Route 66 visitors may want to ‘lay over’ at Adrian, Texas

What else is there to do in Adrian, Texas, the midway point on Route 66 that runs from downtown Chicago, Ill., to the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles?

 

After having enjoyed a delicious home-style cooked meal served with a smile at the MidPoint Café, visitors may want to sashay over to the Dream Maker Station Route 66 Souvenir & Gift Shop and meet the owners Jason and Kelly Snyder.

 

They are described as being “super friendly and welcoming to all Route 66 road trippers,” offering refreshments appropriate for the season. The store has a complete line of nostalgic Route 66 gifts and souvenirs, including T-shirts, coffee mugs, shot glasses, patches, pins and much more. 

Play the pinball machine inside or sit outside and enjoy watching the Route 66 traffic passing by…and the ever-changing West Texas weather.

The historic building was originally Dub’s Enco-Humble Service Station, owned and operated by Dub Edmunds.

Dream Maker Station organizes and hosts an annual Route 66 Car Show, a popular event in the Texas Panhandle area. This fun event features classic cars, food trucks, vendors, raffles, door prizes and a music DJ.

 

For overnight accommodations in Adrian, book a room at the Fabulous 40 Motel on Route 66, which promotes itself as “the first and last motel in Texas.” The proprietors of the 20-unit motel are Roy and Ramona Kiewert. 

(The original plan called for 40 rooms, hence the name...but things changed.)

 

The place appeals to people who are in no rush to move on. In fact, the local chamber of commerce invites folks to linger long, basking in the glory of “no smog, no crowds, no lines.”

 

Adrian began to take form in 1900 when a Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway survey team, working west of Amarillo, Texas, identified it as a future site of a station and shipping point.

The town was named for Adrian Cullen, an early farmer in the area. Its official founding date was 1909, when the railway was completed through that portion of the Oldham County.

Learn more about the history of Adrian and Oldham County at the Julian Bivins Museum, located nearby at Boys Ranch, an unincorporated community on the site of the original county seat at Tascosa.

 

Once a raucous pioneer town, Tascosa was known for gunfights and barroom brawls.

The place was occupied and ruled in 1878 by 19-year-old Henry McCarty, known as “Billy the Kid,” and his gang, the Regulators. They were notorious horse and cattle rustlers.

 

The origin of Boys Ranch in an interesting story involving the “life and times” of Cal Farley. He arrived in Amarillo in 1923 to play second base with the Amarillo Gassers, a minor league baseball team. (Farley is the second from the right in the photo below).

 

Farley was an exceptional athlete. As a professional wrestler and World Welterweight Champion during the 1920s, Farley won 225 straight matches.

In Amarillo, he established a network of Wun-Stop-Duzzit tire shops, reviving several B.F. Goodrich dealerships.

In 1934, Farley started an after-school program for boys in Amarillo, sponsored by the Rotary Club. Interest grew. In 1938, rancher Julian Bivins (shown below) donated about 120 acres of land, about 30 miles northeast of Adrian, for Farley to establish Boys Ranch.

 

The facility opened in 1939 with nine boys in residence. The idea was to provide education and support for “the boy nobody wanted,” giving him “a shirttail to hang onto.”

Today, Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch is still in operation as a residential community open to at-risk children ages 5 to 18 (both boys and girls). About 300 children live in small cottages at Boys Ranch during the year.

 

Strong agricultural and spiritual components anchor the educational curriculum.

‘Required pit stop’ along Route 66 is Adrian, Texas

One of the most popular destinations for motorists to gather to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of U.S. Route 66 in 2026 is the little town of Adrian, Texas, located in the Panhandle region near the top of the state.

Visitors can grab a bite to eat at Adrian’s legendary MidPoint Café and Gift Shop. 

The establishment is aptly named; the town is famously situated “at the geo-mathematical midpoint” of Route 66 – 1,139 miles from both Chicago, Ill., and Los Angeles, Calif.

 

Adrian’s town motto is: “When you are here, you’re halfway there.”

 

The 138 folks who live in Adrian like the feeling; it makes them special. (A few have moved elsewhere since they put up the green city limits sign, noting the population as 166.)

Business is good at the 54-seat MidPoint Café, according to owner Brenda Hammit, 62, She started as a cook at the restaurant in 2013 and took over ownership in 2018.

 

Hammit is doing her level best to carry on the café’s proud traditions that were established by the late Fran Houser, a former owner. 

Houser “was the inspiration” for the character of “Flo” at “Flo’s V8 Café” in the fictional town of “Radiator Springs,” which is featured in the 2006 Pixar animated movie “Cars.”

Flo is a light turquoise/green-colored 1950s General Motors Motorama show car. 

She is not based on a single production model, but is a custom, one-of-a-kind vehicle inspired by GM concepts of that era, featuring elements from the 1951 Buick LeSabre and 1951 Buick XP-300.

 

Also, the “Mia and Tia” twins that appear in the film were based on two MidPoint Café servers – sisters Mary Lou and Christina Mendez.

 

Mia and Tia are red Mazda Miata twins with black roofs.

             Over the course of the film, they display a variety of Lightning McQueen stickers.

In the film, Flo’s, “as a drive-in restaurant for anthropomorphic cars,” boasted that it served “the finest fuel on Route 66.”

