Latest / Stuff You Should Know / What's so special about Route 66?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
- 0:08Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
- 0:16Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Chuckle,
- 0:20Speaker 1: Luck Bryant, Poor Chuck. He was the little kid who
- 0:25Speaker 1: um whose name could never be picked in that song?
- 0:31Speaker 1: Oh yeah, was it? Everyone they did it thought they
- 0:36Speaker 1: were just so clever because they were the first person
- 0:38Speaker 1: that'd ever done that to me. And I was just
- 0:40Speaker 1: like getting line jerk. Oh yeah, my name rhymes with
- 0:43Speaker 1: bad words. Yeah, definitely does, so does Josh, though no
- 0:48Speaker 1: it doesn't. Oh yeah, you're right, it's frette and easy.
- 0:52Speaker 1: My parents gave it a lot of thought. They're like,
- 0:54Speaker 1: what can they call our son Josh? Nothing? He got
- 0:58Speaker 1: nothing on that one, So they just called me fatty instead,
- 1:02Speaker 1: dough boy. How's it going good, Chuck? Yes, Um. We've
- 1:06Speaker 1: got a a little bit of highway stretching out in
- 1:10Speaker 1: front of us today. We on the open road sixty
- 1:13Speaker 1: six man. Who Yeah, probably the most um iconic road
- 1:19Speaker 1: in America, most romanticized for sure. Yeah that's not saying
- 1:23Speaker 1: a lot though, I mean it is, for sure, but
- 1:25Speaker 1: how many roads are there really even? Like you know what,
- 1:29Speaker 1: I was thinking about that too. This is a Debbie
- 1:32Speaker 1: Ranka article. She's your buddy freak girl, right um and uh,
- 1:37Speaker 1: she says in the article, like it is, you know,
- 1:40Speaker 1: the most romanticized, the most um, the most immortalized road
- 1:44Speaker 1: and pop culture. And I was thinking, like, there is
- 1:47Speaker 1: nothing else. There aren't any other roads. What are the
- 1:49Speaker 1: roads are there that are mentioned like specifically more than
- 1:53Speaker 1: once not a song called the Only No there's um
- 2:00Speaker 1: eighty five South yeah uh, which is mentioned by Outcast
- 2:06Speaker 1: and the group eighty five Styles. Yes. And there's another
- 2:09Speaker 1: one called that mentions eighty five Styles. That's all I
- 2:12Speaker 1: could think of. Well, roads back then, and this is
- 2:15Speaker 1: one of the basis of this article is it was
- 2:17Speaker 1: a different deal back then. Roads were much more important
- 2:20Speaker 1: and meant a lot more than nowadays, when you kind
- 2:23Speaker 1: of take it all for granted because you don't get anywhere.
- 2:25Speaker 1: And my hats off to the guys who you know,
- 2:28Speaker 1: made sure that Route sixties six came into existence because
- 2:33Speaker 1: they didn't they didn't follow the path that we followed today,
- 2:37Speaker 1: which is, you know, when you create a highway to
- 2:40Speaker 1: go from point A to point B with as little
- 2:43Speaker 1: resistance as possible, as fast as possible. Right, these guys
- 2:47Speaker 1: shaped Root sixties six so that it literally went through
- 2:50Speaker 1: the main streets of small towns throughout America. That's right, Josh.
- 2:55Speaker 1: And these guys are two gentlemen, in particular, an Oklahoma
- 2:59Speaker 1: real estate a gent named Cyrus Avery. Cyrus Sure, I
- 3:05Speaker 1: like Sirius and John Woodruff, who was a highway guy.
- 3:09Speaker 1: And they were, um, the two big advocates for starting
- 3:14Speaker 1: Root sixty six from Chicago to Los Angeles. And uh, well,
- 3:18Speaker 1: I think that there was a plan to have a
- 3:21Speaker 1: highway from Chicago to Los Angeles. They're in on the
- 3:23Speaker 1: debates on where to take it and have to do it,
- 3:25Speaker 1: and everybody was like, well, we'll just use the old
- 3:27Speaker 1: Santa Fe Trail. Why wouldn't we. I mean, it's already there,
- 3:30Speaker 1: you go right there, And um, Sirius was good enough
- 3:34Speaker 1: for the wagons. Yeah, Sirious was like, oh no, you
- 3:37Speaker 1: don't because that doesn't go through Oklahoma. I'm an Oki
- 3:40Speaker 1: and I want this road to go through my home state.
