The Victorville (Calif.) Daily Press has an article about California Route 66 booster Jim Conkle and his efforts to film a TV pilot tentatively titled “Mother Road Chronicles,” which is loosely patterned after the late Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road.”

“The road is a road of color: color of people and color of sights,” he said.

Sitting in Richie’s All-American Diner on Route 66 in downtown Victorville, the 66-year-old Conkle laid out his vision for the show.

“What better reality TV than getting to know and meet the people that live and work and travel the road?” he asked. “We’re going to go to places that have been restored and places that have not been restored.”

The show will focus on places like the Wigwam Motel in Rialto, whose owner Manoj Patel restored it and brought it out of the “rent-by-the-hour” realm.

Or the couple from Latin America who own Route 66 Memories in Rancho Cucamonga.

The article is well-done. Go read it.

Harley and Annabelle Russell, aka The Mediocre Music Makers, of the Sandhills Curiosity Shop in Erick, Okla., were kind enough to send me an article in the Sayre (Okla.) Record-Democrat newspaper about how their act has gained national and worldwide attention.

The picture above is of Harley and Annabelle on the awning of their store. The article goes on to report that the Russells hosted more than 100 tour groups in 2006, including tourists from Japan, Korea, Norway, Australia, Germany, Wales, Holland, Ireland, Scotland and England. They’ve been featured on Japanese television and film crews from Israel, Serbia, Australia, France and Germany.

A California tour director told an audience at the Oklahoma Governor’s Conference of Tourism in October that 90 percent of his clients choose Harley and Annabelle’s show as their favorite experience on Route 66 tours. [...]

… The Russells have a vision of what Western Oklahoma can be if proper management and cooperation among all entities are achieved.

“By the time (foreign tourists) get to the middle of the U.S., they’ve had enough of standard tourist stuff,” Harley said. “They are ready for something real.” He said T-shirts and stand-and-stare exhibits won’t get the job done. [...]

“You need to know what’s on their minds when they come through the door,” he said. “You need to develop a sixth sense. We get everybody from the devil to Jesus in here and we can swing with any of them.”

The article cited a Google video of Harley and Annabelle.

The Russells also appear in the “Route 66 by Bicycle: Pedaling the Mother Road,” a 57-minute travelogue on DVD shot by Lynette Chiang. They made such an impression, they’re on the DVD’s artwork.

If you haven’t seen them, do so. At the least, you get to see “rednecks in their own environment.”