It may seem odd to start at the end, but since Lee Brooks and his family began their Disney road trip in Anaheim, they knew they wouldn't have another chance to pay their respects to the earthly remains of the man whose spirit they sought.

I must concede, on the subject of our first stop on the road in the good old US of A, that the fact that it was scheduled to be a branch of McDonald’s probably doesn’t sound terribly promising. Let’s face it, Maccy D’s is ubiquitous across America, as it is, with the notable exceptions of Iceland, Bermuda, and most of Africa, across the majority of the globe. So why would a family in search of that mythical, unique Walt Disney spirit of the 1950s be so keen to roll up at the ultimate symbol of 21st century globalisation. Hell, the sociologist George Ritzer even named a much celebrated critical book on the subject, The McDonaldization of Society.

Well, the answer is that on the way to McDonald’s in Downey, California, we must have driven past several hundred “restaurants” bearing the famous golden arches, until we eventually found one that didn’t. The McDonald’s in Downey, you see, dates from before Disneyland (1953 to be precise) and while it can’t lay claim to being the first branch (that honour belonged to a small, octagonal building opposite Monrovia airport which opened in 1937 and later moved to the more famous site in San Bernardino, selling fifteen cent hamburgers), this little time capsule in Downey (actually the company’s third restaurant) remains the world’s oldest operating McDonald’s. Like so much roadside history across America, the claim is a matter of dispute, as the company’s official history credits a site in Des Plaines, Illinois (actually the ninth restaurant), primarily because that location was the first involvement of the franchising wizard Ray Kroc, who later bought the company from the McDonald brothers for $2.7 million. Indeed, it was the very fact that the franchising agreement for the Downey restaurant had been signed with the brothers, rather than Kroc’s company, that meant it was not subject to the modernisation requirements that rendered all its younger siblings so uniform.

So, when we eventually got to Downey, rather than the familiar, but rather bland, decor that the world has become used to, the Speedee McDonald’s, as it is colloquially known, was exactly the kind of shining example of roadside American architecture that we had so hoped to see. The eponymous Speedee, the company’s original icon when Ronald wasn’t so much as a twinkle in papa clown’s eye, is a little cartoon chef who represents the ideal that the McDonald Brothers based their restaurant on, and sits astride a single golden arch. The hamburger stand itself looks, for all the world, like something straight out of a scene from American Graffiti, and much to our delight, when we placed our order, it came in old-fashioned paper bags and boxes that were entirely in keeping with the fifties vibe, which was, perhaps predictably, but nonetheless enjoyably, continued by the rock-and-roll soundtrack that played over the restaurant’s speaker system. There was a small museum of McDonald’s memorabilia which was mildly diverting, but the real joy was in stepping back to a time before Ray Kroc’s giant franchising machine devoured the world and made everything look (and taste) the same.

One small aside about Kroc himself is that he, just like Walt Disney, had lied about his age to become a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I, and the two boys met whilst training in Sound Beach, Connecticut. Kroc later reached out to his old acquaintance in a letter, after he had finalised his deal with the McDonald Brothers, in an attempt to secure his new brand a spot at Disneyland. Kroc claimed that the deal couldn’t be done because Walt had insisted that he raise his prices to increase Disney’s share of the profits, but many believe that this was just a “good story” to conceal the fact that the proposal had simply been rejected.

Even at this early stage of our time on the road I had learned one important thing, and that was that my route planning, while meticulous, was probably somewhat on the over-ambitious side. In my fantasy road trip, whilst sat at the kitchen table at home, we had pulled into Downey and had a quick, post-breakfast snack with Speedee, but in reality we had just sat down and consumed a slightly late lunch. This meant that the long list of stops that we were due to make before we pulled into Las Vegas late that afternoon would almost certainly have to be cut back, and there was more than an even chance that late afternoon might turn inexorably into night. For now, though, we were back on the road and heading toward the bright lights of Hollywood.

Sarah and I had been to California, before the kids came along, and we had done the full pilgrimage around the homes of the stars and trekked up and down Hollywood Boulevard, and if I am entirely honest, been rather underwhelmed by the whole experience. It had, however, been a long time, and Annabel was very keen to see the Hollywood sign, and the walk of fame, so we duly braved the vehicular madness around the place and headed to Hollywood and Highland. Once we had parked deep underground, we hopped in an elevator and went up to one of the suspended walkways to join what seemed like the entire population of Japan in taking a photograph of the famous sign, and then made our way down to street level so we could look at a series of names written on a floor, whilst simultaneously attempting to avoid costumed nut cases who wanted nothing more than to have a picture taken with us (for a small fee). While I think the children were vaguely amused by the whole thing, we generally drew the same conclusions that we had years before, that Hollywood is actually a bit of a dump and that we were happy not to incur any more than than the one-hour parking charge on our rental car before heading out of Tinseltown at full tilt.

