Words by Lamprini C. Thoma
Photos by Nickos Ventouras

All of the tourist guides, from Rough Guide to Lonely Planet, advise aspiring sixty-sixers to start their trip to the West with a hearty Lou Michell's breakfast in Chicago. It is a tradition that goes back to the day the road workers started digging the first meters of the Route, beginning at Jackson Avenue, Chicago. It is the place where they would go to get breakfast every morning before work. Lou's had opened for business three years before the official opening of Route 66, and since then, for more than 9 decades, four generations of Greek-American owners proudly serve what is still known as «the best breakfast in Chicago».
 
The restaurant's story is as American as it gets. Lou Michelle a.k.a. Barba-Ilias – the Greek immigrant who opened this busy spot in 1923, started out by making fluffy traditional Greek omelets, stuffed with feta cheese upon request and served with homemade fries, home baked bread cut in fat slices – the kind you don't usually find in American diners –  and his own red sauce. The Michelle Family still runs the establishment which is officially recognized by the State of Illinois as a Chicago Landmark, much to the pride of Chicagoans who refer to it as their favorite breakfast place.
 
Route 66 begins with a breakfast at a Greek-American establishment as old as the route itself. And it continues throughout its 2.400 glorious miles to treat you with great American food that is often prepared by Greek-American hands. Vegetarians need not apply.


 
A Glass of Water
 
The Great American Road started rolling on November 11th, 1926. 3,940 kilometers from Chicago to LA, for most part following the railroad tracks, which themselves followed the pioneer paths. A big part of the Route traces the original road that was opened by Eduard Bill of the US Army back in 1857. The Mother Road follows the original caravan trail in Illinois and Missouri and then makes a detour to Oklahoma, thanks to the insistence of Cyrus Avery, a Tulsa businessman and proud Okie who was the first highway commissioner and who spearheaded the national committee that created the U.S. Highway System in 1926.
 
The Route then passes through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Its turns and straight lines, bridges and gorges, deserts and plains took Americans by surprise, revealing to them the beauty and diversity of their land. This was the real American Dream road, the road of hope, immigration and that famous ‘American way of life’, the white picket fence dream of small town America. And it was those small towns that fought against all odds to keep the Mother Road and its legend alive after 1985, when it was erased from all official maps.


 
They, along with nostalgia and the old Bobby Troup number (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66 kept the road alive – what's left of it that is, because there are also miles that have gone missing and you can easily find yourself in someone's backyard, another stranger to drive straight to his house because, “here the road disappears, you have to take the Interstate towards Albuquerque and you'll find it in about thirteen miles.” Yes, it happens.
 
The Route is filled with landmarks, businesses and places that lived off the road all those years and still manage to survive the hard times after the Interstate System took over. Most landmark restaurants are in Greek-American hands. There is, actually, an easy way to find out if a restaurant is Greek. If the waiter puts a glass of cold water in front of you before you even order, there is a more than good chance that the establishment is in Greek-American hands, or that the owner has worked with Greeks in the past. Cold water is Greece in a glass.
 
From Chicago to LA
 
Lou Michelle's is a great opening act for the Greek-American legacy of R66. The second historic Greek-American establishment that attracts all sixty-sixers is in Litchfield, Illinois, an old coal mining town and the site of the first commercial oil production in the Lincoln State. It is one of the cities that flourished along with the Mother Road. Even today, the city keeps its part of the road pristine, taking care of those wonderful 30s and 40s signs and maintaining an operational drive-in theater. Still, what keeps Litchfield on the map for devoted 66ers is Ariston Café – and not only for 66ers. People from St Louis and Chicago drive literally hundreds of miles to eat at this simple, unpretentious place with the obviously Greek name (meaning simple ‘the best’). Ariston was founded and is still operated by a Greek-American family: the Adam family. It was opened in 1924 by Petros Adam – or Pete Adam as he was called here – in Carlinville, Illinois, right on Route 66. When they rerouted R66 in 1929, Pete and his business followed. He leased a property in Litchfield and built the original Litchfield restaurant right across the street from today's Ariston. The final location, still in operation, was chosen when burgeoning business made expansion necessary. The name never changed though, and neither did the quality of the food. If there is one Greek word that all 66ers learn, it is the name of this wonderful cafe with its great food and the historical marker outside honoring its tradition.


