Real Life 'Cars'

When you saw the movie 'Cars' did you think it was just a cute story? I hope this changes your mind:

KOTV.com - The News On 6: "MIAMI, Okla. (AP) _ The Riviera Courts Motel is crumbling away and nobody seems to care.

Once a stop along Route 66, the 2,400-mile neon carnival that connected hundreds of communities from Chicago to Los Angeles, this late-1930s Mission Revival is just a weather-worn building on the side of a country road in far northeast Oklahoma.

Next door, soybean farmers Richard and Rosemary Woolard watch the place deteriorate from their front porch.

``Been a lot of changes in this old county,'' 77-year-old Richard Woolard says plainly.

The Riviera Courts is among hundreds of mom-and-pop motels that met their demise along the ribbon of Route 66 as America's interstate system siphoned traffic off the Mother Road onto a four-lane, divided highway called progress.

In Oklahoma, with more Route 66 miles than any of the eight states it flows through, many motels are derelict or abandoned, used as junk yards, makeshift car lots and flophouses."

I have driven these back roads through the small towns. It is just a shame that the have so many problems. In an ideal world it would be OK to have the big box hotels and the little ones. The mom and pop restaurants and the fast food joints. It is not a perfect world however. In return, a part of history is being eliminated. And we are that much the poorer for it.