Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey Start at Adams & Michigan—And Chase Route 66 All the Way to Santa Monica
Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey didn’t just “take a trip.” Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey chose a beginning you can point to with one finger on a city map—downtown Chicago, at Adams Street and Michigan Avenue, right across from the Art Institute—and from that exact corner, Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey aimed a black Pontiac’s hood toward the kind of horizon that only exists when you decide to keep going.
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Visit Oh Sherri Irish Pub →The map in Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey’s hands
I keep coming back to that detail Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey included—the map. Not a screenshot, not a voice barking directions, but something that has to be unfolded and held down. In my mind, Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey are standing there beside the car with the front end toward the camera, paper edges catching the lake wind, and the city behind them doing what cities always do—rushing—while Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey are doing the opposite: pausing long enough to say, “This is real. We’re actually starting.”
About that “1966 Firebird”—and why it doesn’t change what Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey remember
There’s a funny little snag in the way memory labels things: Pontiac didn’t release the Firebird until the 1967 model year, which means a “1966 Pontiac Firebird” isn’t something the factory ever built. But the truth is, I understand why Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey call it that anyway—because what Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey are naming isn’t a production chart. Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey are naming the feeling of the car: the dream car, the black paint that made the world look sharper in its reflections, the kind of machine you don’t just drive—you trust.
Two bookends: Chicago stone, Santa Monica salt
Chicago gives you that first jolt of certainty. You’re surrounded by weight—buildings, history, the museum-facing corner at Adams and Michigan that feels official, like a stamp on a passport. Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey begin there on purpose, because beginnings like that leave no wiggle room. You can’t pretend you “sort of” started Route 66 when you start it right there.
And then Santa Monica does the opposite. At the pier, the continent stops, and all that motion turns into standing still. Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey lean on the black Pontiac under the “End of the Trail” sign, and the ocean is right there—loud, bright, indifferent in the way water always is. If Chicago felt like signing your name at the bottom of a contract, Santa Monica feels like looking up from it and realizing you kept every promise you made to yourselves.
What it means that the road is still mostly there
Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey mention something that carries more emotion than it looks like at first glance: even though Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, most of it can still be driven. That’s the part that gets me. It means Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey weren’t chasing a myth that vanished. They were chasing something stubborn—an old alignment that keeps resurfacing beside newer roads, like a memory refusing to be paved over.
The stops Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey chose to hold onto
The list of places Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey call out...
Cozy Dog in Springfield,
the Gateway Arch,
Meramec Caverns,
the Blue Whale,
Cadillac Ranch,
the Blue Swallow Motel,
Winslow,
Roy’s in Amboy
reads like more than an itinerary.
It reads like a string tied around a finger. Like Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey knew that time would pass and the sharp edges of the trip would soften, so they pinned it down with names you can still say out loud and instantly taste the dust, the soda, the late-day heat radiating off the hood.
2026 sitting out there in the distance
Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey even nod toward the Route 66 Centennial in 2026, and I love that—because it places their road trip in a longer timeline without shrinking it. Anniversaries belong to everyone; this drive belongs to Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey.
When the centennial banners go up and the speeches get made, Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey will still have something quieter and truer: the private knowledge of what it felt like to take their own “Mother Road” from one exact street corner to one exact sign at the edge of the Pacific.
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Name: Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey
Contact: https://www.facebook.com/silver.fox.9862/
Item: Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey Take A Road Trip On Route 66, starting at downtown Chicago, Illinois
Year: 1966
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Douglas Criswell Jr. and Harvey
Memory from 1966
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