Greetings from Route 66

Asif Khan is thrilled, just thrilled. He’s honored too, and gloriously happy. What’s more, he’s proud and privileged, which isn’t to mention this emotion he feels – yes, he’s overwhelmed, just completely beside himself, because he is here – finally here.

I look around. We are in a bar.

It is a nice bar – wood paneling, brass, old-time ceiling. But that’s all it is to me – a bar. Asif’s exultation catches me off guard. But I suspect that I will bear witness to more such ardor in the weeks to come. This is, you see, the beginning of a journey – a Rotary journey.

After a brief spell as a freelance editor for this magazine, and possessing only a passing acquaintance with Rotary, I have been given an unexpected assignment. I am to spend 16 days driving across the United States on the fabled Route 66, nearly 2,500 miles, from Chicago to Los Angeles, host to the 2008 RI Convention. My only instructions: Meet Rotarians along the way and record what I see.

What I’m seeing now is Cavanaughs, the unofficial post-meeting gathering place for members of the Rotary Club of Chicago – aka RotaryOne, the mother of all Rotary clubs, the one that Paul Harris and a few friends started in 1905. RotaryOne has a certain mystique, owing to its history and its membership, which includes the mayor of Chicago and a number of high-powered business folks.

Today, there are around a dozen Rotarians here, and though I’d expected old men whispering deals through clouds of cigar smoke, they are mostly people in their 30s and 40s. There’s certainly some business getting done, but there is also among these people a striking camaraderie and earnestness.

There is, for example, the tall man who says, hello, his name is Asif, he was born in India, but lives in southeast England, where he is a member of the Rotary Club of Hastings. He has traveled to Chicago because this is the birthplace of Rotary, and he can’t stress enough what a grand experience it was to stand up and introduce himself at lunch today, to be here in this bar, enjoying the good company of the members of the very first Rotary club.

Asif breathes in the stale bar air as if it were a magic elixir. Rotary, he explains, has changed his life. It has enabled him to do good in the world and form instant friendships with all sorts of people (he’s been greeted like a brother at over two dozen Rotary clubs in as many countries). Tomorrow, he’s going to take a tour of RI headquarters and stock up on Rotary handkerchiefs and neckties. “This is the town of Paul Harris,” Asif says. “I would like to meet a descendant of Paul Harris and shake his hand.”

Let me be honest: I am more than a little bit cynical. I am an American journalist who grew up in Chicago and lived most of his adult life overseas, exposed to – often seeking out – crime, war, and corruption. What to make of these Rotarians, these people who seem so unflinchingly optimistic, so committed, so enamored of the simple virtues of friendship, fairness, and service? I’m not sure yet. But Asif’s enthusiasm is as real as it gets. And though he is an Indian from England, he seems somehow the right person to meet as I prepare for a trip into the American heartland, a trip that will introduce me to Rotary – and to my home.

Days 1-2

Miles logged: 480

After a day and a half of driving, I arrive in Lebanon, a small highway town about 150 miles southwest of St. Louis. On the main strip, along with the McDonald’s and the Bamboo Garden Oriental Buffet, there’s a large blue building that used to be the Kmart. Now it’s a Route 66 museum, and the local Rotary club donated money and volunteers to help set it up. Joe Beltz, district governor in 2006-07, takes me to check it out. When we arrive, I’m surprised to find the museum director, Rotarian Cathy Dame, Rotary Club of Lebanon president Steve Pickering, and several other club members all lined up, ready to receive us. It’s a fine museum, and Cathy gives us all a tour, the Rotarians quite literally sticking out their chests in pride.

President Steve and the others inform me that their club is comprised of the “movers and shakers” of Lebanon, and no doubt it is. But what impresses me most about the Lebanon Rotarians is this thing they call “fellowship.” I can see that these people really care about each other. Some were childhood friends, and they all know each others’ stories. Gib is the president of an insurance agency. I’ll bet his Rotary relationships get him some business. And it occurs to me that this is just how business ought to be done – among friends, as part of a community.

