a week after my parents were married in August 1943 they climbed into a borrowed 1940 Plymouth sedan with two other GIs and drove the real Route 66 from St. Louis to Riverside, California. It took them most of a day to go from their home town of New Castle, Indiana to St. Louis where they crossed the Mississippi and turned southwest toward a future in California. That first day they only got as far as Rolla, Missouri where they stayed in a motel. Because of overly optimistic travel plans, they were unable to stop again for the night before reaching Riverside on the fourth day. Because my dad could make himself stay awake at night, he took over driving in the darkness and the other GIs drove during the day. It became an ordeal for my mother who told the story with stoic good humor many years later. They had alignment problems while still in Missouri and ran out of gas early one morning in the desert. The journey became a blur, a test of endurance for them all. They adapted well enough to arrive in California in time to report for duty on the assigned day.

Many times along the journey this time I looked over to the old Route 66 which is still there and in my mind’s eye I could see the black Plymouth rolling over the hills and down into the dales, silver moon hubcaps showy in contrast to the black paint on the body and wheels. Inside I could see the newlyweds leaning against each other as they crossed the southern Great Plains in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. Then came the hostile desert they had only read about in books. They were hot and uncomfortable as they marked endless miles across an unfamiliar landscape, but it didn’t matter. They were young and they had each other. They’d get through it somehow, and they did. Their generation didn’t let things like economic depressions and world wars get in their way for very long.

Traveling the Mother Road is never boring. Growing up next to my paternal grandfather’s farm in Indiana, I learned at an early age to be aware of the activities of the farm year. Indiana and Illinois are Corn Belt states so we saw fields of corn and soybeans, hay and winter wheat all the way to the Mississippi River. Beyond the river Missouri became hilly and brushy for quite a ways before turning back to row crops and livestock toward Springfield. We spent the night near Springfield, Missouri.

The landscape spread out as we neared the Oklahoma line. We were coming into the southern Great Plains. Almost as soon as we crossed into Oklahoma we began to see more horses and beef cattle. There was a major cotton growing area before we reached Tulsa. Tan fields dotted with white ran along........

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