- 3:43Speaker 1: By god, if he didn't wrestle it into reality, Yeah,
- 3:47Speaker 1: and I got a stat for you here I found UM.
- 3:49Speaker 1: The reason this was necessary is because from nineteen ten
- 3:54Speaker 1: to nineteen decade, five hundred thousand cars grew to ten
- 3:59Speaker 1: million cars in ten years, and we weren't ready for
- 4:04Speaker 1: that at all. I know, we weren't Chuck. That was
- 4:06Speaker 1: a huge boom of UM automobiles and we basically it
- 4:11Speaker 1: was like having UM going from five thousand computers to
- 4:15Speaker 1: ten million computers and not having an Internet. Hey, you
- 4:19Speaker 1: know it's a nice analogy. Thanks. Yeah. So the Associated
- 4:21Speaker 1: Highways of America they developed a plan UM. I mean,
- 4:26Speaker 1: it's pretty comprehensive. It wasn't just like, hey, let's build
- 4:28Speaker 1: some roads. It was let's let's link them all, let's
- 4:31Speaker 1: establish a numbering system, let's road signs, road sign uniform,
- 4:36Speaker 1: road sign, absolutely warning signs. Upkeep? How are we gonna upkeep?
- 4:39Speaker 1: All this? It was really comprehensive, right because prior to
- 4:43Speaker 1: the the creation of the Associated Highways of America Plan UM,
- 4:48Speaker 1: it was like immigration today, it's all patchwork or you know,
- 4:51Speaker 1: you never know. If you are an illegal immigrant, you
- 4:54Speaker 1: don't know what you're going to run into an Illinois
- 4:57Speaker 1: and if you go to California, you have no it's patchwork.
- 5:00Speaker 1: Well and you would name it, you know, you're like,
- 5:02Speaker 1: this is the Lincoln Highway, right, Yeah, from here to here,
- 5:07Speaker 1: it's the Lincoln Highway, right, uh yeah, because the same
- 5:10Speaker 1: road could be adopted and renamed by any locality. This
- 5:14Speaker 1: this group had the very UM a tremendous amount of
- 5:19Speaker 1: foresight in saying like, no, no, no, Like, if we
- 5:22Speaker 1: can get people easily from one place to another in
- 5:24Speaker 1: these cars, they'll spend money along the way. And that's
- 5:28Speaker 1: exactly what happened. So one of the UM, one of
- 5:33Speaker 1: the roads that came into existence out of this Associated
- 5:36Speaker 1: Highways of America plan was eventually named Route sixty six
- 5:40Speaker 1: and it was officially designated on November when the UM
- 5:46Speaker 1: National Highway Act was passed. Right, yes, Josh Roote, sixty
- 5:50Speaker 1: six was born, and it was a very popular road
- 5:53Speaker 1: and it meant a lot more than here we've got
- 5:56Speaker 1: a road. It linked Chicago to l a, which is
- 6:00Speaker 1: a really big deal. That helped bring industry from east
- 6:02Speaker 1: to west. Yeah, and this is the so it wasn't
- 6:05Speaker 1: like the wild wild West, but the West wasn't like
- 6:09Speaker 1: it was today thanks to Route sixty six that helped,
- 6:11Speaker 1: you know, bring it forward and join you know, the
- 6:14Speaker 1: rest of the country. Uh, the whole thing stretched miles rightly. Yeah.
- 6:22Speaker 1: One of the things that interests me is it's changed
- 6:24Speaker 1: so many times and had some carved out or added
- 6:27Speaker 1: on or whatever that even the National Scenic Byways Association
- 6:32Speaker 1: can say exactly how long it was, right, but roughly miles.
- 6:38Speaker 1: And and like we said, it didn't take a direct
- 6:41Speaker 1: route from Los Angeles or from Chicago to Los Angeles.
- 6:46Speaker 1: It's snaked through eight different states Illinois, Missouri, and Chuck
- 6:51Speaker 1: has a map here Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
- 6:58Speaker 1: and California. And although it didn't follow the old Santa
- 7:01Speaker 1: Fe trail, it did follow some obscure wagon trail used
- 7:06Speaker 1: by Minor forty nine ers during the California Gold Rush.
