The Griswolds ain’t got nothing on us

As a parent, there’s a fine line between nurturing the soul of an emerging artist and creating a future serial killer.

I’m still not exactly sure which path I’ve put my 6-year-old son on.

After our unconventional family vacation last week, I actually sort of envision him one day fashioning a mask for himself made from human flesh.

Whether that means he’s destined to become a psycho or just a performance artist, though, remains to be seen.

It was somewhere on Route 66 between Tulsa and Oklahoma City when our car whizzed past a dead armadillo on the side of the road.

“Whoa! A dead armadillo!” I exclaimed.

“Where?” our son excitedly asked. “I didn’t see the armadillo.”

“Never mind,” I answered, “it was just back there.”

“Awwwww,” he whined.

I could feel the disappointment that he’d missed the armadillo, which appeared to have been spared the full force of a tire and instead was just laying there, paws up, on its armored back.

That’s when I slowed the car.

“What’s the hurry?” I asked myself. “This is vacay. If you want to check out a dead armadillo, go check out a dead armadillo.”

“Are you turning around to show him the dead armadillo?” my wife inquired.

I could sense some excitement in her voice — she secretly wanted to view the dead armadillo, too.

That’s the beauty of Route 66, which, like our own Lincoln Highway, now mostly serves either just local traffic or a slow drip of tourists. We were free to go inspect the dead armadillo without joining him as roadkill.

So inspect we did.

After all, this wasn’t your average, central Iowa roadkill. To us, that armadillo was as exotic as seeing a squished, duck-billed platypus.

And what’s a vacation if you don’t get to see something different?

Plus, it was free.

After a few quality minutes, we drove on, headed toward that day’s stop in Tucumcari, New Mexico, a classic Route 66 town not much bigger than Jefferson, but with more neon than we have in a three-county area.

My wife and I enjoy things off the beaten path, and Route 66 in the 21st century is certifiably no longer the beaten path.

Whole swaths that were bypassed by the interstate system now serve, in a sense, as giant roadkill. And just like we did with the armadillo, we love slowing down to inspect abandoned gas stations and rusty neon signs.

Every few miles, you’ll find signs of life in the form of an incredibly tasty diner or a roadside attraction — like a giant, concrete blue whale — that simply refuses to accept its fate.

We travel the Lincoln Highway whenever we can, too, but of the two famed roads, the Lincoln Highway is sorta like the stuffy dad who couldn’t understand his kids’ rock ’n’ roll or cartoons.

When I think of travelers on the Lincoln Highway, I picture wealthy industrialists wearing monocles.

On Route 66, I see Hawaiian shirts and Vans slip-ons.

Or maybe that’s just me I was looking at in the mirror.

Previous trips have taken us from Chicago to St. Louis, and from St. Louis through Missouri to the Oklahoma state line.

The route connects Chicago to L.A.

But this time, we gave ourselves a week and planned to go from Oklahoma to Albuquerque. From Albuquerque, we jumped off Route 66 and pointed the car south toward Roswell, New Mexico, before backtracking north to Taos then home via Dodge City, Kansas.

We ate steak in Amarillo, Texas, and watched a guy try to eat a 72-ounce steak dinner in 60 minutes or less for a T-shirt.

My wife and son spray-painted their names on the half-buried cars at Cadillac Ranch.

Our son saw an Old West shootout in Dodge City and danced the Friendship Dance with Indians from Taos Pueblo, a World Heritage Site.

For me, knowing we were going to be in Albuquerque, it felt wrong to be so close to Roswell and not visit a place called the International UFO Museum & Research Center.

The museum was ultimately a disappointment, although that didn’t stop us from dropping 60 or so bucks in the gift shop. But if they want us to believe the conspiracy theory that aliens crash-landed in Roswell in 1947, they should strive to have fewer typos on the museum walls.

If they need an editor, I know one.

But on Route 66, there are some things that are even stranger than an alien autopsy exhibit.

Back in Tucumcari, we visited a roadside landmark called Tee Pee Curios. It’s exactly what you think — a little Southwestern gift shop nestled inside a concrete tepee.

When the owner, Gar Engman, asked where we were from, he clearly wasn’t prepared to hear the words “Jefferson, Iowa.”

Turns out, he was from Dayton, having recently quit his Webster County painting business to live full-time on the route. He bought the ’40s-era curio shop a couple of years ago.

There we were, more than 800 miles from home, talking about camping at Spring Lake and eating at the A&W.

It’s a small world — but I’m guessing that poor armadillo croaked wishing it was just a wee bit larger.