The Amtrak train, Monday morning, 7 AM, over espresso in the Turquoise Room, La Posada hotel.
Looking sucked-dry and sand-blasted by the freezing winter wind, Winslow at four o'clock on the Sunday after New Year's seems a little desolate, especially if you're driving in the wrong direction down a Navajo service road. In the right direction: La Posada, a renovated Harvey hotel, the famous Route 66 chain. From the parking lot, the place looks like an abandoned old insane asylum; by check-in, it feels like the first scenes of The Shining. But the year nineteen-thirty-five greets you in the lobby like an old friend, with Christmas lights and piñon smoke, vintage tile, painted cinder block, old black-and-whites of MGM stars, and some raucous Navajo art. Then you settle in at the bar and start ordering glasses of red wine, chatting with the other guests (in technical terms, making the usual ass of yourself). The next morning, it's sixteen caustic degrees out, warming up the car and ordering breakfast, watching the travelers depart the train, into the cold morning air of the new decade.