Day 3

Miles logged: 889

A thick orange sunrise and the totems of free enterprise: Arby’s and Hardees; PetSmart, Pizza Hut, and Perfect Nails; U.S. Cellular; Burger King, Blockbuster, Boston Chicken, Bank of This and Bank of That. They call Route 66 “The Main Street of America,” and in southwest Missouri, that’s exactly what it is.

But a very short stretch of the old road cuts into the bottom right-hand corner of Kansas, and here it is two lanes through fields and one-street towns like Galena and Baxter Springs. There are no Rotary clubs nearby, so I take back roads about 50 miles northwest to Parsons, where the town center has two streets – one indeed called Main – but no franchises, just a few sleepy shops and a Baptist church, which is where I meet Kelly Rector, president of the Rotary Club of Parsons.

We get into Kelly’s red pickup and head to the Parsons Arboretum. There, standing attention next to a beat-up station wagon, is Rotarian Ken Ervin. Ken, who is in his 80s, was the third-generation owner of an auto parts retailer until a few years ago, when a tornado flattened his business and the rest of Parsons. Now he devotes most of his time to Rotary and the arboretum. “This way,” he says. “Now we’ll be showing you the Rotary trail.” The trail is made of weed-defying concrete. It runs through a park that Ken maintains with help from other Rotarians and a crew of inmates on loan from a low-security prison. It is hard work.

At lunchtime, I attend my first-ever Rotary meeting on the second floor of the Parsonian Hotel. The meeting begins with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then a member of a two-school board presents a sophisticated analysis of educational policy and the teaching of literacy. When it comes time for questions and answers, Ken says he reckons it all comes down to the parents. Three generations of his family have been reading to their kids, and the kids all turned out OK.

After the meeting, I’m back in my car, following Parsons club member and assistant governor of District 6110 Glenn Fischer. He’s dressed in a leather jacket, an American flag bandanna on his head, and he’s piloting a fully-loaded Honda Goldwing motorcycle.

Glen, it turns out, is taking me to Coffeyville, Kan. After a 45-minute drive down a perfectly straight two-laner, across fields of carbohydrates, flat as the ocean, we are sitting in the conference room of the Condon National Bank with local Rotarians Bob Elznic, Debbie Carter, and Lisa Kuehn. This bank, I’m told, is the same one that was held up by the notorious Dalton brothers and their gang in 1892.

More important, just last June, a massive flood not only submerged much of this town in water but also caused an oil refinery to spring a leak, coating entire neighborhoods with goopy crude oil. As we drove in, I saw the wrecked houses, all marked with big Xs, like in New Orleans, water and oil lines near their rooftops. Arguably, Rotary is even more important in disaster areas that don’t attract world attention and charity. “One thing we’ve learned: In disasters like this, nobody’s going to take care of you,” says Lisa of the Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve had to do it ourselves.”

The Rotary Club of Coffeyville recently held a ceremony to present awards to 100 heroes who put Service Above Self during the floods. These included Rotarian Jeff Morris, the Coffeyville city manager, who worked so hard that he ended up in the hospital with migraines. There was also Rotarian Jerry Marquette, the hospital CEO, who volunteered to distribute hospital food when the Red Cross couldn’t get into town. People spotted him in the hospital kitchen, in front of the stove, doing the cooking himself.

Day 4

Miles logged: 1108

In Oklahoma City I see my first cowboys, or at least people who are dressed like cowboys. The streets here are wider, too – windswept and almost empty, so you half- expect to see tumbleweed blowing between the buildings. There are so few people on the streets of downtown Oklahoma City on Friday at 10 a.m. that I have to check my calendar to convince myself that it’s not Sunday.

I find General Bill Bowden (he was a B-52 bombardier in Vietnam, spent time at the Pentagon, and once commanded 27,000 men), of the Rotary Club of Oklahoma City, in the coffee shop at the city library. He’s brought along Rotarian Jerry Burger. They are both wearing charcoal gray suits, and I regret my casual attire.

The general launches right into an explication of the Oklahoma City Rotary club’s role in building the dancing water fountain, which I can see right outside the library’s atrium windows, along with a life-sized statue of a buffalo, painted half-blue and branded with a Rotary emblem. When this fountain was completed two years ago, it put Rotary “front and center,” the general says. “When we dedicated the thing, the mayor showed. We got a write-up in the paper and everything. It was something else.”

