Samantha Brown Stops Off in Springfield Traveling Route 66

Samantha Brown has been traveling for TV for 25 years. Now in its eighth season, Samantha Brown’s Places to Love is covering an essential piece of United States history: Route 66. Route 66 represents a lot of things to a lot of people—both here and abroad—and Brown (who has, perhaps surprisingly, never traveled the route herself) is setting out to experience the Mother Road and uncover the humanity and history beneath the hype. Ahead of some upcoming Route 66-related content of our own in our June feature (no spoilers here), we got to speak to Brown about her experience in Springfield, along the length of Route 66 she’s traveled so far, and her experiences traveling the world for work for more than two decades.

417 Magazine: How did this Route 66-specific series come about?
Samantha Brown: We did a standalone episode in the state of Illinois, because you can kind of have the whole Route 66 nostalgia and Americana experience in one state, so we thought ‘Oh, that's a really cool little contained nugget of travel that’s really attainable for most people.’ 
So we flew into Chicago and then flew out of St. Louis. But then you just get the travel bug, like we all do, and we just thought ‘what if we did the whole thing?’ It's a tough haul, road trips are tough to shoot logistically, [shooting] a road trip is very different from our other travel shows, but we just all had this mission. You know, we were on a mission from God, I guess, if I could quote the Blues Brothers, which has a bit of Route 66 history in it as well.

417: Is this a first time for you as well?
S.B.: It's the first time for me, it was the first time for me traveling through many of these states that I’ve visited here and there as a little drop-in, but just to travel through and create an uninterrupted line through these states is a completely different experience.

417: How do you typically figure out what it is that you're going to do on a trip—either in the United States or anywhere else? How do you decide what to cover?
S.B.: That's where really our ‘job’ comes into play is the whole pre-production of it. We have a team, my husband, who's also my partner in this, my director, we basically have a location, whether it's Route 66 or say, Vienna, Austria, or Huntsville, Alabama. And we just say,  ‘What's the place known for?’ 
Then, ‘what is it not known for?’ We want to show both, right? Because what it's not known for is the surprise. What it's known for is what grounds people, but it's a jumping-off point for us. We also want to show and hear from the people who don't usually get to be a part of the travel narrative because it’s a journey. It’s storytelling. What we're trying to do is be less of a travelogue or travel itinerary show and more just amazing storytelling through the people we meet.
 The pre-production is somewhat easier for Route 66, because we have to do things that follow that highway. Maybe we'll venture 20, 30 minutes off, but not too much, whereas when we're in a place like Vienna, it's a little overwhelming because there are so many directions we could go.

417: How do you avoid covering more familiar tourist stops?
S.B.: If I were going to Europe, it's all about cathedrals and castles, right? My feeling would be, how do we show a cathedral? 
Because everyone talks about a cathedral being the heart and soul of a place. So what we'll do is say, okay, if that’s the heart and soul, and of course it's a tourist center as well, what is [something] that personifies that? Is there a person who cleans the pews every day and knows where all the divots are in the marble? 
[...] Is there an organ player who's been playing here for four generations and now their daughter is the second generation to take over? What are the stories that humanize these monuments that we just kind of take for granted as history? It's always the human perspective, I would say.

417: Was this your first time in Springfield?
S.B.: It was my first time in Missouri, embarrassingly. So, yes, it was my first time in Springfield and we were there for just one night. We came in really late and then the next day we shot at the History Museum [on the Square] and then headed out from there. So, we spent far too little time, but that really is a road trip. It's these little quick hits, but we do try to get even deeper on those quick hits.

417: What was your impression of it in the short time you were here?
S.B.: I loved it. Driving in, it was still daylight, and I just thought, ‘Wow, this is a beautiful city, I wish I could walk around.’ We stayed at a really cool hotel, Hotel Vandivort, a great hotel, really lovely staff and wonderful rooms. When you’re on a road trip some of them are hit and miss, right? I remember I saw right across the street, there's a place called Gailey’s Breakfast Cafe, but it was closed so I wasn't able to go because we had to leave bright and early the next day. I did peek in and it just looked like the perfect place, especially for a road trip, to fill up and go.

417: What do you find different about traveling the United States as opposed to traveling other places around the world?
S.B.: It's really wonderful meeting different people. I'm from New York City, and I know people have ideas of how I think and who I am, and I have ideas of who these people are and how they think, and that all just dissolves when you meet people face-to-face and you just realize how good people are and how much we all have in common. Honestly, that exists everywhere. All of us just want the same thing, which is to have a good life for our kids [and] for ourselves. One thing that I really loved about being out [on Route 66] happened towards the end of Illinois and then Missouri and into Oklahoma was how the land opens up and it's so different from any place in the world. And with Route 66, you're not on the main highway, so you go through the towns and really get a sense of this country. 
It's a beautiful thing to experience and that's why travel is so important.