Even with a revised plan of action, and the time ticking on well into late afternoon, there was one more place that I wanted to visit before we left California. So much has been written and said about the life of Walt Disney, and there have been almost as many column inches devoted to his death. It seems fitting that a life story so heavily laden with myth and magic should, as is the current custom of Disney’s Marvel blockbusters, have a final, teasingly climactic scene after the closing credits. Sure, the discovery of terminal cancer and an all-too-sudden death that shocked and saddened the world in December 1966 was extremely dramatic, but this was Walt Disney, the greatest showman and manufacturer of magic since Harry Houdini. Is it any wonder, then, rather than simply accept the passing of a man seen in such a prophetic light, a mass belief in a resurrection mythology should begin to emerge.

Everyone has heard the tall tales of Walt’s fascination with the pseudo-science of cryogenics, and given his track record of championing the transformative potential of new technologies, it really wasn’t a huge leap, for a fan community who were desperate for it to be true. Unlike many other major public figures, however, Walt’s death and subsequent funeral were decidedly low-key, private affairs, and this served to fuel the urban myth of a frozen creator, ready to be resurrected in order to take his place on the throne of his magic kingdom. I suspect that if there had been some imposing tomb or mausoleum that millions of adoring fans could visit (as if Disneyland wasn’t a big enough monument to his genius), then such urban myths may not have persisted, but just like the private nature of his funeral, Walt’s grave site was a simple, unassuming garden at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, and that was exactly where we were headed next.

The first thing to note about the cemetery is that “memorial park” is exactly the right description for the stunningly beautiful, rolling hillside that constitutes it. Forest Lawn is at once both deeply impressive and lavishly imposing, and the drive through it to locate Walt’s grave is a memory that will not soon leave me. The second is that if you don’t know where to find it, you are not likely to stumble upon the final resting place of Walter Elias Disney. I cannot convey strongly enough that it really is the tiniest, most understated and tranquil of gardens. There are no signs to identify where the ashes of one of the most famous men of the twentieth century are interred, and there is certainly none of the fantasy imagery that he became so synonymous with.

Once we did locate the garden, the rest of the family stayed in the car as I stood alone in silent reflection in the late afternoon Burbank sun and gazed upon the modest wall plaques that bore the names of several members of the Disney family. After having spent the previous few days being just the kind of family, playing together, that Walt has supposedly envisaged whilst sitting on that bench all those years before, it was an odd but deeply moving privilege to be able to stand and reflect upon that extraordinary life in these peaceful and rather meditative surroundings. If the views across the wonderfully manicured hills of Forest Lawn will stay with me for a long time, then the moments spent within the sacred precincts of that garden will remain in my memory for as long as I live. After all, without the man to whom I was paying my respects there, this trip, and probably the man I had become, would not exist.

Continued in "Mouse to Mouse"!

Walt's formative years were spent in Marceline, Missouri. In the vernacular, it's where the magic began. Today, a few wisps of that enchantment still exist, in the Walt Disney Museum, open to the public on select days for limited hours.

This entire book has, in many ways, been an expression of how formative an experience my first glimpse of the Magic Kingdom was, as an eleven-year-old boy, and how much that experience itself was underlined by the moment that I discovered America in that picture book in the school library all those years before. Eventually visiting Disneyland with Sarah, and then seeing it anew once again through the eyes of our own children, would, of course, share almost equal billing in the narrative of the film of my life. The fact that on this trip I had been lucky enough to pay my respects beside Walt’s grave and see the Kansas City building in which so many of these dreams originally took flight had given our journey so far the flavour of a secular pilgrimage to places that I had spent years thinking about, but never really believed I would visit. While this had, of course, been a family vacation packed with amusements to thrill all four of us, I am deeply conscious that the core of it had been dedicated to indulging my own obsessive fascination, not just with the Walt Disney Company, but with searching for the company of Walt Disney. To my eternal gratitude, this had been accepted and supported by my family, but no destination on the entire trip was more emblematic of this than the small town in Missouri to which we were headed.

Any true Disneyphile would know that Marceline, while not the birthplace of the great man, was, at least in his own self-generated mythology, the place that gave birth to Walt Disney. We left early and had no other stops planned on our route to Marceline, as the Walt Disney Hometown Museum, in the old Santa Fe Railroad Depot, closed early on a Sunday, and as this may genuinely be a place for a once-in-a-lifetime visit, to arrive on its doorstep and see a closed sign might just be too much to take.