“Hardly anything in this town is turned without Rotary,” the general adds.

Three hours later, I am in Pauls Valley, Okla., waving an American flag. A bus carrying all of the town’s National Guardsmen passes by. The guardsmen have been called to Iraq, and I’ve joined the members of the Rotary Club of Pauls Valley and other residents who have lined the side of the road to bid the troops farewell.

At the club meeting a few moments before, Tony Leddy presented me with a collection of photographs that had been taken by somebody named Mike. They were mostly close-up shots of flowers, and Tony said it’d sure make Mike happy if I were to have them. All the Rotarians seemed to agree that it was a mighty fine thing that I was receiving these photos. But I didn’t yet know who Mike was.

After the meeting, Tony gives me a tour. It’s an American small town. The high point is the Rotary rose garden. This is, in fact, why I’m here in Pauls Valley, around 60 miles south of Route 66. Pauls Valley is the birthplace of Herbert Taylor, the original author of Rotary’s Four-Way Test. He served one term as the president of the Pauls Valley club, and in his honor, the current members have created a rose garden that has what Tony reckons is the largest Rotary emblem in the world, or “at least we got the prettiest.”

As we view the Rotary wheel, which is about 15 feet in diameter, Tony says the inspiration for The Four-Way Test might have come from Pauls Valley – the “honesty and integrity” of the people here. “We’re common folks doing common things,” Tony says. “We just try to be good.” A cynic might dismiss this, but Tony is not role-playing.

Just then, a pickup truck skids to a stop in front of the garden and discharges a man in a cowboy hat. “You the visitor?” says the man. “You the Vee-I-Pee?”

This is Mike. Mike runs the local movie theater – “I got a PhD in popping corn,” he says – but cameras and gardening are his passions, and he spends a lot of time here, tending to the roses and photographing them. He says he sure is glad that an editor of a big-time magazine is seeing his work.

It isn’t until later that Tony mentions that Mike is not well. Mike was in Vietnam. He’s been in therapy, but he’s never been the same. That’s all that Tony says about it – a few words in passing. But I realize then that Mike’s work in the Rotary garden is meant to be healing. And the Rotarians have given me Mike’s photos and brought him to meet me, in order to give him a little boost. It is a gentle and charitable action.

As a city boy, I can say that is something different – very different.

Days 5-6

Miles logged: 1326

I’ve backtracked to Tulsa because there is a warehouse here, smack dab on Route 66, that Rotarians from Missouri to Kansas to Oklahoma have told me is a sight to behold – the crowning achievement of District 6110. It is marked “Medical Supplies Network, Inc.,” and inside I find a big, bearded Rotarian named Larry Biron, who is the director of operations.

The concept, Larry says, is simple: Rotarians from all over the area collect used medical equipment and supplies from clinics and hospitals and deliver them to the warehouse. Here they are sorted and tested by Rotary volunteers, then shipped to Rotary clubs in developing countries.

For Larry, 57, running this warehouse is a full-time, albeit unpaid, job, and he thinks it’s kind of funny, the surprises life throws you. He moved to Oklahoma in 1978, and he would’ve never done that if it weren’t for a bit of political drama in Lewiston, Maine, where he used to live. After serving a stint in the state legislature there, Larry decided it was time for him to be the town mayor. Come election day, he got the most votes, but not a plurality. There was a run-off, and a day before the second vote, the local newspaper asked him what he was going to do if he lost. Larry said, ha-ha, maybe he’d move, and the next morning, there was the awful headline, something like: “If Biron loses, he’s ditching Lewiston.” Well, after that, he didn’t have much choice. Not long after the votes were counted (there weren’t enough for Larry), he packed his wife and two kids and everything he owned into the back of his car and moved to Tulsa, where he spent the better part of three decades renting home appliances before quitting to devote all his time to Rotary.

Come evening, I am in Elk City, thanks to Rotarian Gary McGinn, a semi-retired county judge who called to say that his town had an excellent Route 66 museum – some folks from Iceland told him it was the best one they’d ever seen – so he’ll go ahead and make a reservation for me at the Holiday Inn.

