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NO ROOM AT THE HENNING

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This is another salutary tale of how you should never presume that things will be forever. Perhaps, in Europe, we tend to think of Route 66 as preserved in aspic. But, even if a building is on the National Register of Historic Places, it offers little protection, unlike the UK’s own listing of historic buildings. Many never even make it as far as the register.

And the Henning Motel in Newberry Springs on the California stretch of Route 66 wasn’t particularly noteworthy. If it were not for the sign, then most people would have taken a photo of the Bagdad Café next door and probably not bothered to raise their cameras for the single storey white motel. No-one knows much about the Henning, least of all why it had an impressive neon sign for what was a tiny motel with just a handful of rooms. Unusually, it was constructed as one building, unlike the cabins of a similar vintage in Amboy and Chambless down the road; as Jack Rittenhouse only spoke of tourist cabins at Newberry Springs in his 1946 guide, it’s fair to assume the motel was built in the 1950s. I found a matchbook that appears to be from the 1930s or 40s which advertises ‘The Henning Motel, 400 East Main Street, Barstow’. It’s possible that the owners moved out here in the 1950s – the Barstow address is now an empty lot, so no clues there.

Look closely at one of the photos of the decaying motel and you will see the reason for its death. Interstate 40 bypassed Route 60 in 1973, running a few yards behind the motel, although it might as well be a hundred miles away. The Henning struggled on for a while – hell, it was even famous for a moment when the film ‘Bagdad Café’ was filmed at what was then called the Sidewinder Café in 1987.

For years, the building has been quietly mouldering away. A hand painted sign outside with a Flagstaff telephone number invited offers of $25,000 for the building and three and a half acres of land. But the motel moved beyond economic repair years ago, while land is not in short supply out here. I passed it fairly regularly, sometimes taking a photo, sometimes not.

And then this summer it was gone. Cleared, the concrete pad the only sign something was once here. The sign is clinging on, overseeing an empty lot and lost memories.

GOODBYE TO THE CLUB CAFE

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On a grey and overcast October afternoon, I stopped by at the remains of the Club Cafe in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. I didn’t take much notice of the guy with a tape measure wandering around, but I decided not to clamber through the window opening and have a last walk round the skeleton of the building. Sometimes you meet people as intrigued by a building as you and sometimes you skulk past them, eyes not meeting, knowing they don’t see what you see.

The Club Café opened in 1935, five years after the Santa Rosa stretch of Route 66 was completed; its blue-tiled frontage and smiling ‘Fat Man’ logo, a happy gent wearing a polka dot tie and looking delighted after, presumably, dining on the Club Café’s home cooking, became well-known to thousands of travellers on Route 66.

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But, by the time I-40 bypassed the New Mexico town, people didn’t want home cooking. They wanted a quick stop at one of the generic fast food places just off the interstate. The Fat Man looked dated in the face of the ubiquitous clown and southern gentleman. In 1992, the Club Café closed its doors forever. It was bought by Joseph and Christiana Campos who planned to reopen it, but the building had suffered too much

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over the years. They couldn’t save the Club Café, but they got permission to use the Fat Man logo at their restaurant, Joseph’s Bar and Grill, down the road.

On the low retaining wall in the parking lot were painted signs from a happier time, commemorating ratings in the Mobil Travel Guide as well as Chef Ron Chavez, who owned the restaurants for over twenty years. He’d been a cook here in the 1950s and then bought the café in the 1970s. Moving to Taos, he wrote poetry until his death last October, never seeing the final demise of the café he loved. The Club Café’s sign still stands (others were taken down and left on the site – they are now gone) for now, although its fate seems uncertain. The guy with the tape measure gave it a cursory glance and moved on.

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The Club Café has always been there every time I’ve passed through Santa Rosa. I thought it always would be. But, for once, I stopped and took a few photos. Had I known that the bulldozers would be moving in the next morning, I would have run the camera red hot. I guess these may be some of the last photos ever taken of the Club Cafe.

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MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE

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NOTHING, MOHAVE COUNTY, ARIZONA

Nothing is a modern ghost town. Well, it was never even really a town. It was established in 1977, 100 miles north west of Phoenix on US-93 between Kingman and Wickenburg; essentially a gas station, small mart and a ADOT motorist callbox. It did, however, have a town sign which read ‘Town of Nothing Arizona. Founded 1977. Elevation 3269ft. The staunch citizens of Nothing are full of Hope, Faith, and Believe in the work ethic. Thru-the-years-these dedicated people had faith in Nothing, hoped for Nothing, worked at Nothing, for Nothing.’

By 2005 it was abandoned and the gas station began to collapse a few years later. There was a brief hope that Nothing would come to something when maker of bespoke wood-fired pizza ovens, Mike ‘Pizzaman Mike’ Jensen bought the site and opened a pizza parlour briefly in 2009. As well as tempting motorists with pizza, he also had plans for RV parking, cabins, a mini mart and truck parking.

But he found that the battle against County Health, Building, Planning, Zoning and ADOT was impossible. Mike says; “The Health Dept. refused to issue a Mobile Food License if I was Based in Nothing. Building, Planning and Zoning stated it was residential and I needed to apply for commercial and basically start over as Nothing exists in Nothing, while the DOT wanted me to pave the whole front and maintain it as my right of way. With all this said and done, since I could not sell anything in Nothing – not even water without a hefty fine – it left me no choice but to leave Nothing. So when you own Nothing, you have Nothing to lose.”

Now the gas station has gone completely, the one remaining building is boarded up and the posted site is full of rubble. The planned route of I-11 goes straight through here, so one day there may truly be nothing at Nothing.

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Down this road that I must travel

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I make no apologies for a title stolen from an 1980s pop song. After all, most of the good road quotes are already taken.

Unlike the roads.

They still exist, running north to south, east to west, sometimes through cardinal points that you didn’t know existed and that would make your head spin to comprehend. This is a blog about roads and the snapshots of the past that litter every yard of tarmac or concrete or dirt. It’s the things you never noticed and the things you’ve seen a hundred times and yet didn’t see. It’s somewhere to put my photos. It’s somewhere to justify the hours I spend distracted, butterfly-minded, by the curious and the commonplace. It’s another road to travel.

And I have no idea where this one is going…

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All text and photographs unless otherwise stipulated remains copyright of Blue Miller. Please do not use without an appropriate credit and link to http://www.neverquitelost.com. Thank you.