John Steinbeck, back in the postwar boom of the 60’s, wrote a book about his journey across America. It was called “Travels with Charlie”. Charlie was his big ol’ standard French Poodle and Steinbeck and his dog took a trip across the country to find and report on the soul of America. The people they met and the places they visited became the subject of his very popular book and, along with other travelogues like “On the Road” by Kerouac, became a basic guide for other shifting souls who longed to travel and explore America. The urge to “up and go”, footloose and free became a “thing to do”. Steinbeck used a pickup truck with a camper built on top as his vehicle for that trip. The truck sparked the imagination of each person who he met on his trip and it helped fuel a restless penchant for self-contained travel that endures to this day. In a very “American” way the market saw an opportunity and an industry grew up around people’s desire for travel and self-sufficiency. Steinbeck’s truck was a derivation of the Connestoga Wagon-also called the ‘prairie schooner’-and today we have the travel trailer, the RV, and all sorts of manufactured and homemade vehicles. The purpose of all of these is, simply, to get one out on the open road to experience varying degrees of self-sufficiency.
In Europe the Gypsies did the same thing Steinbeck did. They traveled rootlessly and made a living out of their travels. I will not comment on the reputation of Gypsy travel or legality of their commerce but I am sure people did not look out of their windows as the Gypsy troop passed by and long for the “freedom” that Gypsies had. The social and economic structure of Europe was built around the insular structure of the community and the security of belonging to a village, city or state. Gypsies were looked down upon and distrusted. But there is a little bit of Gypsy in all Americans and Steinbeck’s book hit a nerve that triggered a Gypsy-like reaction in the people of America. Like many other phenomena America has a way of blowing things way out of proportion. In America a road became an Interstate Highway System. In America an inn became a chain of Motel 6’s, Holiday Inn’s, and Marriott’s. Steinbeck’s truck evolved into shinning space ship sized Airstream Trailers and motor homes with full kitchens, showers, whirlpool tubs and bump-out spaces that turn a bus sized RV into a house. Mr. Steinbeck and Charlie camped in orchards and fields. They got permission from farmers to be there. They spent a night under the stars and moved on to the next small town. They would be arrested today if they did that. They now have a complex of private ‘campgrounds’ to choose from each repleat with shower rooms and flush toilets, bar-b-que pits and swimming pools. Electricity is provided at each campsite. There is a place to ‘dump’ ones trash and and a tank to drain ones self-contained toilet/shower/kitchen/Jacuzzi waste. At night cords of wood are burned in fire pits for no other reason than to perpetuate the illusion of “camping”. Electric lights throughout the campground keep nature safely at arm’s length and irrelevant and the stars un-seeable. At 10:00 pm everyone not already inside watching the flat screen TV goes inside to sleep between sheets and blankets in the air conditioning in their stylishly decorated box-on-wheels.
Traveling with Charlie way back when, Steinbeck marveled at the concept of “manufactured homes”. The factory built house (“trailers” and “double wides”)he thought were the wave of the future. He was not wrong but he was not exactly correct either. Perhaps Pete Seeger’s song “Little Boxes” was closer to the mark. The “double wide” enabled the process of the slumming of the countryside. Boxes of tin deteriorating on the hillsides of America. The actuality of the democratization in American housing as Steinbeck saw it has been manifested in the decaying slums of the city and the rusting trailer along with the dead, rotten automobiles in the carport. Similarly RV’s have become the home of the retiree. Millions of manufactured, 21st century covered wagons parked in millions of gravel covered parking lots (read: “campgrounds”) filled with gray haired people living on social security and savings. This is not exactly where Steinbeck thought the future was going.
As the population ages more and more it has become the dream of individuals to hit the open road. To see America from the captain’s chair behind the steering wheel. To live a life “on the road”. It is fun. It is liberating. But it is work. It can be much more expensive than imagined. It also, I think, loosens the weave in the fabric of society. Friendship, sense of place and “home” diminishes. And unlike the old homestead RV’s quickly deteriorate and depreciate. It has become true that some campgrounds will not allow older RV’s in as they are sometimes abandoned by their owners. While some people might abandon their land-based home the house retains a certain value and can be rejuvenated. An old, decrepit RV becomes, in good part, landfill. I am pretty sure Steinbeck’s old truck is long gone, crushed and recycled * but I’m also pretty sure his real home is still there. Still valuable.
