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CNN Live At Daybreak
Route 66 Memories: History Preserved
Aired July 04, 2003 - 06:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well on the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate freedom. While that's at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, freedom comes in other forms here in the U.S. as well, for example, the freedom of the open road.
CNN's Bruce Morton shows us how memories of one historic roadway are being preserved for years to come.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MERLE HAGGARD, COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER: 66 was just a narrow two lane highway.
BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Merle Haggard wasn't born when his parents drove 66 from Oklahoma to California in 1934. His sister, Lillian Haggard Hoge, remembers, remembers the things the family is giving the Smithsonian for an exhibit on "America on the Move." A trunk, a silk Woodrow Wilson scarf.
LILLIAN HAGGARD HOGE, DONOR: I think the scarf might be more personally significant because it was the first gift that my dad gave my mother.
MORTON: Were they hillbillies in California, a reporter asked?
HOGE: I'm awfully sorry, but I never considered myself a hillbilly. I was never treated like one.
HAGGARD: Harry Truman was the man who ran the show. The bad Korean War was just beginning and I was just three years too young to go.
MORTON: Merle Haggard met 66 as a 14-year-old hitchhiker. His parents didn't know where he was.
HAGGARD: I left California and came east in search of what I'm not really sure.
MORTON: But the real migration was the one his folks made, the one John Steinbeck wrote about in "Grapes of Wrath," thousands heading west.
BRENT GLASS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY: It took Route 66 out of their homes and out of their cities to a better life.
MORTON: The exhibit, which opens in November, will include 40 feet of the old original Route 66. Many found it. So, years later, after trouble, after prison, did Merle Haggard.
HAGGARD: Not in the beginning, but finally I became something I think that James Haggard would be terribly proud of.
Country music hadn't gone to New York City yet and a serviceman was proud of what he'd done. And Hank and Lefty crowded every jukebox and that's the way it was in '51.
MORTON: Route 66, it changed America.
HOGE: Without 66, we'd still be back in the wagon days.
MORTON: Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired July 4, 2003 - 06:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well on the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate freedom. While that's at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, freedom comes in other forms here in the U.S. as well, for example, the freedom of the open road.
CNN's Bruce Morton shows us how memories of one historic roadway are being preserved for years to come.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MERLE HAGGARD, COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER: 66 was just a narrow two lane highway.
BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Merle Haggard wasn't born when his parents drove 66 from Oklahoma to California in 1934. His sister, Lillian Haggard Hoge, remembers, remembers the things the family is giving the Smithsonian for an exhibit on "America on the Move." A trunk, a silk Woodrow Wilson scarf.
LILLIAN HAGGARD HOGE, DONOR: I think the scarf might be more personally significant because it was the first gift that my dad gave my mother.
MORTON: Were they hillbillies in California, a reporter asked?
HOGE: I'm awfully sorry, but I never considered myself a hillbilly. I was never treated like one.
HAGGARD: Harry Truman was the man who ran the show. The bad Korean War was just beginning and I was just three years too young to go.
MORTON: Merle Haggard met 66 as a 14-year-old hitchhiker. His parents didn't know where he was.
HAGGARD: I left California and came east in search of what I'm not really sure.
MORTON: But the real migration was the one his folks made, the one John Steinbeck wrote about in "Grapes of Wrath," thousands heading west.
BRENT GLASS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY: It took Route 66 out of their homes and out of their cities to a better life.
MORTON: The exhibit, which opens in November, will include 40 feet of the old original Route 66. Many found it. So, years later, after trouble, after prison, did Merle Haggard.
HAGGARD: Not in the beginning, but finally I became something I think that James Haggard would be terribly proud of.
Country music hadn't gone to New York City yet and a serviceman was proud of what he'd done. And Hank and Lefty crowded every jukebox and that's the way it was in '51.
MORTON: Route 66, it changed America.
HOGE: Without 66, we'd still be back in the wagon days.
MORTON: Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