Day 7

Miles logged: 1474

At breakfast the next morning enters the largest human being I have ever seen, dressed in overalls and a cowboy hat. He hangs the hat on the rack and announces that he’d like some “pork bellies.” The waitress looks confused, so the man says, “Don’t you know what pork bellies is? It’s bacon!” “Honey,” says the waitress, “I’ve been in L.A. They don’t even know their food is animals.”

Soon after, I spot A.L. Whinery. The judge has told me to keep my eyes open for a towering cowboy, and that’s what A.L. is – 6-foot-5 and full of swagger, even though he’s 80-something years old. He has been a member of the Rotary Club of nearby Sayre, Okla., for 47 years. Most of that time, he was in the mortuary business. “My brother made a doctor, I made a funeral director,” he says by way of introduction.

But today the funeral business is run by A.L.’s son Brad, who, as the 28-year-old 1985-1986 governor of then District 577, was the youngest DG in the entire Rotary world. A.L. emphasizes the sacrifice that district governors make. Brad was working full-time at the mortuary while also trying to find time and money to make his visits to Rotary clubs in the district. “The whole family had to pitch in to keep the business going,” A.L. says.

He pulls his pickup into the Flying W Guest Ranch, his latest venture. This is a working ranch, with buffalo and cattle, but A.L. and his son Don have built a mock frontier town and opened the place to vacationers who want to experience ranch living. “Imagine coming over this in a covered wagon,” he says.

I return to Elk City loaded up with Flying W buffalo jerky and meet Judge McGinn, who takes me to the Hog Trough restaurant for lunch. Over barbecue sausages, he tells me that the Elk City Rotary club members are a close-knit bunch. He remembers only one time when there was any kind of disagreement, and that was more than 40 years ago. During Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the government was handing out a lot of money for town renewal projects, and William Brown, a colonel in the Air Force and a Rotarian at the time, was a whiz at writing grant proposals. The colonel submitted a proposal looking for money to build some tennis courts, and “the mayor had a fit,” says McGinn. “He thought tennis courts bring in ruffians…there was some discussion in Rotary.”

As we leave the Hog Trough, the judge spots the colonel at another table. He says, “Hiya, Colonel,” but we don’t stop to chat. It’s time to go to the Route 66 museum.

The museum is well worth the visit. The judge watches with evident joy as I sit in the vintage convertible and pretend to drive. He leads me around telling me where to get the best photos. Next door, there is a museum of Elk City history, and the judge has clearly been to this museum many times. He’s in a state of high excitement.

On the way back into town, we pass Rotary Park, which has nice basketball and volleyball courts. The judge also points out a flagpole at the local high school, built with funds from the Rotary club. “In towns like this, somebody is building all this stuff,” says the judge. “That’s Rotary.”

I have to be in Shamrock, Texas, by dinnertime, so now I’m doing 90 mph down the old 66 – past Sayre and Erick, Okla. I make it to Shamrock eight minutes early and park my Korean car among the oversized pickup trucks in the parking lot of the U-Drop Inn, a neon-lit Art Deco beauty that once served as a popular Route 66 gas stop and diner and is now a visitor’s center.

The whole Rotary Club of Shamrock has turned out for a barbecue feast in my honor. The mayor is here, too. And the local media. A reporter interviews me, and it’s all a blur. I have no idea what I say, but I feel important – or maybe they think I’m somebody else.

Next thing I know, everybody is out front, the newsman’s camera is flashing, I’m grinning and gripping, there are slaps on my back, arms around my shoulders, and then this deafening roar, a blur of chrome – it’s two motorcycles that do a loop, engines revving full throttle, before they stop in front of me so a man in a Rotary tie can dismount, crunch my hand, and say: “Welcome to Texas!” This is District 5730 Governor Michael Graves. He has flown his private airplane from Plainview to the tiny landing strip outside Shamrock just to attend this function. It’s not like there are taxis in this town, so the local Rotarians have, quite reasonably, given Governor Michael, a doctor by profession, a motorcycle with high handlebars and a seat shaped like a banana.