 
In Oklahoma, in cowboy land, you follow Spyro Agnew Avenue to the center of Oklahoma City, finding all those Greek diners and ‘Coney Islands’, which smell of cleaning liquid and nostalgia, like ‘Jim's Coney Island’ and ‘Never on Sunday Restaurant’. Coney Islands are as Greek as spanakopita. They originate from Detroit, Michigan, a state with an historic and vibrant Greek community. Story has it that the first one was opened by Kostas (Gust) Kyros in 1917 serving gyro, the Coney Island hot dog (a hot dog served with no-beans chili), and the Coney Burger (which replaces the hot-dog with burger meat), as well as breakfast 24/7. This is still the Coney Island tradition there where the burger empires haven't managed to bring them down.
 
But you have to get to Albuquerque in New Mexico to find the ultimate R66 spot. It is called Nick's Restaurant and it is where the Route 66 of 1924 crosses the Route 66 of the 1936 rerouting. Nick Manolis, the proud owner, is a third generation Greek-American. He has to feed us, “the first Greeks that took the Route,” as “everybody, all the people who drive the route come here” and he would have known if other Greeks had done the trip. He is a smiling, warm, large-framed man and the baklava that his wife makes every day is the best you can get on the Mother Road.
 

A hero's bar
 
Old Route 66 passed through Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, where you cannot miss Evangelo's Bar. It has a big neon sign featuring the Greek flag and the face of a young American soldier, a cigarette between his lips and a determined stare. It's a picture familiar from numerous reproductions, from LIFE magazine to a recent memorial stamp – the famous photo taken by world class photographer Eugene Smith in 1944 that became the unofficial icon of the American ‘unknown soldier’. Entering the bar, you will soon learn that the iconic American soldier was in fact Greek; he managed to get American citizenship only several years after the war. This little bar, considered one of the best live music spots in Santa Fe, was his way of earning his living and is now in the hands of one of his three sons, Nick.

 

The soldier's name was Evangelos Klonis and he is now buried in Kefalonia, the homeland that he left in 1936 as a stowaway on a boat to the US. At the age of 16 he worked his way from California to Santa Fe. When he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he decided to help his new homeland. He tried to join the Marines but was rejected as he was not a US citizen. So he joined the army instead, where his Greek citizenship was not a problem. He became Sergeant Angelo Klonis of the US infantry. He went to war in 1942 and was honorably discharged in 1945. He fought with the infantry as well as with a special commando unit and his bravery earned him the nickname T.E.: initials standing for Trellos Ellinas (the Crazy Greek). He never bragged about the lives of the fellow soldiers that he saved and his family learned of his heroic actions years later. His son Nick tells me that Evangelo never wanted to talk much about his army years. Actually, he only mentioned the famous photo once.
 
His picture came back into spotlight in the 90s when it was selected to become a US stamp. From then on, journalists and historians started arriving at the bar to ask for more information, and the strange story of the Crazy Greek who became an American symbol came to light. Today his image brings people together in this small bar, Nick tells me. Americans see his father as the personification of the war they fought and their victory, Greek-Americans see him as a symbol of all that is great about the United States and New Mexicans see him as a fellow citizen of whom they are proud.


 
In California, near Santa Monica pier, the Mother Road comes to an end. Here there are still a few diners in Greek hands but the most famous Greeks of the state are now university professors. As Louis (Ilias) of Tower Inn Café told me, ‘Greeks used to feed America. We used to have all the diners, all the restaurant businesses. But, as Greeks, we wanted to send our kids to university; we worked hard to see the next generation get out of those greasy kitchens. Most of us sent our kids to university, sold our business and went back to our village in Greece.’ Greeks used to feed America. Those that never left still feed America's nostalgia.
 

 
(Part of this story was published in the Athens News newspaper in 2010. Lamprini and Nick travelled the route once more last October (2013) and found everything in place.)