"Ah, there's nothing like a Polish sausage smothered with jalapenos to settle a queasy stomach," I said to my skeptical traveling companion Bob Allen, adding a squirt of mustard for good luck and taking a humongous bite.
There's something about driving the length of Route 66 — or even setting out to do so — that gives you a voracious appetite. It was Saturday, Oct. 8, 2011, and we'd just sat down to our first lunch of the journey, at Polk-a-Dot, a drive-in in Braidwood, Illinois, an hour or so south of Chicago.
In operation since 1956, the popular Route 66 landmark features remote jukebox music selectors on every table and life-size statues of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Betty Boop in the parking lot.