Ladies, how would you like to pack up and move every week; to follow your husband all over the country, keeping always on the move--you, the children, the nursemaid, the poodle dog? And after you've settled in each new motel, got the kitchen stocked and found a launderette to clean the baby's diapers, how would you enjoy waiting around while hubby works dawn to dusk?
That's life as lived these days by Judy Jones of Waukegan--and she LIKES it! No wonder: She's touring America as the wife of Marty Milner, co-star of CBS-TV's Route 66.
[For the uninitiated, Route 66 is filmed almost entirely on location--from Hawaii to New England.] Last year, for 39 episodes, only six days were spent in Hollywood at the home studios.
"Togetherness is important to Marty and myself," says Judy. "And Amy, our 3-year-old daughter, is delighted with the whole adventure. It gives her a chance to see her daddy all the time and she needs the strong hand of her father.
"When we separated recently for the birth of Molly, our second child, it was Amy who suffered most. One of the neighbors asked here where her daddy was and she answered she didn't know--that he probably went to the North Pole. For a time she suspected she had no father."
Judy opined that her marriage with Marty might have headed for the rocks if she and the children had remained at home in Sherman Oaks, Cal., while Marty went on the road with Route 66.
"The biggest problem we have traveling has to do with such items as ketchup, mustard, sugar, salt, and other staples," she said. "We have to stock our kitchen all over again in every city, town, and hamlet we visit. The problem is, simply, what can you do with a half-empty ketchup bottle? We leave large amounts of staples wherever we go.
"We travel with an ice chest, coffee pot, gas stove that collapses like a deck of cards, a travel iron, and a supply of disposable diapers for little Molly.
Eyebrows were raised all over Hollywood last fall when the producers of Route 66 announced that the series would be filmed entirely on location. Friends foresaw a grim life on the road for everyone connected with the show [a crew of more than 30 travel to each location.]
The big problem that faced the cast and crew was what to do about families. Their solution was to put together a caravan of trucks, vans, trailers and take everyone along. They've carried on through oil fields, stock yards, canyons, and waterfronts all across the country.
"When I signed to do this show I didn't know I was in for an education in sightseeing," says Marty. "But that's the way it's worked out. I only wish Amy were old enough to appreciate places like the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, Zion, and the big cities.
"We've been in more places and done more different things in these few months than many actors go and do in their entire careers."
This fall the Milners are off again--on the road from Montana to Pennsylvania, to New England, through the south and then to Hawaii.
Did someone comment that Route 66 doesn't go thataway? So what woman driver--like Judy Milner--ever stuck to the right road!