Route 66

Bagdad Cafe

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The 1987 cult classic film Bagdad Cafe was filmed in the California desert on Route 66. If you’ve seen it, you likely remember the lonely song “Calling You”, the quirky characters and the dusty location. I’m going to write about the movie, rather than describe the tens of millions of acres of the National Conservation Lands of the California Desert including the Mojave Trails and many large wilderness areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management, because the movie captures the weird, lonesome feeling of the desert and its ghost towns better than I can.

Carson McCullers wrote a novella called The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which, along with the landscape, inspired a German director, Percy Adlon, to create this movie. He wrote a completely new script and renamed the cafe after a nearby ghost town in order to introduce a bit of magic into the story.

Here’s a hint for folks who may have missed the Aladdin connection. Instead of a magic lamp, a thief from Bagdad steals a gold colored coffee thermos from a German tourist named Jasmin. Trapped in the cafe (after being abandoned by her husband), Jasmin works her magic like a genie on three sad cafe folk: a piano player, an artist and the owner.

The film was a hit in the director’s home country of Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and bus loads of French tourists still frequently stop here to buy souvenirs. The movie was made into a TV show starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, which didn’t do very well, because the adaptation removed both the magic and the whole ‘lonesome desert’ angle, by making the cafe busy and turning the characters into excellent communicators. Miscommunication among misfits is central to the film, as is the sparsely populated desert backdrop.

Sadly, the owner of the Bagdad Cafe just died, and I don’t know how long they’ll stay open, with I-10 no longer following the historic Route 66 past here and with the cafe known for a 40 year old movie. I’ve driven through many of these ghost towns and isolated places headed that way, and I often wonder what kind of dreams—broken or crazy—drove people to try to build lives out here in the middle of nowhere. Still, you never know about places like this; they may last another 40 years. I think the emptiness of the desert gives people a chance to live a different life than the routines and social norms in which most people are stuck. Anyway, watch the film, which conveys more than I can.

Mojave Trails from Amboy to Zzyzx

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Mojave Trails National Monument lies south of Mojave National Preserve and includes a section of 100 year old Route 66 in southern California. But the broader East Mojave Heritage Trails extend through both areas and far beyond, north to the Kingston Range near the Nevada border, east to the Dead Mountains Wilderness near Needles, and south to Sheephole Valley, Old Woman and Turtle Mountains wildernesses. Many of the trails follow the old Spanish trails and Native American routes through passes to water sources. Until this trip, I didn’t realize that California has more desert lands than Arizona, that there were so many huge wilderness conservation lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, or just how diverse the landscapes are. Even without a four wheel drive off road vehicle, you can see Kelso Dunes, Soda Lake, and hike to lava tubes.

The monument has a stretch of ten whistle stop towns named alphabetically starting with Amboy, known for its volcanic crater above. The 250’ high crater can be hiked, but I just wandered around the viewing area nearby. Most of these towns have since returned to dust, but Roy’s Cafe is still open in Amboy, thanks to the son of a chicken chain owner who bought the town decades ago. I enjoy visiting ghost towns and dusty old cafes in the middle of nowhere, and California’s Route 66 has several photogenic spots. I’ll write about my favorite one next time.

If you’ve ever driven I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, you may have wondered about the exit for Zzyzx. Zzyzx was created as a health treatment by a radio conman in the 1940s on the shore of Soda Lake in the Mojave Desert. He developed an oasis resort and sold his salty cure-all by mail nationwide, until he ran into some legal trouble in the 1970s. Now most of the area is within the Mojave National Preserve, and a local college uses the buildings, but it’s still a beautiful spot not to be missed.

Aunt Marjorie, who drove the Lincoln Highway in 1925

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While my maternal grandfather directly inspired my wanderlust, my cousin asked “what about Aunt Marjorie?” Determined that she get proper respect, he handed me a dossier about her, and another great road trip inspiration came back to life.

In 1925, my paternal great great Aunt Marjorie Scattergood went down to the corner of Broad & Market in Philadelphia, saw a sign pointing west with ‘San Francisco, 3000 miles’, and she thought, why not? Her college friend Gladys was driving a used Model T on the first transcontinental road (golden spike was 1869) and thought it would be fun. The car may have been the town car version, same year as the one above with a thin roof.

Aunt Marge was no shrinking violet. She held a world record in the hammer throw, college record in javelin, and was captain of her water polo, swim, and hockey teams.

She held degrees in History, Economics and Politics, and she had studied abroad in Edinburgh by then. She volunteered in France during WWI. And she was involved in social work connected to reformers like Jane Addams and Frances Perkins.

Her family, my father’s side, were Abolitionist Quakers, and Thomas Garrett was her great uncle and my great great great great uncle. In any case, Aunt Marjorie was not one to shy away from a challenging adventure.

The Lincoln Highway ran from Times Square NYC, past Edison’s labs, to Philadelphia, through Gettysburg, through rural Pennsylvania, through Lincoln country, joining what became Route 66 somewhere near Dixon Illinois, then switching to the old pioneer trails, through Iowa, to Salt Lake City and ending at Lincoln Park in San Francisco, about 2 1/2 blocks from where I raised my kids.

My cousin’s records revealed clues about Marjorie’s route, and they chose the longer Colorado Loop. She went to explore the west, picked apples for two months in Utah to pay for 3 tires, looked through the Keyhole on Longs Peak—a ‘high commitment/ considerable rockfall trail around 14,250 feet’ in Rocky—, and spent a month on a sheep dude ranch up in Granby Colorado. She must have passed by the Colorado NM on her way to Utah. Most of the roads out there still follow the old Spanish trails, really Native American trails for centuries.

Our country is still starkly and dramatically beautiful, the high mountains, the prairies, and the salt flats. In an interview, she showed photos of prairie schooners that were still traveling by wagon in 1925. Much of her trip followed the route my maternal grandfather had taken just a few years earlier. And my route too, 100 years later in an EV, to historic sites, heritage areas and scenic spots has crisscrossed theirs.

History is a funny riddle, too often forgotten or ignored. My dad didn’t tell me enough about his side of the family, so I’m grateful to learn this chapter of Aunt Marjorie’s story. If it weren’t for my cousin, I might never have realized that we traveled the same road a century apart, exactly how my family is related to Harriett Tubman’s close friend and partner in crime you may know as Simeon Halliday, why a building at the CIA is named after Aunt Marjorie and her partner Florence Thorne (they met in 1926), how she wrote Dr Martin Luther King Jr, how she protested wars, hosted refugees and fought for workers’ rights. If we only try to remember, then once again, we will realize that we walk in the footsteps of giants.

“Hi there, neighbor. Going my way? East or west on the Lincoln Highway.”

— From God’s Country starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney

“I’ve been walking that Lincoln Highway, I thought you knowed. I’ve been hittin’ that 66, way down the road.”

— From Hard Travelin’ by Woody Guthrie

Here are my visits to women’s history sites nationally.