- 7:09Speaker 1: So people driving on Roote sixty six were actually following
- 7:12Speaker 1: an old wagon trail. Well. Yeah, and another cool thing
- 7:15Speaker 1: too is what it what it did besides make it
- 7:17Speaker 1: quicker and bring industry, you know, back and forth quicker
- 7:20Speaker 1: it Uh, this is the first time a lot of
- 7:22Speaker 1: these people and a lot of these towns had access
- 7:25Speaker 1: to a road like this, right, Like back in the day,
- 7:27Speaker 1: you were just kind of stuck where you were, and
- 7:30Speaker 1: if you wanted to get to Los Angeles, it was
- 7:32Speaker 1: a lot tougher than just hopping on what became Root
- 7:35Speaker 1: sixty six or later on right. And and remember we
- 7:40Speaker 1: said that people um were spending money along the way
- 7:43Speaker 1: at filling stations, at hotels and all this, and there
- 7:47Speaker 1: was kind of this um celebratory idea of you know,
- 7:52Speaker 1: let's let's attract these people. Let's get them to stay here,
- 7:55Speaker 1: let's get them to stop here and get their guests,
- 7:57Speaker 1: let's get them to eat here. So all these really
- 8:00Speaker 1: great odd places sprung up, like, Um, there's the Twin Arrows,
- 8:07Speaker 1: which is just this old store basically, and it's two
- 8:11Speaker 1: old telephone poles sticking out of the ground made to
- 8:15Speaker 1: look like arrows. They're being a yellow and red and
- 8:17Speaker 1: I mean that's it. But I mean, if you think
- 8:20Speaker 1: about it, Chuck, if you and I were to go
- 8:22Speaker 1: down Peach Tree, we're not going to see two giant
- 8:25Speaker 1: arrows sticking out of the side of the road. And
- 8:27Speaker 1: that could be enough for you know, word of mouth
- 8:30Speaker 1: to get through. Like you have to see the two
- 8:31Speaker 1: Twin Arrows. They're huge and enormous cool, that's what's in
- 8:35Speaker 1: your head over this other town that you heard nothing
- 8:37Speaker 1: else about, right, and this is kitch. Now obviously when
- 8:40Speaker 1: we look now and see Pee Wee's Big Adventure and
- 8:43Speaker 1: we see the Caabazon dinosaurs, it's it's like it's funny.
- 8:47Speaker 1: Or the world's tallest thermometer, which I've always had a
- 8:52Speaker 1: problem with because it's not even a thermometer. What does
- 8:54Speaker 1: it just look like a thermometer? Well, yeah, it's it's
- 8:57Speaker 1: actually that's not on Root sixty six, that's in Baker.
- 8:59Speaker 1: But every time I used to pass it angered me
- 9:02Speaker 1: because it claims to be the world's tallest thermometer and
- 9:04Speaker 1: it's just a readout of the temperature. That's really tall.
- 9:06Speaker 1: It's not like it's full of mercury and it's like
- 9:09Speaker 1: a hundred feet of mercury measuring. You know, it's just phony. Yeah,
- 9:14Speaker 1: but probably if they did fill it with mercury, it
- 9:16Speaker 1: would violate some sort of law. Yeah, a lot of
- 9:20Speaker 1: mercury there are. I mean, D sixty six is still
- 9:25Speaker 1: well we'll talk about the decline of in a minute,
- 9:27Speaker 1: but it's still packed with some weird things like the
- 9:29Speaker 1: twin arrows, the the Cozy Dog drive in which looks
- 9:34Speaker 1: delicious in Illinois, they claim, although other people claim this
- 9:37Speaker 1: as well, to have invented the corn dog. Yes, one
- 9:40Speaker 1: of our favorite things a k a. The hot dog
- 9:42Speaker 1: and a stick. It's a corn dog. Uh. And they
- 9:46Speaker 1: are still open today. They've been open since the late forties.
- 9:49Speaker 1: And did you see the sign? No, that was another
- 9:52Speaker 1: thing too. There um signs sprung up for these places,
- 9:55Speaker 1: and there's some great signs. The Cozy Dog in has
- 9:58Speaker 1: two hot dogs in their look they look like honeymoon
- 10:00Speaker 1: hot dogs. They're they're very cozy, and it's just I
- 10:04Speaker 1: would stop there just for the sign, and I guess
- 10:06Speaker 1: that that's the point, right, Yeah, same with the giganticus hedacus.