The trip was largely uneventful, taking in miles of the usual featureless interstate until suddenly our GPS decided to intervene and introduce us to an entirely unexpected attraction, the country roads of Missouri. It began as a picturesque little drive through some of the prettiest countryside you can image until at one point we began to head up a small hill and then quickly down the other side. This small hill was followed by a slightly larger one, which was in turn followed by their bigger brother. The kids began to make whooping noises as our progress over these undulations began to produce the very mild, but tell-tale feelings of momentary weightlessness in their tummies that, don’t tell Tyler, are commonly associated with uppers. The noises coming from the rear of the car seemed to have an encouraging effect upon the road, because the farther we went, the steeper and more regular the peaks and troughs of what, by this point, was best described as a kind of cross country, vehicular roller coaster, became. For a solid hour of our journey toward Marceline these climbs and falls were interrupted only by hairpin turns and the odd deer dashing across in front of us, and quite how Sarah managed to stop the car taking flight like a refugee from a particularly action-packed episode of The Dukes of Hazzard, I shall never know. In the end, the earth began to level out in front of us, we started to see signs for Marceline, and at least in the front passenger seat a sense of excited anticipation abounded.

If, as the tone of this book might imply, Walter Elias Disney really was the greatest thing since sliced bread, then as it turns out, he was raised (and yes, a host of yeast-related puns did spring to mind there) in almost the right place. When we were within touching distance (on the proviso that the person touching has 38-mile arms) of Marceline, we drove through the rather well-appointed town of Chillicothe which, according to the mural on the side of the Clipper (a beauty salon) on Washington Street, was the home of sliced bread.

In 1928 the owner of the Chillicothe Baking Company, Frank Bench, employed a machine called the Rohwedder Bread Slicer, a distinctly Heath Robinson-looking affair developed by Bench’s friend, Otto Rohwedder, of Davenport, Iowa. According to Aarron Bobrow-Stain’s White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, the machine was created as a favour to Bench in a final attempt to resurrect his bakery that had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Within weeks of installing Rohwedder’s mechanical marvel, sales of the bakery’s Kleen-Maid Bread jumped by an astonishing 2000% and the world’s most overused comparison had been born.

Incidentally, the first recorded use of the phrase was by comedian Red Skelton who suggested in a 1952 interview with the Salisbury Times that the interviewer should not “worry about television. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.” Skelton’s opinions on television were probably pretty sound given a twenty year career in the medium that for the Disney fan can be said to have reached its peak in 1976 when he presented the bicentennial TV special America on Parade from Disneyland.

With the sliced wonder behind us, it wasn’t long before a glance of a water tower emblazoned with the name Marceline began to create an increased level of excitement in the car, for two quite different reasons. For the adults in the front (or if I’m entirely honest, the one in the passenger seat), it obviously meant that we were nearing the veritable holy grail of Walt’s home town. For the junior Brooks’ in the rear, the buzz seemed to be around the misapprehension that we were going to see Marceline the Vampire Queen from one of their favourite shows, Adventure Time. Actually, I have often wondered whether the blue skinned, Goth-inflected, bass-playing bloodsucker’s name is some kind of oblique tribute to Walt Disney, but this was no time for my fevered imagination to start wandering off down that particular cul-de-sac, as, once I cleared up the confusion, we drew up next to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum.

For a few moments we all stood in the lovingly kept little garden at the front of the former railroad depot as I disappeared into a reverie about the fact that, after all these years, I had finally made it there, until suddenly the cacophonous horn of a passing train (and when I say passing, I mean literally a couple of feet away) punctured the silence, and almost sent poor Tyler scuttling up the nearest drain pipe in terror. Like Dorothy opening the door of her displaced house and stepping into Oz, we gingerly entered the museum, paid our entrance fee, and joined a small group of people being addressed by a friendly lady who had already begun an introductory talk about Walt’s time in the town. I was, of course, transfixed by everything she had to say, but what made it extra special was the fact that the lady, Inez, wasn’t merely reciting facts and stories that she had learned about Walt, but relating things that he had told her. It was a magical moment to realise that we were listening to someone who personally knew the man whose illusive shadow we had been following across America. In that instant. it occurred to me that for all the places we had been so far on this trip, and the wonderlands that lay ahead, standing there, in that little room with this diminutive, silver-haired storyteller, was probably the closest that any of us would ever get to the man who was responsible for so many of our dreams, and at once this made me feel inspired and a little sad.

The museum itself, while small, was packed full of interesting personal mementoes, bequeathed mostly (as Inez informed us) by Walt’s sister, Ruth, and is an absolute must for any Disney fan who happens to find themselves in this part of the country. As always, we had to balance the energy of a couple of excitable children, who had after all been cooped up in a car for several hours, with the opportunity to browse at our leisure, and I’m sure if Sarah and I ever got to visit on our own we would have spent a lot longer taking everything in, but all things considered the museum was quite as delightful as we could ever have hoped it would be. In true Disney tradition, we exited though the gift shop and bought a Christmas ornament that will take pride of place on our tree for years to come. Tyler used some of his spending money to buy a Mickey plush from, as he put it, “his daddy’s house”.

Continued in "Mouse to Mouse"!