My insurance agency sits on one of the paths Route 66 took through Springfield., Mo.

It’s not the first time America’s Main Street and I have bumped into each other, so it made sense to have a few mementos of our meetings as I decided on the office decor.

Most of my decorations are the kitschy stuff you can get anywhere, but I do have a couple of pieces I’m proud of.

I got to add a piece to the collection I’m proud of this week.

Jerry Rice paints Route 66 scenes from the Mother Road’s heyday in Southwest Missouri.

This one, that he calls “Downtown” shows the square in Springfield back before they added the park.

My first run in with Route 66 was in 2000, when I became the editor of a semi-weekly newspaper in Tucumcari, N.M., one of the little towns that thrived during Route 66’s peak.

The Mother Road had its Diamond Jubilee the next year and the celebration committee asked artist Bill Curry to commemorate the event with a painting.

This print has been traveling around with me since 2001.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Cars,” the movie has several nods to real towns and people connected to the road. Tucumcari Mountain, there behind the Corvette, inspired the mountain that looks like a radiator cap in Radiator Springs.

As part of that 75th anniversary celebration, my paper put out a brochure that talked about the history of the Route. One of the articles in the brochure was written by Route 66 historian Michael Wallis, who was the voice of the sheriff in the movie.

The one I’m probably the most attached to, though, isn’t traditionally considered a work of art and isn’t even centered on Route 66.

It’s an 50-year-old map that my grandparents had. It shows the Southwest United States, including most of the places Route 66 went.

My granddad had a gas station in Urich, Mo., so I’m not sure if this map is from the time when gas stations handed out road maps or if it was a map my grandparents actually used to visit California.

As a side benefit, the map shows most of the places my life has taken me.

The map doesn’t quite go far enough north to get to Kirksville (where I went to Truman State University) or small enough to get Montrose (the tiny town where I grew up), but the rest are there: Not only Tucumcari and Springfield, but Dodge City, Kan., and McAllen, Texas.

I also have a number of prints from the early days of Farmers Insurance. No direct tie to Route 66, there, either, although Farmers started in 1928, two years after the Mother Road’s start in 1926.