Just past the midpoint line and the promise of Ugly Pie, we found ourselves at Dream Maker Station—a modest old service station dressed up in memory and grit. It sits quietly alongside Route 66 in Adrian, Texas, not trying to be anything it’s not. But that’s what makes it special. Because somehow, in being exactly what it is, it became part of something much bigger.
This is one of the places that helped inspire Cars. The Pixar team came through here, met the locals, walked this very stretch of pavement. Radiator Springs didn’t come out of thin air. It was pulled together from places like this—from people like the woman who stood behind the counter when I walked in.
She greeted me with a kindness you don’t find in chain stores, the kind born of pride and patience. We talked as if we’d known each other longer than a minute. I told her I was traveling Route 66 and picking up magnets as I went. She lit up. “Well,” she said, “you’ve come to the right place.”
There were a few options, all lovingly displayed near the front—Route 66 shields, designs with old garage pumps, one that mimicked the Midpoint Café’s cheerful logo. But one magnet stood out.
It didn’t just speak to the past. It looked to the road ahead.
A silver and black shield with wings, bold and clean. Across the top: 100 Years. A tribute to next year’s centennial celebration. A reminder that this road—this strange, stubborn ribbon of asphalt—has lasted a century and still carries meaning. It was beautiful. It was hopeful. And it was coming with me.
“I like that one too,” she said, as I picked it up. “It’s not just about where we’ve been. It’s about what comes next.”
We stood a little longer talking about the café down the street, about travelers who grew up on Cars now walking in with their own kids, about what it means to preserve something—not in amber, but in spirit.
Before leaving, I thanked her and slid the magnet into the glovebox where it joined Glenrio and Tucumcari and all the other little tokens I’ve gathered on this pilgrimage west. My wall back home is going to look like a shrine to the American road—and that feels exactly right.
Outside, the old pump cast a long shadow in the morning light. Dream Maker Station might look like a quiet little stop, but it carries a strange electricity. Pixar may have given it a second life, but it never really died. It was just waiting—like so much on Route 66—for someone to slow down long enough to see the beauty in something built to last.
And with that magnet in hand, I didn’t just leave with a memory.
I left with a promise to come back. For the next hundred miles. For the next hundred years.