The Albuquerque Tribune’s opinion page has a regular “bouquets and brickbats” feature, in which it heaps its praise or derision on what’s happening with local issues.

The Tribune sent a bouquet to the Albuquerque City Council for designating landmark status Monday night to El Vado Motel on Route 66.

Albuquerque obsessed with razing historic buildings in the 1960s and 1970s. Whole neighborhoods were leveled by urban renewal and other misguided efforts at “progress.” So even little acts of mercy deserve praise these days.

The City Council on Monday voted to make the embattled El Vado Motel at 2500 Central Ave. S.W. a city landmark, the better to spare it from destruction. The 70-year-old motel was regarded by Route 66 advocates as one of the few remaining, good examples of motel architecture from the highway’s heyday. People from all over the country protested plans to turn the property into town homes - despite the owner’s promise to spare small portions of the motel.

A couple of options now include the city working with the owner to come up with a project acceptable to both - or, as Councilor Ken Sanchez suggests, buying the property.

Neither option should be ruled out - so long as the historic building is preserved for posterity.

Rick and Jane McKinney, the evangelist couple who are heading east in their Walk Across America trek, debated walking on the interstate in eastern Arizona.

Instead, they walked on Route 66, mostly through Winslow. They had a much more life-affirming experience (I could have told you that ), including an encounter with an Navajo man:

Then we met Raymond and Celeste standing outside a senior citizens center. Raymond is a Navajo. Celeste is a Christian but Raymond is not. He told us lots of interesting and heart wrenching stories about being shipped off to “Indian School” as a boy. He told us how the teachers would wash the children’s mouths out with lye soap when they spoke their native language to try to force them to speak English. He told us about he and other Native American children were mistreated by those in authority. As we spoke to him of Jesus and his love it was obvious that his deep wounds had hardened his heart toward the gospel. This was the first time since God had broken our hearts over the treatment of the Native Americans that we’d had an opportunity to express our remorse to a Native American face to face. Right there on the main street of Winslow I told Raymond how sorry we were for what had happened to him. I told him that although we had had nothing directly to do with his treatment and the treatment of his people, that we were heartbroken over it and that we had repented to God for the action of the “white man.” Another miracle began to happen before our very eyes. Raymond’s heart began to melt and the expression on his face began to change. It was obvious that this was the first time he’d ever been apologized for all the horrible things that had happened. We continued to share and although we spent about 30 minutes with him we could not overcome a lifetime of bitternews in a half an hour. Raymond was moved by the gospel and promised us that he would consider its importance in his life.

Rick and Jane’s experiences of walking across American is becoming an eye-opener for them. Again, I think their true purpose is to not “reclaim America’s Freedoms, Families and Faith” or some other grandiose goal. It’s to extend acts of human kindness along the Mother Road.

To read the rest, the diary entry is here, under the Feb. 7 heading.

Steve Vaught of thefatmanwalking.com gives the reasons why on his Feb. 8 journal:

I have decided to take a little time off from walking because I need to break this plateau that I have been at for several weeks. I am going to be focusing primarily on upper body development and nutrition education and practice. I know that some certain people are not going to be happy about this decision but this is now and will remain about my health first and foremost. I am not a character in a movie with a story that gets neatly resolved by the end of the show. I am a real human being with problems and challenges just like everyone else. I have undertaken this journey to figure out how I allowed myself to get into the position that I found myself and then to learn how to fix myself in a permanent and meaningful way.

…

So if it is unclear, I am not quitting the walk. I am adding to it by taking this time to introduce a fitness program that will capitalize on my success to date and bring me to a new level of fitness that will allow me to finish my walk strong, healthy and looking the part.

That is all that I can say about this tonight but I have more to tell you about tomorrow, so please be patient and I promise you that it will be worth the wait.

Xbox Advanced reports that THQ is currently developing a video game based on the Pixar Animation Studios’ Route 66 summer film, “Cars.”

It will be available for Xbox, Playstation 2, PC and GameCube platforms.

The game should be in stores shortly before or on the movie’s release of June 9. The game will include voice talent from the film.

The Xbox Advanced site also has three screen shots from the video game.

UPDATE: A few more screen shots from the game can be found here.

The Toledo Blade published an article about the summer Pixar film, “Cars,” and its link to the city’s long history as a Jeep manufacturer. I found the story’s more interesting part was the interview with the actor who portrayed the Jeep part in the film, Paul Dooley. The article can be read here.

Bloomington, Ill., has acquired a United Hockey League franchise that will drop the puck in the 2006-07 season.

The Bloomington team doesn’t have a name yet. The team and a local newspaper is letting fans have a say on the nickname.

One of the choices is the 66ers, as in Route 66, which goes right through town.

Which one will you pick? I know which one I’m leaning to.

Yes, I know Tulsa already has a 66ers team. But that’s in basketball, not hockey. There will be little chance of confusion.

Jane and Michael Stern, of Roadfood fame, have contributed an article in the February issue of Gourmet magazine. The Sterns write about one of Oklahoma’s favorite dishes — chicken-fried steak — and two acclaimed Route 66 restaurants that serve it — Clanton’s Cafe of Vinita and the Rock Cafe of Stroud.

Gourmet doesn’t have the article online, but I’m going to excerpt a few passages. First, about Clanton’s, which opened in 1927, before much of Route 66 was paved:

… The Patricks relish the fact that their place is a town cafe with standards set by local tastes. Dennis Patrick says: “If our gravy is a little off, if the biscuits aren’t as fluffy as usual, if there’s too much salt in the dressing, they let us know.”

At the Rock Cafe, owner Dawn Welch says her pork jagerschnitzel outsells chicken-fried steak 10-to-1 (for good reason, I might add). Also, the Rock Cafe uses the same “seasoned for eternity” grill as when the restaurant opened in 1939.

Welch tells us she has nightmares about losing the grill. When we stop for breakfast, she has just the night before dreamed that it had cracked beyond repair. Running a spatula across the dark, timeworn surface to clear away crumbs, she wonders aloud if a couple more decades of scraping might eventually wear it out. She tells of the day a few years ago when a woman from New York City came to visit and asked if she could watch Welch make chicken-fried steaks. The woman observed, then offered to buy the grill so she could bring it back east with her. The offer was generous, big enough to buy a modern replacement, but Welch refused what she considered a Faustian bargain. The soul of the Rock Cafe was not for sale.

Go to your local bookstore or newstand to buy the magazine. It also contains excellent photographs from both restaurants and plenty of historical lore.

Hat tip to Laurel Kane for letting us know about the article.