Maybe you heard that Sir Paul McCartney took a little holiday a few weeks ago. He and his new girlfriend set out down famed Route 66 in a 20-year-old Ford Bronco. Along the way, just like real people, they camped.

Before summer slips out of sight, we who are not billionaire rock stars deserve to take a road trip, too.

Right now. Today. We'll do Highway 97. It's not famous. Technically, it's not even there anymore.

Doesn't matter. We will start at the northern fringe of the new Hamilton, in Freelton. From there we'll head due west, past old graveyards, fields of cows and horses, swaddled workers from India picking Italian parsley all day long, corn that really is as high as an elephant's eye.

On this journey, we will not be able to rely on those fine old King's Highway shields, the ones with the crown on top, because Highway 97 was decommissioned in 1984.

As we'll discover, the road now has many names along its route, including Old Beverly Road, Concession Street, Oxford Road 8.

Highway 97 opened in 1928, so we happen to be making our journey on its 80th birthday. When this blacktop was new, the hugely successful Ford Model A had just been introduced. You could get one for $385 and gas was nearly free.

At kilometre 0, we see the sign for Marcy's Sweet Corn. We learn that Highway 97 is one long trail of commerce and see end-of-the-driveway signs for firewood, butter tarts, honey, pesticide-free produce, trout, maple syrup, purebred shepherds, cattle, ducks, chickens and peacocks.

In the middle of a tall forest, we come across duelling population signs. The Region of Waterloo, which we're about to travel through until we get to Oxford County, tells us it has 508,000 people. The sign for Hamilton, in our rear view mirror, offers only 503,000.

Highway 97 skirts one piece of city, the part of Cambridge that used to be Galt. We pop into a Shoppers here and blow $8 on a throwaway camera. What's a road trip without pictures?

Once you've crossed that nasty 401, Highway 97 turns really rural. Three settlements await. The first is Plattsville, population 915.

It has a variety store, the only one we'll see for the rest of the trip. We enjoy a beverage while scouring the bulletin board. Somebody has two hand-tamed chinchillas for sale, males, born in June, one black, one grey.

We've been looking forward to the next stop, Bright, population 323. We know this is the home of cheese curds from Bright Brand, established 1874. We've bought them at the grocery dozens of times. Here we get a bag fresh off the line. As any good curds should, they squeak when you chew them.

Where Highway 97 cuts through the heart of Bright, we stumble onto real news. A jumbo milk tanker and a shiny red pickup have collided. Amazingly, no one's hurt.

The volunteer firefighters are directing traffic as a supersized tow truck decked out like Mardi Gras gets in position to haul the tanker way.

Bryan Mogmobert, 11, is there on his bike with his brothers. "Nothing like this ever happens here," he says.

It's kilometre 70, and we've made it to the western terminus of Highway 97, Hickson. Population, 246.

Soon we meet Fred and Elaine Todd, who live in an old brick house with a veranda right on the old highway.

We've done our homework and we know where Hickson got its name. Does Elaine?

Absolutely. From Sir Joseph Hickson, general manager of the Grand Trunk Railway in the late 1800s. Elaine says the train used to run right next door to the house.

She used to be the village postmaster. She and Fred also ran a variety and gas station, but it got so it wasn't worth it.

The Hickson Diner closed not long ago. The library just closed for good. Gone too are the bank, the Ford dealership, grocery store, hardware, hairdresser, turnip plant.

And the blacksmith's, which new people turned into a more modern enterprise. The Todds confide that, until the police arrived, the small block building right across old Highway 97 from their house was a marijuana grow-op.

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com

905-526-3391