After a frustrating morning across Route 66, Oliver Holt drove roughly 185 miles from Tulsa to Paris, Texas, searching for a place to watch World Cup action—only to find most venues had no TVs, no sports, or didn’t know what the tournament was.
It was just after 9am when Oliver Holt crossed the bridge over the Arkansas River, dropped onto Route 66 outside Tulsa, and headed south-west through suburbs packed with industrial units and homemade signs—one offering “burn barrels” for $10.
A ragged man raged at the world as he dragged a shopping basket along the roadside. the message on his t-shirt reading “Do the Fandango.” Ahead of him. the summer plan had looked simple: drive 60 or 70 miles. stop for a couple of Monday World Cup matches. then push on towards Dallas in time for England’s tournament opener against Croatia.
Instead, the World Cup started to feel like a rumor.
The first stop was Bristow, about 35 miles from Tulsa. Holt ate chicken fried steak for breakfast in a diner called Boomerangs, where waitresses suggested places that might have the games. The first was C&J Kountry Fixin’s outside town. It was closed on Mondays.
The second was Anchor 66, a burger bar outside Bristow marked “Veteran Owned.” Holt drove up expecting sport. Inside, there were four booths, all full—and no television showing anything he could use. He bought a drink anyway and sat outside as a waitress apologized.
“We used to show sports,” she said. “But we get a lot of church people coming in here and one day, the music channel was on. There were some fuss and a lady on the TV got her boobies out. There were five or six church people in the place. We had to get rid of the television after that.”
By this point, Cape Verde were defending for their lives, holding Spain to a 0-0 draw. In Oklahoma, Holt found, the match was already fading into the background. He had missed the start of Spain-Cape Verde. The waitress had not heard of the World Cup. and suggested there might be a sports bar in Stroud. the next town on Route 66.
The search kept slipping. In Stroud, Holt stopped at a convenience store and asked about a sports bar. The woman behind the counter smiled apologetically: “We don’t have anything like that here.” Her t-shirt read: “All I need is coffee and Jesus.”
She pointed him towards Shawnee, about an hour’s drive away—but Shawnee wasn’t on his route.
So Holt walked into Okie Tom’s hardware store. Okie Tom wasn’t there, but a lady with a tattoo across her windpipe was. She told him, “There used to be one, but they closed it down. The Cue and Brew is what it was.”
Spain-Cape Verde had by then slipped completely out of reach. Holt kept driving, watching farm machinery rusting in a field and passing a motel sign that said, “We are Still Open,” which didn’t exactly suggest a heavy crowd.
At a Wal-Mart, Holt asked a checkout worker where he might watch the World Cup. The worker looked perplexed and replied, “The wutt?”
Holt explained what it was. The worker said there was a bowling alley in Chandler, a couple of miles further down the road, and that it had televisions. Holt parked outside the venue—called “66 Bowl,” decorated with 60s-style branding for Mobil, Firestone and Superior Feeds.
It was closed.
He was four hours from Tulsa and hadn’t seen a single kick on Route 66. So he left “the mother road” behind and drove on south.
By then, Belgium-Egypt was at half-time. He made for Paden, a small town Tom Joad and his family pass through in The Grapes of Wrath. A restaurant there called Cowpokes sounded promising, but the manager told him they didn’t show sports. The manager said there was a sister-restaurant in Seminole where she was sure they showed sports—25 miles away. Holt wasn’t headed in that direction.
He did catch a television in a pizza place, only for it to be the baseball Men’s College World Series. The man behind the counter hadn’t heard of the World Cup and said they couldn’t get Fox Sports anyway.
He later described seeing the spot where the Joads’ dog is knocked down by a car just outside Paden—an abandoned petrol pump overgrown with weeds—and said it was the high point of the day.
At that stage, he abandoned Belgium-Egypt and even Saudi Arabia-Uruguay, and made for Paris, Texas, where he would stay the night.
In Paris, Holt’s hopes briefly rose. He found a sports bar called The Vintage Hangout. and parked in a town square that looked. in his words. eerily similar to the square in Hill Valley from the 1950s scenes of Back to the Future. A store called Remember When was boarded up. Even nostalgia had “had its day.”.
The Vintage Hangout was shut—until Thursday.
He tried Gourmet Jaxx, a burger joint across the square, where there were two televisions showing the Men’s College World Series. Holt asked the waitress if she knew somewhere he could watch the World Cup. Her face creased into a frown.
“I’m sorry?” she said crossly, as if he’d asked something utterly unreasonable and faintly improper.
He then asked another bar. They told him he might find somewhere out on the loop—the Paris, Texas version of a ring-road—and suggested chain restaurants like Chili’s or Applebee’s.
He started with Chili’s. There, a bank of screens above the bar showed a Major League Rugby game, the Men’s College World Series on another, the Golf Channel, a Classic Monday Night Football game, and even a Fox programme called The Quiz with Balls.
When Holt asked the waitress if she could put the World Cup on, she replied, “The wutt?” She followed up, “Is that the wrestling?” Holt explained what it was and said she would ask her manager.
The manager came through. There was a television in the corner above the door, and Iran-New Zealand played out there.
There was a moment of relief—and then a distraction. A gentleman behind him started choking on his chicken quesadilla. He staggered to his feet. pointing to his throat. and a woman who works at the local ER rushed over and performed the Heimlich Manoeuvre. Holt said he missed the first Iran goal in the excitement.
The gentleman recovered well. Holt sat down, ate a half rack of ribs, and watched the World Cup.
The match he saw ended up being the lone one in front of him.
He was the only one watching.
Route 66 World Cup Oliver Holt Tulsa Paris Texas Anchor 66 Chili’s Iran vs New Zealand Spain vs Cape Verde Belgium vs Egypt Saudi Arabia vs Uruguay England Croatia