Day 8 

Miles logged: 1671

I’m not on Route 66 anymore. I took a left onto a forlorn stretch of highway, heading straight over the horizon – toward Muleshoe. I get the sense, though, that the residents of Muleshoe, faithful to the town’s motto, “Focused on Our Community,” are glad to keep their distance from outsiders. There isn’t a big push to attract tourists, though a sign on the outskirts says this is home to the “world’s largest muleshoe,” which is something.

I take a quick tour of downtown – a Radio Shack, a “Western wear” outfitter, a butcher, and a “Sanitary Barber Shop,” all in the shadow of a looming grain factory – and then meet Wayne Pierson, president of the Rotary Club of Muleshoe, in his storefront office at Edward Jones Investments. Wayne is very cordial, but he asks, “Why are you in Muleshoe?” as if he sees my intentions as suspect, like maybe I’m here just because his town has a funny name.

Actually, the Rotary Club of Muleshoe’s claim to fame is its annual steer-roping contest. There is an active subculture of cowboys who roam the western United States in search of these contests, and Muleshoe has appeared on their radar. Each summer, the cowboys converge on the town. Few residents turn out to watch the roping (it’s not really a spectator sport), but this year the Rotary club cleared $14,500 from the cowboys’ entry fees and sponsorships.

At the club’s lunch meeting, Wayne introduces me to the other members, still somewhat skeptical: “How we were blessed to have Mr. Mitchell here in Muleshoe, I’m not so sure,” he says. But he presents me with a Mule-o-Meter – a weather monitoring device (it’s a picture of a mule with a string for a tail; if the string moves, it’s windy). And the other Rotarians wink when they shake my hand and urge me (“Don’t be bashful, now”) to dig into the beef brisket.

Evening in Amarillo, and it’s an elegant dinner party at the home of William Boyce, president of the Rotary Club of Amarillo West. There are around 20 Rotarians in attendance, and one of them says, “Hello! Hello! Welcome to Texas!” and hugs me tighter than my grandma used to do. This is Beth Duke, who now runs a nonprofit that’s helping to revitalize downtown Amarillo, and she says she knows how tired I am, she’ll get me everything I need.

Before long, I’m loaded up with steaks and sitting at the head of another Texas table, and there’s Michael Graves again. He says he wouldn’t think of missing a Rotary gathering like this one. These folks just can’t say enough good things about Rotary. It’s changed their lives, they say, given them a sense of purpose. They say it’s well and good that I’m touring clubs in America, seeing how they sustain their towns, but the most amazing thing about Rotary is that it is so international.

Beth has decorated a room in her home for the sole purpose of hosting more Group Study Exchange teams from overseas. Her husband, Ralph Duke, tells the story about the time some German Rotarians saved her car’s license plate. Beth and Ralph had taken their German guests to the Big Texan Steak Ranch, and there was a big bus full of Swiss tourists there, too. After dinner, Beth discovered a Swiss man lying under her car, trying to unscrew her license plate. The plate would have ended up hanging on the guy’s wall in Switzerland if it weren’t for the German Rotarians, who successfully intervened, berating the would-be thief in his own language.

Days  9-10

Miles logged: 2552

Palomas, Mexico, at 11 p.m. I am the only customer in the Lucky 7 bar. What am I doing here?

The way it happened was this. From Parsons to Amarillo, I had heard many stories about Mexico – about all the work that Rotarians in this part of America were doing with Rotarians on other the side of the border. Kelly Rector, in Parsons, used to send trucks from his trucking company to Larry Biron’s warehouse in Tulsa and drive medical equipment across the border. District Governor Michael Graves told me about the Rotarian whose brand-new, uninsured pickup truck was stolen during a Rotary expedition to Mexico. The Rotarians in his club started a fund to help buy him a new one. Many Rotarians told me about the hoops they jumped through to get supplies – donated clothing, food, equipment, building materials – across the border.

