Homeless?

Recently while driving in Brooklyn, I observed a man driving a corvette in the next lane. As he passed by, I could see his New York license plate, which read: HOMELESS

At first I thought maybe the driver was divorced and his wife got the house. Then I thought it was a cruel statement about the plight of many people in today's economy. Finally, I thought back to a TV show which aired from 1960 to 1964. It was called Route 66 and was about the adventures of two young men who drove across the country, stopping in a different small town each week to interact with the local population.

The young men, Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock, played by Martin Milner and George Maharis, respectively, seemed to be free spirits with no cares or roots. This was several years before the dawning of the age of aquarius. There were a total of 116 episodes filmed in black and white and I probably saw most of them, although I can honestly say I don't remember a single one - just the general concept.

Vanity plates were not available when this show aired, but if they were, I doubt they would have had a license plate that read HOMELESS. Yet this is what they seemed to be.

Route 66 may have had a special meaning to me because my family had driven cross county to visit the newly opened Disneyland in the summer of 1957. The interstate highway system was in its infancy then and we probably traveled on route 66 at some point.

Somehow the adventures we had were never quite as exciting as those of Tod and Buz. Until I got to roam around Tom Sawyer's Island, while wearing my holster and six gun.

Can you imagine a kid being allowed to enter a theme park today with handguns strapped to his thighs? Well, that's exactly what I did in 1957. There were so many cowboy shows on television that it was not unusual for kids to want to be cowboys.

Today, if a kid had a gun, they'd think he was trying out for the NBA.