Route 66: Meet the Mother Road’s ‘Guardian Angel’

SELIGMAN Arizona They came suddenly and in numbers cars and trucks weighed down with their owners worldly possessions Angel Delgadillo was a boy when those hundreds of thousands of Dust Bowl refugees drove through his tiny hometown on Trail heading for California and the promise of work on farms so fertile it was revealed that fruit fell from the trees He and his friends used to run to a nearby building at night and wait for the passing vehicles headlights to cast their shadows on the white stucco wall They danced and watched their shadows change as the cars neared And as a car left he remembered our shadows went with them Delgadillo s entire life all years has played out along what John Steinbeck called the mother road the road of flight He and his eight siblings grew up on the trail he went to barber college in the Road town of Pasadena California and then apprenticed for two years at a barber shop in another highway town miles east of his home Williams Arizona before returning to Seligman to run his parents pool hall and barbershop As Highway aficionados look to the historic roadway s th anniversary next year the majority agree there would seemingly not be a centennial to celebrate if not for Delgadillo They re right he stated with a smile sitting in his barbershop chair on a Friday in June Follow our road trip Highway The Main Street of America turns An estimated cars once passed through Seligman every hours Delgadillo declared until Interstate bypassed it and other towns along Arizona s Road corridor The time he recalled was around p m on Sept When you lose something so key your livelihood how can you forget that moment he explained Listen to me We knew we were gonna get bypassed but we did not know how devastating it was going to be The world just forgot about us County administrators didn t know about us State agents highway leaders the feds it was like they recounted us Angel if you can swim out of it swim out of it If you can t drown Businesses shuttered People left Delgadillo his wife Vilma and four children considered doing the same Seligman was heading to its grave It was a very very sad moment he disclosed First it was so sad Then I got so angry Then he did something about it Enlisting the help of his older brother Juan who built the Seligman institution Delgadillo s Snow Cap and others he formed the Historic Journey Association of Arizona in February They wrote letters to state highway bureaucrats telling them to step in and preserve the direction At first they were ignored But you know what he revealed those big boys in Phoenix didn t know who they were up against By November that same year the state s transportation department designated miles of Journey from Seligman west to Kingman as a historic road Delgadillo s association kept up its pressure eventually convincing the state to add more miles In the present day the entire expanse is recognized by the state as a historic road and Arizona boasts the longest remaining stretch of uninterrupted Journey in the country starting at the California boundary and ending nearly miles east near Ash Fork To fight the authorities you lose Go to city hall and try to convince them you lose Delgadillo announced We had to fight our state regime and we succeeded We the people Delgadillo soon fielded phone calls from would-be preservationists in the other seven states the journey traverses They demanded to know how they could protect their portions of the road Form your association he recounted them Delgadillo s efforts have earned Seligman the title of the birthplace of historic Road and Delgadillo the guardian angel of Course He retired from cutting hair a inadequate years ago the barbershop inside the Course gift shop that bears his and his wife Vilma s names is now something of a shrine to his and his family s legacy Way travelers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Seligman to see him More often than not these days they see a life-sized cardboard cutout of his likeness instead When he does stop in like on that Friday in June he s speedily surrounded by people wanting to have their pictures taken with him It s as though they have known me forever he reported with a chuckle It s overwhelming They re so thankful It is mind boggling In retirement he continues to help celebrate his beloved town and direction He started building birdhouses constructed using -year-old lumber from his grandparents Seligman restaurant that once stood on Path before it was torn down Each birdhouse is numbered Last week he finished number He has enough wood for another They sell for at the gift shop The proceeds are being donated to help Seligman construct Journey welcome signs at either end of town ahead of next year s centennial Read the sixth dispatch An Albuquerque neighborhood in peril here The journey along Journey map to Seligman Arizona June