Then I get a call from Tom Lindsay, governor-elect of District 5520, who lives in Deming, N.M., 35 miles from the Mexican border. Tom says he wants people to know there’s something south of Santa Fe, and besides, there’s a 96-year-old member of the Rotary Club of Deming I absolutely have to meet. Tom wants nothing more than to give a friend in his final years a chance to tell his story to a magazine writer. The gesture is quintessentially Rotary, and I’ve learned that despite all of Rotary’s talk about the need to recruit younger members, these older folks mean the world to their clubs as role models and keepers of timeless values.

So then, it’s a long drive to Deming, and finally the “Hacienda de Vocale,” Emanuel Vocale’s farmhouse in the desert. The old man used to grow grapes for wine here, but now he has his wine delivered by an Italian friend who owns a vineyard down the street (yes, there are vineyards in the New Mexico desert). Emanuel places a jug of the stuff on his patio table, along with a hunk of cheese that had been hanging in his barn, and begins to tell the story of a father who moved his family from Italy to West Virginia, where he met a recruiter looking for people to farm the land in New Mexico. “Everyone told my dad there was nothing here but sand dunes, Indians, and rattlesnakes,” Emanuel says. “They said the Indians were going to scalp us, but my dad said, ‘There are people in New Mexico, and they still have scalps.’”

Tom is at the table, along with Shelby Phillips III, who is a real cowboy – the quiet, self-assured owner of a cattle ranch even further out in the desert. Tom, Shelby, and Vocale are part of group of eight Deming residents who get together at 5 every evening for coffee.

Emanuel says his first house in New Mexico was made out of boards and there was no well for water, but “even so, we made a crop.” Eventually, his father bought a tractor – though he thought horses had more sense – and in 1934, Emanuel’s family bought a piece of land for him to farm. He went to Italy to marry his wife, but other than that, he never thought of leaving New Mexico. In 1941, he was asked to be a Rotarian. “I couldn’t say no; they were all so nice to me,” he says. Tom and Shelby smile, pictures of pure contentment, and the sun turns the sky red over the Hacienda de Vocale.

Later at Tom’s house, it’s steaks off the grill, his wife Linda’s homemade chili salsa, and a lot of talk about Mexico. Life across the border couldn’t be more different, but Deming is very much a product of its location. All the Mexican holidays are celebrated here, the schools are bilingual, many of the area’s most successful businesses and farms are owned by one-time illegal immigrants, and the Hat Creek Saloon plays a mix of country and Mexican music for a crowd that is half-white, half-Hispanic.

Tom, Linda, and Shelby visit Mexico often. District 5520, which Tom is now governing, is involved in at least 30 projects with Rotary clubs across the border. “We don’t work like big brothers teaching little brothers,” he says. “We’re just Rotarians working with Rotarians.” Tom has gone to Mexican schools to volunteer as a speech therapist, once bringing a grateful mother to tears. He and his friends often go to dusty Palomas just for dinner, or to get their teeth worked on by the cheap dentists. But at 11 p.m., Palomas is not a place to be. “You don’t want to go,” says Shelby.

So, of course, I do go. I was pointed north, but then I did a U-turn, and now I’m heading south on the dark, narrow road that runs 32 miles across the desert to the border. Bats with 3-foot wingspans flap in the moonlight, and all manner of wildlife scurry across the road. I am the only one on this road, so I pull over and lie on my hood, taking in the silence and looking up at the unreal sky, smeared white with stars. Part of this trip, I think, is a rediscovery of America, and that is why I am going to Mexico.

Now, after a cozy dinner with the sorts of Americans I never knew existed – people with roots in a desert, lifetime friends who see each other every day at 5 p.m., a gentle cowboy – now, less than an hour after that, here is a different sort of international experience. I can leave the United States and be in a foreign land seconds later. I can feel more acutely what America is by seeing what it is not. And I can be home by sunrise.

The border crossing is isolated, empty, floodlit. There are no cars or people passing through. I park my car and walk across. The Mexican guards seem not to notice. In Mexico, there is traffic – a steady stream of pickup trucks and beat-up sedans that drive right up to the border and circle back in the roundabout where the road ends.

Days 11-14

Miles logged: 3023

In Holbrook, Ariz., late at night, after a long drive, fueled by Flying W buffalo jerky, I pull into the Wigwam Hotel, where each room is shaped like a teepee. As teepees go, this one is pretty friendly, but its rates are too high, so I check in next door at the Star Hotel, which is owned by a real Indian – from Mumbai.