- 10:12Speaker 1: Did you see this thing? I didn't see a picture
- 10:14Speaker 1: of it now. It looks like one of the Eastern
- 10:17Speaker 1: Island statues kind of buried up to its chin. Maybe Yeah.
- 10:22Speaker 1: It's fourteen ft tall, right, fourteen ft above ground? Yeah,
- 10:26Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know how much his underground. Yeah.
- 10:28Speaker 1: So again, no reason for it, like the twin arrows,
- 10:31Speaker 1: other than like to get people to stop, get out
- 10:33Speaker 1: of their car and open their wallets. Right right. Have
- 10:36Speaker 1: you ever been to the Cadillac Ranch. I haven't. That's
- 10:39Speaker 1: pretty cool, Like a lot of these. I kind of
- 10:41Speaker 1: turned my nose up at because it's really like south
- 10:44Speaker 1: of the border type stuff. And I don't mean Mexico.
- 10:46Speaker 1: I mean that place in North Carolina anyway. Cadillac Ranch
- 10:50Speaker 1: uh in Texas, Amaro, Texas. It um. That is where
- 10:54Speaker 1: you will find ten Cadillacs from nineteen sixty three stuck
- 11:00Speaker 1: nose down into the ground. You can paint them, you
- 11:04Speaker 1: can graffiti, um, you can do anything you want to them. Really,
- 11:06Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I just assumed that the graffiti was.
- 11:09Speaker 1: Now they encourage it and it's it's part of the allure.
- 11:12Speaker 1: And that was a helium magnet named Stanley Marsh commissioned
- 11:16Speaker 1: that in the nineteen seventies and then it was moved
- 11:19Speaker 1: in the late nineties because it was like civilization was
- 11:22Speaker 1: getting too close, so they actually moved it. So I
- 11:24Speaker 1: had that confused with the Chicken Ranch until I read
- 11:27Speaker 1: the description. I was like, Oh, that's not the Chicken Ranch.
- 11:30Speaker 1: What's the Chicken Ranch. It's a famous brothel. Oh, okay
- 11:33Speaker 1: in Nevada. I think I guess it would have to
- 11:36Speaker 1: be Nevada. I've never been there. I haven't either. I
- 11:39Speaker 1: would like to go officially on the record one more time.
- 11:42Speaker 1: I have never been there either. I saw it on
- 11:45Speaker 1: like I think a HBO Real Sex special when I
- 11:48Speaker 1: was twelve. I got you yeah uh. And then Josh,
- 11:51Speaker 1: there's the meteor crater, which I've actually been to, and
- 11:55Speaker 1: that's why I pulled that page for you. Yeah, so
- 11:59Speaker 1: Chuck chuck him up with a little extra um supplemental
- 12:02Speaker 1: research that included a picture and a description, and I
- 12:06Speaker 1: just I couldn't make heads or tales of why he
- 12:09Speaker 1: chose that. Now I understand, why did you go stand
- 12:12Speaker 1: in the crater and get all irradiated? No, but that
- 12:15Speaker 1: is in Amboy, California, and we uh did a TV
- 12:19Speaker 1: commercial there and it's across from it's very near Royce
- 12:23Speaker 1: Cafe and right there on Root sixty six. Royce Cafe
- 12:27Speaker 1: is like the only thing around because I've already killed
- 12:29Speaker 1: Root sixty six in that area. And um, I got
- 12:33Speaker 1: a shirt I should have worn it like a little
- 12:34Speaker 1: Royce Cafe and boy and boy like a sort of
- 12:39Speaker 1: like a mechanic shirt. Nice, like a hipster mechanic shirt.
- 12:42Speaker 1: Very nice. The creater is really cool though, right, Josh, Yeah,
- 12:45Speaker 1: I think it's like fifty years old. Yeah, it's huge.
