Guardian Angel of Route 66

For Angel Delgadillo, the courtly, silver-haired barber, Route 66 is a whole lot more than a road on a map.

Stretching from Chicago to Los Angeles, the highway once linked small towns across half the nation. Delgadillo has spent most of his 73 years in one of those towns, Seligman, Ariz., (pop. 456) where he grew up watching traffic fly by on what some have called “America’s Main Street.” But without the help of Angel Delgadillo, the “Guardian Angel of Route 66,” our nation’s most famous highway might have become just a memory recalled in song lyrics.

“I remember watching the Okies pass by our home in ramshackle vehicles loaded with tools, spare tires, washtubs, chickens, and mattresses,” he says. Dust storms in the Midwest and the Great Depression in the 1930s sent thousands—many from Oklahoma—scurrying along Route 66 to what they hoped would be a better life in California.

Those were tough times for the Delgadillo family as well. They considered loading up the family Model T to follow the road to the Golden State, but they hung on. Angel and his brothers and sisters started playing Big Band music at towns all along Route 66. The Delgadillo Orchestra kept food on the table and the tight-knit family together.

After World War II, Delgadillo followed in his father’s footsteps, choosing a career as a barber. He began clipping hair in Seligman in 1950. Now semi-retired, he still keeps the shop exactly as he left it. He smiles as he pats the worn barber chair, recalling busier, livelier times. “My father, who was a self-taught barber, purchased this chair for $194 in 1925 when haircuts were 25 cents.”

When Interstate 40 opened in 1978, replacing Route 66 as the main thoroughfare, Delgadillo watched his hometown begin to die. Seligman, usually bustling with 9,000 cars a day seeking its roadside diners and cafes, motels, service stations, and trading posts, became so quiet you could hear tumbleweeds blowing over the road.

“It was such a sad time,” Delgadillo says. “So many families packed up and moved away. Businesses closed. There was no work.”

He and wife Vilma somehow managed to stay afloat and keep their four children together so they didn’t have to move away from the town they loved.

Delgadillo refused to let his town and Route 66 die. The remaining residents of Seligman put their heads together to come up with ways to attract industry to the town, but Delgadillo had another idea. He knew the power of memory and myth, and the highway that novelist John Steinbeck referred to as the “Mother Road” wasn’t lacking in either.

Delgadillo called a town meeting in February 1987, where he and 15 other Seligman residents formed the Historic Route 66 Association of America. “My dream,” Delgadillo says, “was to bring back the economy to our towns by asking the state to make Route 66 a historic highway.”

Arizona did just that on April 23, 1988. Thanks to Delgadillo and his group, the 159-mile stretch of Route 66 from Seligman to Topock, Ariz., will be forever preserved. Seligman, for its role in the “rebirth of Route 66,” has become a destination spot.

Thousands of visitors come to Angel and Vilma’s Route 66 Gift Shop and Museum, which once was home to Delgadillo’s barber shop and pool hall. The décor hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. It’s packed with Route 66 memorabilia, pictures sent by visitors, gifts, and antiques. Business cards fill practically every inch of wall space in the gift shop.

As Seligman enjoys a resurgence, the Guardian Angel of Route 66 is glad to tell any visitor stories of the legendary road and small town living. All you have to do is ask.

Susan Babbington is a freelance writer from Henderson, Nev.

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