A day later, I meet Pete Kretsedemas, who came to this country from Greece in 1949. The American army drafted him to the war in Korea, and when he came home to Alabama, he got word that a distant relation had a notion to open a restaurant in the middle of the desert. Pete and his two brothers took a train to Winslow, Ariz., and in 1955 the Falcon diner on Route 66 was born. The Rotary Club of Winslow started holding its meetings there, and in 1957 Pete became a member.

That was in the heyday of Route 66, before the interstate was built. The Falcon became an institution. Senator Barry Goldwater used to come in and ask for Pete, and the actor Richard Burton said the Falcon had the best food and the best service between Hollywood and Kansas. Pete sold the restaurant in 1998, and the club now meets at the Casablanca, but in early November he was invited to a party at the Falcon. In the same dining room where he was inducted into Rotary, the club celebrated Pete’s 50th year as a Rotarian in good standing. “Rotary has been good to me,” says Pete. “It got into my heart. I couldn’t wait for each Wednesday.”

Rotarian Bob Hall, executive director of the Winslow Chamber of Commerce, gives me a tour of the town. Bob used to be a hairdresser in San Francisco, but he tired of the lifestyle and anonymity of the big city. In 1991, he moved to Winslow in search of something pure.

He shows me all of Winslow’s highlights, explaining that when he arrived, much of the town was boarded up. Now there are tourist shops, a beautifully renovated hotel called La Posada, and a corner with a mural and a statue celebrating the famous Eagles song: “Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and such a fine sight to see…”

There are plaques on the walls of Bob’s office: “Bob Hall: Winslow Citizen of the Year,” “Bob Hall: Best Coach Ever – Winslow Dolphin Swim Team.” Obviously, Bob is a leader. He cares about his town. He takes seriously the motto Service Above Self…

But I don’t have to say this. All I have to say is “Bob is a Rotarian.”

Day 15-16

Miles logged: 3342

The stretch of road from Kingman, Ariz., to Los Angeles is the most dramatic of the trip – the kind of desert you see in the pictures – and my editor has said I ought to listen to psychedelic music or something to get into the mood, but I’m munching on Flying W buffalo jerky and listening to an advertisement for cordless power tools.

And why not? Commerce is what makes this country turn. That and Hollywood. And a couple hours later, there it is: the Hollywood sign! And Rodeo Drive, Sunset Boulevard, palm trees, the beach – the ocean!

I’ve made it to Los Angeles. It is such a fine thing to hear the ocean that I walk all the way from Santa Monica Pier, which is the official end of Route 66, to Venice Beach, where there are few Rotarians and a lot of people in strange outfits.

The next day I meet Gerry Turner, a member of the host organization committee for the 2008 Los Angeles convention. Gerry is a consultant who specializes in human resources management, which is to say he knows how to get things done. The license plate on his Corvette says MOTVATN, and he’s motivated a corps of Rotarian volunteers who have been working for five years to make this year’s convention the greatest ever.

After lunch at the Palm, Gerry takes me to the convention center, and with a broad sweep of his arm, he says proudly, “This is where it’s all going to happen.” He shows me the street that will be closed off for the opening events, and the newly built NOKIA Theatre, where Rotarians will hear a special performance by singer Natalie Cole.

Then Gerry shows me what I think is the best part of all: the expansive hall that will serve as the House of Friendship. More than 14,000 Rotarians from around the world will converge on this hall, exchanging ideas and information about their home countries.

Gerry says: “When you see all these people in their native costumes, you’ll know they all share the same values, the same goal to help humanity. It proves that Rotary has no boundaries, and this is what makes it special.”

I know enough after this trip to recognize the authenticity of that statement. My cynicism is long gone. I envy Gerry for the pride he must feel for captaining this project, and I hope that my new Rotary friends from the heartland will attend the convention. All that goodness and happiness, the sheer amount of energy and enthusiasm that will be amassed in one place – I reckon it will seem like magic, like maybe the whole convention center will just start glowing, so you can see it all the way from Chicago.