It's hard, at first glance, to tell where the real Hayes Shoe Store begins and a mural depicting its vintage years begins along the historic, mostly two-lane, U.S. Route 66 in Cuba, Missouri, named after the island of Cuba in 1857 for reasons that are murky today. What is clear is that Cuba is Missouri's unchallenged "mural city," thanks to its reverence for the historic "Mother Road" — U.S. highway 66, the old two-lane road that ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Cuba and Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean in California. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2021.