Those of you that are fans of Star Trek will understand where I got the title from. In the 28th episode of the first season of the original Star Trek series in 1966, there was an episode entitled “The City on the Edge of Forever” in which the Enterprise orbits a planet that is giving off time rifts and affecting the crew. They beam down to this planet and find the source of these time distortions is a large ring-shaped portal that is a sentient being that calls itself “The Guardian of Forever.” It offers to send the crew back to sometime in Earth’s past. Dr. McCoy, being in an altered mental state after having injected himself with drugs to try to treat sickness caused by these time rifts, jumps through the ring and lands in 1920’s era New York City. He proceeds to alter the timeline in such a way that the Enterprise never existed, so Kirk and Spock have to go after him and fix the damage that was done.
So, what happened me when I stepped through this ring-shaped gateway in the town of Springfield, Missouri, USA, erected in the purported birthplace of U.S. Route 66 in the 1920’s to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the highway. Officially, this place is known as “Queen’s Gate 66” and it’s next hotel whose claim to fame is that Elvis stayed there in 1956. (Though he would visit Springfield on his final tour of 1977 and do a show that is far, far more interesting at a local basketball arena).
Why Springfield? A telegram was sent in April of 1926 proposing the name of the then new highway connecting Chicago to Los Angeles as “route 66.”
Did I suddenly step back to this golden 1950’s era where everybody drove American cars with massive fins and V8 engines that got less than 10 miles per gallon, and nobody cared because gas was only 25 cents a gallon? No, I just found shops that sell both legal marijuana and guns. Welcome to Missouri!
Shot photos, not each other.
Adventures of a Photo Nerd 