- 12:48Speaker 1: It's like two two and a half miles. Well, I
- 12:50Speaker 1: let me count myself. I imagine that the dirt is
- 12:53Speaker 1: far far older than fifty thou years old. But the
- 12:57Speaker 1: shape right occurred fifty year the event they created the
- 13:02Speaker 1: creator the meteor. But it's enormous. Like when you see it,
- 13:05Speaker 1: it's like two and a half miles in circumference, fifty
- 13:08Speaker 1: feet deep and you drive by it and you're like, wow,
- 13:10Speaker 1: what if that thing were to hit somewhere today in
- 13:12Speaker 1: your civilization. But anyway, hats off to Roy's Cafe. They
- 13:16Speaker 1: they're still around, uh today and back in the day
- 13:20Speaker 1: they had seventy people that work there. Yeah, at its
- 13:24Speaker 1: height when when sixty six was swinging it. Now, when
- 13:28Speaker 1: I was in there, I got a milkshake, there was
- 13:29Speaker 1: like to two dudes in there. Yeah, and you hats
- 13:32Speaker 1: off to two still going because there's even parts of
- 13:36Speaker 1: Roots sixty Roots sixty six are just gone. Yeah, like
- 13:39Speaker 1: fifteen they say, is is just not even there anymore?
- 13:42Speaker 1: You can still drive of it. Yeah, And so let's
- 13:45Speaker 1: talk about the hey day, Chuck. In the hey day,
- 13:47Speaker 1: there was a TV show called Root sixty six that
- 13:50Speaker 1: premiered in nineteen sixty right, Um had a great little,
- 13:55Speaker 1: uh little swinging theme song. Nelson riddles Root sixty six.
- 14:01Speaker 1: Have you heard it? Not? No? No, In my opinion,
- 14:05Speaker 1: it's way better. It's instrumental, but I listened to it
- 14:07Speaker 1: all day to day while we were researching, and it's
- 14:10Speaker 1: a good song. Um. And then you know, the TV
- 14:13Speaker 1: show Root sixty six was written by this guy who traveled,
- 14:17Speaker 1: actually traveled the country and like got inspiration for the
- 14:21Speaker 1: TV show as he was writing it. Yeah, so he
- 14:25Speaker 1: was going in like he'd see a VA hospital and
- 14:27Speaker 1: then he was writing a story about these two main
- 14:30Speaker 1: characters who were like, uh, they kind of represent the
- 14:33Speaker 1: post war baby boomer angst of like America won the
- 14:38Speaker 1: war and like we have all this money now and
- 14:40Speaker 1: there's a lot of like disenfranchisement, which led to beat
- 14:43Speaker 1: nicks and hippies and jet caroac and all this stuff.
- 14:46Speaker 1: And Root sixty six became emblematic of people pushing westward
- 14:50Speaker 1: towards l A after the war. Easy writer, that was
- 14:53Speaker 1: Root sixty But the TV show a little factoid. It
- 14:57Speaker 1: was filmed in forty different states. Yeah, and that's like
- 15:01Speaker 1: they don't even do that now, So to do that
- 15:03Speaker 1: back then was like really revolutionary and Robert Redford was
- 15:06Speaker 1: almost in that too. Did you see that? I did
- 15:09Speaker 1: didn't make the cut though, we didn't forty states for
- 15:13Speaker 1: one show. One show. That's where sixty six right near Josh.
- 15:18Speaker 1: So can we are we at the decline, the sad decline?
- 15:22Speaker 1: I think we are. Yeah, that same highway plan kind
- 15:27Speaker 1: of is what killed it, because after World War Two
- 15:29Speaker 1: they were like, we need people working, and we need
- 15:31Speaker 1: more roads, better roads, faster roads, Like we need to
- 15:36Speaker 1: go against what um Cyrus Avery came up with, which
- 15:40Speaker 1: is just we'll circumvent towns. Towns slow things down, towns
- 15:45Speaker 1: have red lights in them. Yeah, we're going to create
- 15:48Speaker 1: these super highways. And that's what happened. Yeah, Eisenhower was
- 15:52Speaker 1: inspired by the Altobahn and created the Federal Highway Act finally, right,
- 15:58Speaker 1: and that that pretty much killed Root sixty six. Like
- 16:02Speaker 1: I said, I forty killed a great portion of it,
- 16:05Speaker 1: and a lot of it still runs side by side,
- 16:08Speaker 1: which is the saddest part. Like you can be on
- 16:11Speaker 1: Route sixty six and all you look to your right
- 16:14Speaker 1: and you see people just like zooming by you, and
- 16:16Speaker 1: it's really kind of you suckers. Get out of the
- 16:20Speaker 1: rat race and they're looking at us, going, you hippie right,
- 16:23Speaker 1: following the old Root sixty six. Actually I followed Route
- 16:26Speaker 1: sixty six a little bit in New Mexico when I
- 16:28Speaker 1: was living in the van beautiful country there on Route
- 16:31Speaker 1: sixty six. Historic Root sixty six. That's a lot of yeah,
- 16:35Speaker 1: that's a lot of the The only way you can
- 16:38Speaker 1: find Roote sixty six these days are Historic Route sixty
- 16:41Speaker 1: six markers. Because you're saying, if already killed it, yeah,
- 16:45Speaker 1: not only did was I forty? You know, can you
- 16:48Speaker 1: say it was probably responsible? I forty was completed in
- 16:51Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four and in nine five, Roots sixty six
- 16:55Speaker 1: was officially decommissioned, so it didn't appear on any map.