Shane McAuliffe, who hosts “The Texas Bucket List,” a weekly, nationally syndicated television program, recently dropped by the MidPoint Café to order a triple-decker cheeseburger.

 

Hammit told him to be sure to save room for a piece of her “Ugly Crust Pie.” It’s a slice of Americana – a specialty dessert that was introduced by Joann Harwell, who formerly served as Midpoint Café’s pastry chef. 

Using her grandmother’s pie recipes, Harwell would lament that her crusts never measured up to perfection.

“The main ingredient in any recipe I have is the love that goes with the attempt. I don’t make a perfect pie crust, but I’ve come to see that there’s more to life than being perfect,” Harwell said.

Writing for Chron.com, based in Houston, Rebecca Treon said: “Today, Hammit herself makes roughly 20 pies per day – sometimes starting at 3 a.m. – and they almost always sell out.”

“Coconut cream is MidPoint’s most popular flavor, but Hammit also makes an Elvis-inspired pie that has chocolate, peanut butter and banana.” 

“There’s also the MidPoint version of a Derby pie, with Tennessee whiskey, chocolate and pecan, plus more common flavors, like apple and lemon meringue.”

Treon said: “The rest of the menu includes amped-up American diner classics: burgers almost too big to get your mouth around, BLTs with 10 pieces of bacon and a quarter-pound hot dog. But there are no French fries, because MidPoint doesn’t have a fryer; instead, they serve chips, coleslaw or potato salad. Hammit coordinates with tour buses in advance.”

 

“MidPoint’s decor has evolved organically over time, thanks to its customers,” Treon wrote. “The walls are lined with license plates, and the register displays currency from around the world. The dining room has brightly hued, vintage diner tables and Naugahyde booths, and the walls are covered with 1950s, Route 66 and Coca-Cola memorabilia.”

 

“This is probably one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done,” Hammit says. “I love meeting people. I’ve made so many friends. It’s not about the money – I’ve just had a blast in here, it’s just amazing.”

Golf stories seem to get better with age

Mark Twain is often cited as the source of the quote: “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” 

He was a wise man; I couldn’t agree more.

My best round of golf in North Carolina was the time I got to drive the beverage cart at a Boone Area Chamber of Commerce benefit tournament played at Linville Ridge Country Club in Avery County.

 

My worst round of golf in North Carolina was the time I had to sub in for a player who didn’t show up at a Boone Area Chamber of Commerce benefit tournament played at Hound Ears Club in Watauga County. I ran out of balls by the 8th hole.

I felt better after reading about a golfing experience involving Fred Raphael, the entrepreneurial promoter who came up with the idea of televising a “Legends of Golf” competition in the late 1970s.

Raphael was a marketing guy and had never played golf. He decided he’d better take up the game, so there he was at Pine Valley Golf Club, a difficult, exclusive layout in New Jersey.

Counting whiffs, lost balls and every other penalty, I shot 154,” Raphael said. “It’s a good thing (golfer) Gene Sarazen had given me a lot of golf balls.”

 

What Raphael didn’t know was that the balls he had been given were British undersized balls that were not authorized for U.S. courses.

 

“A couple of weeks later, the member who got me on at Pine Valley called to say the club president sent out a letter saying 28 illegal British balls were found in the rough and that anyone caught playing the illegal balls would be kicked out of the club,” Raphael said.

“What should I tell him?” the member asked Raphael.

“Tell him to keep looking,” Raphael said. “There are four more out there.”

Then, there’s the poster displayed at a golf club in Liverpool, England, that summarizes the objective of the game: “Swat the ball as far as you can…and if you find it on the same day, you have won.”

An article in Golf Digest in 2009, authored by Bill Fields of Pinehurst, N.C., said today’s PGA Champions Tour began to form “on a soggy April Day in 1979 at Onion Creek Country Club in Austin, Texas.

 

The notion of a senior tour took flight, Fields said, during a dramatic, emotionally charged six-hole, nationally televised playoff between the doubles team of Julius Boros-Roberto De Vicenzo versus Tommy Bolt-Art Wall Jr. in Fred Raphael’s “Legends of Golf.”

Boros (above) and De Vincenzo

They competitors range in age from 55 to 63, and the action “overflowed with stellar shots and counterpunches,” Fields said, convincing people that “a second act for the sport’s aging champions was a good idea.” About 5,000 people came out to the course to watch and marvel at the old goats’ shot-making abilities.

Bolt (above) and Wall

 

One pro golfer who noticed in 1979 was Bob Goalby. He had amassed 11 PGA titles over the course of his career between 1958-71. (His first victory came at the 1958 Greater Greensboro (N.C.) Open, and his sole Major Tournament win came in 1968 at The Masters.)

Goalby was the ringleader who put together a small group of PGA players who were “past their prime” to formulate a plan for a “senior tour.” Key participants were Boros, Bolt, Sam Snead, Gardner Dickinson, Dan January and Dan Sikes.

“I was optimistic,” Goalby said. “I remember saying, ‘We’re going to have a senior tour someday. The public is going to find a place for Arnold (Palmer) to play.’” 

(Palmer was approaching his 50th birthday on Sept. 10, 1979.)