Here’s an article from the Charlottesville (Va.) Daily Progress that lays out a man’s story:
Stuart E. Bruce stood on the shoulder of Route 66, and read the legendary highway like a sentence until it ran out of words against the far horizon. There, somewhere along the 432 miles of crumbling blacktop that cuts through central Oklahoma, he picked up a piece of asphalt and clutched it in his aged hand. […]
“I can see him bending over and picking that piece of asphalt up,” Mary Sanders said of her father, who died Dec. 1, 2006. “I thought, ‘Why does he want that?’
“Then the other day I was out in his paint shop and came across a Route 66 highway sign he had painted. On the bottom of the sign he had mounted that piece of the road.
“His life dream had been to drive along Route 66. So in May 2001 we picked up the road in Missouri and drove on it to New Mexico. He thought that was the most wonderful thing.”
On Saturday, the Route 66 sign and about 30 other paintings done by Bruce will be auctioned off at his home, where his wife, Isabelle, still lives.
Bruce was a longtime commercial artist and sign painter. In addition to aforementioned items, an antique gas pump and wagon will also be on the block. The auction will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at 1604 Mulberry Ave. in Charlottesville.
Albemarle Auction and Antiques will be running the auction. Plenty of photos of Bruce’s paintings are shown at the site, but alas, the Route 66 shield is not. But look the site over; roadies might find something else worth buying.