- 16:59Speaker 1: Basically said you're not a highway anymore, which is really sad.
- 17:02Speaker 1: So if you want a drive Root sixty six or
- 17:04Speaker 1: the portions that you can drive, you need to get
- 17:07Speaker 1: a special map these days, and thankfully they make them
- 17:11Speaker 1: that shows the old trail and or the trail the
- 17:13Speaker 1: old highway and all the little quaint, little kitchy, cheesy
- 17:18Speaker 1: things you can see and do along the way. So chuck.
- 17:21Speaker 1: One of the things you can see as a statue
- 17:24Speaker 1: A right, yeah, and foil Oklahoma? Right? Do you know
- 17:30Speaker 1: about this? Oh? I love this guy. Um. There's a
- 17:33Speaker 1: guy named Andy Payne and he is the guy who
- 17:36Speaker 1: the statues of back in he won the Transcontinental foot Race.
- 17:43Speaker 1: Oh that guy. Yeah, this guy was part Cherokee. He
- 17:46Speaker 1: was from Oklahoma, and he ran from Los Angeles to
- 17:52Speaker 1: New York in f and one miles. He won prize
- 17:58Speaker 1: and this this thisbstantial amount of money. I would probably
- 18:03Speaker 1: run that for fifty thou dollars today. I can only imagine.
- 18:05Speaker 1: I didn't do the math, get like into New Jersey,
- 18:09Speaker 1: need quit. I don't know. Yeah, Um, you're not part
- 18:12Speaker 1: Cherokee though, No I'm not. It's in his blood. I'm
- 18:14Speaker 1: part Choctaw. Um are you really know? Because I am? No,
- 18:19Speaker 1: you're not like way way very small part, isn't everybody? So? Um? So?
- 18:27Speaker 1: The so Mr Payne ran from New York to or
- 18:32Speaker 1: l A to New York in uh five hundred and
- 18:35Speaker 1: seventy three hours, which is twenty three days. Right. But
- 18:38Speaker 1: to make it thirty four dred miles in seventy three hours,
- 18:42Speaker 1: he would have had to have run an average of
- 18:44Speaker 1: six miles an hour. For twenty three straight days without stopping,
- 18:49Speaker 1: so god knows how fast he was running because he
- 18:51Speaker 1: had to sleep at some point in time. Right, But
- 18:54Speaker 1: this guy, if you ask me, he deserved not only
- 18:56Speaker 1: the twenty five thou dollars. I think I said fifty
- 18:59Speaker 1: thod earlier today night. So uh that's about it. Huh. Yeah.
- 19:03Speaker 1: I think a lot of Root sixty six is on
- 19:06Speaker 1: the Registry of National Historic Places and they're trying to
- 19:10Speaker 1: preserve as much of it as they can thanks to
- 19:12Speaker 1: a bill that President Clinton signed. But it's also on
- 19:16Speaker 1: a list of what was that other list it was on,
- 19:18Speaker 1: basically saying it was endangered the Endangered species list of
- 19:22Speaker 1: highways highways. Yeah, well, the problem was it wasn't like
- 19:26Speaker 1: Eisenhower was like, wa, I'm going to destroy Americana. It
- 19:30Speaker 1: was Root sixties six was too busy. It couldn't handle
- 19:35Speaker 1: the traffic that it was set up for, which is
- 19:38Speaker 1: the most embarrassing and humiliating experience a highway can have. Really. Yeah,
- 19:42Speaker 1: pretty much, ear that are a dead end. That's it.
- 19:45Speaker 1: That's pretty humiliating, poor dead end roads. So that's Rod
- 19:49Speaker 1: sixty six. As you were saying, um, it's still around BIA.
