100th Anniversary Edition Route 66 Books & Magnets COPYRIGHT © 2025 :: DAVID WICKLINE All Rights Reserved
Hi, my name is David Wickline & many of you have known me for the almost 30 years that I have been infatuated with the kitsch, glitz, glamour & history of The Mother Road, Route US 66! When I first found Route 66 west of St. Louis, Missouri, the spark was ignited! I began traveling her old two-lanes at least two times a summer trying to make sense of & experience the many fragmented alignments. This was about the time Jim Ross & Jerry McClanahan published the Here It Is - 8 State Map Set. I became enamoured over the next few years & was capturing everything of interest along all of the alignments of our old highway. My daughter Chelsea suggested, “Why don’t you write a book & put all of your digital images in it?”…so IMAGES of 66 was born, actually “freezing Route 66 in time.” This was a first & it became my first self-published book in 2005, the same time as Jerry’s EZ Guide for Travelers was published. The EZ Guide assisted me to finally making sense of all the fragmented alignments & led to IMAGES of 66 Volume 2 in 2007, a second self-published work with me creating all of the pages on my computer. I then hired a printing company for printing and binding. The books are delivered to my home and are then distributed. My books are only available wholesale to merchants & mom & pop businesses who could make the money & help them stay in business. I do sell autographed retail copies. This led to the Riding Route 66 Tour Books 1 (2017) & 2 (2021) & the Driving Route 66 Tour Book (2022). Then the Route 66 Handbook was born in 2023 with over 2,000 listings of attractions & points of interest along all 2,450 miles. My final book is the massive Illinois Historic Route 66 book which has 438 pages & is a full 1 inch thick! It is the most complete history & reference book about Illinois Route 66! The above four books are available for wholesale purchase according to the Orderform in the back. So how did the magnets begin? Unfortunately, many of the great folks I met along the road just could not afford to stock the IMAGES of 66 books. You see, one of the purposes of self-publishing the books was to help them make money & more importantly, to help them to be in business the next time I stopped by! I then had the idea to also sell magnets to merchants & mom & pop businesses making custom magnets so they could get an easy sale from more Route 66 Travelers, again to make their cash registers ring! The idea quickly caught on & soon I needed an employee. I started with Route 66 shields, cars & petroliana logos with about 100 different designs plus (custom ones are only available to that business) & now I am concentrating on about 140 designs that are pictured in this catalog & on the front cover. The magnets & pins come in a 1” size, the same size as a quarter. The larger 2.25” magnets & badges are the size of a White Claw or Michelob Ultra can. The people along the road remember faces & names & they began remembering me & mine in my travels. So, once I shut down the Roadhouse 66 Bar & Grille in Columbus, I began making the magnet designs to fill my idle time & soon I decided to take my books & the magnets on the road! My newest item is the Wooden Frame Magnet Display Board which holds 20 – 2.25” magnets (if staggered) or 121 – 1” assorted Route 66 & fun nostalgic magnets!
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