417: What would you say to someone who isn’t from the United States and wants to take the Route 66 trip?
S.B.: I would say, because it was the expectation I set for myself as well, is that Route 66 is billed as this nostalgia trip and almost the golden age of travel and maybe even the golden age of the United States, but there’s serious history along Route 66. From the forced migration of Native Americans to Jim Crow laws, it's a fascinating history, and it's our history—American history. It's still about the grit and resilience of the American psyche, and it's so American that through all of this, people persevere...[and] that strength and fortitude is not a myth. It's still there, and it's still in the people. It's still in the Native American tribes that eventually made it to Oklahoma, it's still in the Black-owned filling stations that are still owned by the same Black families and want to preserve their history. It's not just Elvis and muscle cars, there's so much there. To only take it at its surface level would be a shame, there's a lot of really deep history that you get to know and understand.

417: For anyone who finds travel stressful, especially families, what tips do you have?
S.B.: I have two kids and we've been traveling with them since they were babies, and it's very different from when I'm a professional traveler and everyone has a job, right? 
So kudos to parents and people traveling with family. It’s not easy, but it is so worth it. My advice to families, is you’ve got to take your time and you have to get it out of your head that it’s about being perfect and that everything has to go as planned. The whole purpose of travel is that it is not, and what I try to remind myself is that when you travel, no one is in their comfort zone. I travel all over the world with my kids and we just spend time in parks and we go where the locals go and we do what they do because they are not on this itinerary of must-sees. People who live in these destinations, they relax, they enjoy them, and that's what we're going to do. Maybe we'll put in a museum or one big attraction a day, but that's it. Then the rest is just, let's just go for a walk. The general rule is that everyone from nine—I do a lot of multigenerational trips—everyone from people who are over 75 down to 5 years old needs a break at around 3 p.m. Never schedule anything arduous at that time. That time is for ice cream. That time is for naps.

417: I'm making a personal note of that mandatory 3 p.m. break tip. For someone who travels as much as you do, what makes you really feel at home when you’re back in Brooklyn?
S.B.: I can order a bacon, egg and cheese and they know what I'm talking about. I can't believe how many places in the world don't know what an egg sandwich is. That's always heartbreaking for me because I live on them. I have my neighborhood things, but I think that's kind of why I love New York City and Brooklyn because everyone in the world lives here and it's always different. 
It's never the same city twice and I love that energy. I wasn't brought up in it. I was brought up in New Hampshire in an almost rural environment, [but] I just love the energy of cities, all cities.

417: What does your downtime look like when you're not traveling?
S.B.: I love to go for walks. I just walk everywhere. I go to parks, I love public spaces. I'll visit different public spaces in the city and just kind of check them out. And just go for long walks.
 It's pretty basic. I have 12-year-old twins, and I drop them off at school, go back to work and then pick them up. It’s pretty boring.

417: That almost seems like a necessity considering the amount of stuff you have to do for work.
S.B.: Yes, exactly. You're so on and you're so tuned into other people's cultures that, yeah, when I get back home, it’s just relaxing.

417: Is there anything you can share ahead of the episode that stood out without spoiling anything?
S.B.: One thing we were really excited about was in Carthage, Missouri, which was the Battle of the Carthage Civil War Museum. I had no idea about the Battle of Carthage, which was the Civil War’s first full-scale land battle. I'm from New Hampshire, [the Civil War] was just North versus South. Anything west of the Mississippi, I had no idea. You're always learning and maybe that's something that everyone in Missouri knows about the battle of Carthage, but it's this idea of what that battle meant then, but then talking to the curator and what it means today, because it does resonate today. We're always learning from our history and we're trying to take in that Route 66 is not a road of the past. It really is our future.

417: Was there anything else that stood out about this phase of the trip?
S.B.: The History Museum on the Square is such a must-stop for anyone doing Route 66... One thing people who do Route 66 don't realize until you're halfway through is that it doesn't really exist [as a single road] anymore. It's not on a GPS. It's not on a map. You have to figure out the chunks [and] what's still here. That art representation of Route 66 [at History Museum on the Square] is brilliant in just helping us get a handle on this 2,400-mile road of what's there, what’s still here and piecing history together on this road.

Brown’s trip along Route 66 isn’t done yet, but you can see her stop in Springfield on Samantha Brown’s Places to Love on Sunday, March 23, on PBS. You can also follow her on Instagram or check out a variety of her experiences, travel guides, tips and more on her website. Keep an eye out for more Route 66-centric content from 417 Magazine in our June feature.