- 19:53Speaker 1: Special man go check it out and just kind of
- 19:56Speaker 1: drop out for a little while, ye if they If
- 20:00Speaker 1: you want to see any pictures find out more about
- 20:03Speaker 1: this stuff, you can go type root sixty six in
- 20:07Speaker 1: the handy search bart how stuff works dot Com, which
- 20:09Speaker 1: I said I was dropping, didn't I? Uh, yeah, I
- 20:12Speaker 1: just don't like the word handy. After two and thirty five,
- 20:16Speaker 1: you don't like ordnamdy not anymore. Yeah, uh, just type
- 20:20Speaker 1: it into the search bar, the standard normal search bar
- 20:23Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, which is not at
- 20:25Speaker 1: all handy. So listener mail time. Huh yeah, Josh, I'm
- 20:30Speaker 1: gonna call this. Uh, this is what you get for
- 20:32Speaker 1: pledging and for at okay, hey, Josh and Chuck. I
- 20:35Speaker 1: listened to the Ghost Prison podcast and found one particular
- 20:38Speaker 1: part pretty funny and relevant to something that happened to me.
- 20:41Speaker 1: I've never been in a ghost prison or a political
- 20:43Speaker 1: prisoner yet, but I have been held captive and tortured
- 20:46Speaker 1: with music. This past fall, I pledged a fraternity at
- 20:50Speaker 1: a major university. He doesn't reveal like anything. Of course,
- 20:53Speaker 1: that's what those guys did here. One night while I
- 20:55Speaker 1: was pledging, the brothers had us all show up at
- 20:57Speaker 1: this kid's house. With the promise of a really good time.
- 21:02Speaker 1: That's when I would run screaming as soon as we
- 21:05Speaker 1: walked through the door like a dummy. As soon as
- 21:10Speaker 1: we walked through the door, we were searched, our pockets
- 21:12Speaker 1: were emptied, and we were putt into a really dirty,
- 21:14Speaker 1: dank basement which is probably about twelve by twelve one
- 21:17Speaker 1: couch for eleven dudes. As soon as everyone got there,
- 21:21Speaker 1: they slammed the door, shut off the lights, and started
- 21:23Speaker 1: playing Mambo number five by Lou Bega. It's as bad
- 21:28Speaker 1: as it gets. Um. If it doesn't come to mind
- 21:31Speaker 1: lou Bega if you listen to his podcast, we apologize,
- 21:34Speaker 1: but it's true and get back to pumping that gash.
- 21:37Speaker 1: They had it on. They had it on full blast
- 21:40Speaker 1: from a pretty powerful stereo from about eight pm to
- 21:43Speaker 1: two AM, so like six hours straight of loue Vega's
- 21:48Speaker 1: song Mambo number five. We had to raise our voices
- 21:51Speaker 1: even to be able to hear each other. At two
- 21:54Speaker 1: a m. They abruptly turned off the music and shouted,
- 21:56Speaker 1: go to sleep. We all breathed this I of relief
- 22:00Speaker 1: the end. Then we tried to go to sleep. After
- 22:02Speaker 1: about ten minutes we heard it playing faintly in the distance.
- 22:05Speaker 1: I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me.
- 22:07Speaker 1: But after about thirty minutes it got gradually and gradually louder,
- 22:10Speaker 1: and then it was full blast again and remained on
- 22:13Speaker 1: for the next forty eight hours with only a ten
- 22:16Speaker 1: second break. So Jack who was in a fraternity and
- 22:20Speaker 1: had to endure that for like two days, And the
- 22:23Speaker 1: reason he didn't include all this is because that fraternity
- 22:26Speaker 1: would be shut down and the university would be sued
- 22:29Speaker 1: if this came to light, because that is wrong. Yeah,
- 22:33Speaker 1: I'm not going to call for fraternity stories, So what
- 22:37Speaker 1: should I call for? Uh sorority stories? If you have
- 22:43Speaker 1: any generic, funny, interesting story, we want to hear it
- 22:47Speaker 1: or wrap it up, send it in an email to
- 22:50Speaker 1: stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more on
- 22:58Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
- 23:01Speaker 1: dot com. Want more house stuff works, check out our
- 23:04Speaker 1: blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
- 23:08Speaker 1: M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
- 23:12Speaker 1: It's ready, are you