This is a point I think he missed in 1962 when he published Travels With Charlie. The people and the road are still there Mr. Steinbeck but they are very much changed. In ways you did not see coming.
*Please see NY Times photo of the (supposed) truck used by Mr. Steinbeck-I assume it is, in fact, still extant.
Bought ten dollars worth of lotto tickets last night. I was out to dinner with Don. He sat across from me in his white shirt (the rest of the universe has gone to casual Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc…but not Don. Somehow it all looks right on him-the pressed white shirt and tie. The dark suit. I feel like it is right for him. In fact I would feel let down if he showed up in jeans and a polo shirt). I wore jeans and a Polo shirt. Dinner was over. We had exhausted the conversation with the last little bits of gossip at our disposal and Don announced that he had to go to the CVS to buy lotto tickets.
Since he insisted on picking up the check I insisted on buying the tickets. We drove to CVS but they don’t sell them there. We drove instead to the liquor store on the other side of the Beach shopping center and they were doing a brisk business selling dreams for a dollar. We got in line and when we got to the cash register I handed Don a ten dollar bill. He laughed and added twenty of his own. I was a little embarrassed. Thirty dollars worth of lotto tickets.
I have bought lotto tickets before. I usually buy one. In fact I buy lotto tickets regularly-about once every two years-and I have never bought more than one. Last night I bought ten. Don bought twenty.
I have not checked the numbers yet today. If I win I will take Liz out to the Grand Canyon in a helicopter (like Don and Diane just did on their vacation to Las Vegas) and we will drink champagne in the depths of G-d’s great creation. Of course Don and Diane will have to be with us.
I don’t know what else I would do with a hundred million dollars. I used to think about that kind of thing when I was a little boy. There was a program on the black and white TV called “The Millionaire”. Every week John Bares Fertipton gave someone a check -taxes paid- for one million dollars. He used an elegant intermediary, a butler type whose accent fell just short of British English, to discretely deliver the check to the unsuspecting recipient. It was an innocent drama from an innocent time in the history of America. The person who got the check could never know who had given it (sedaka?) and they always needed it desperately. Mr. Fertipton must have done some bonzo research on his subjects each week (or rather the writers for the show did some heavy drinking) and it was a very entertaining show. Every one in the United States watched each week and they dreamed that some day Mr. Fertipton would single them out for the check and they would conjecture what would they do with it?? That was the real question. Boys, such as myself, would lay awake and dream of the stack of money and how we would spend it.
I also remember a small illustrated piece in the World Book Encyclopedia (I learned to spell encyclopedia from the Mickey Mouse Club. It was part of a song. Yes. I learned to sing the spelling of the word “encyclopedia” along with ‘Cubby’ and ‘Annette’ on the Mickey Mouse Club!) about the meaning and scope of the concept of “A Million”. It had a drawing of a pile of money and the pile was flying off into space (as if it were being blown to the moon by a giant, intellegent fan) and the description was “if you were to put a million dollar bills end-to-end it would reach…” I honestly don’t remember right now how far a million dollars placed end-to-end would reach but it was amazing to me as a little boy. A boy who read the encyclopedia that his mom had bought from a door-to-door salesman. It came delivered to our door and the entire red, faux leather set fit neatly on the shelves in my bedroom. I read it cover to cover. A yearly update was also sent via the postal service and I read it too.
Well the boy who read the encyclopedia has grown up. A million dollars might reach the moon and half way back but it won’t buy a tenth of what it did when John Bares Fertipton gave out his checks. If they remade “The Millionaire” today it would have to be “The Billionaire”. My father worked all day for the ten bucks it took to buy the lotto tickets in my pocket. Now it will just about cover the cost of a burger and salad in the diner.
I think I will do a Google search and find a web site that will tell me what last night’s lotto numbers were. With the speed of light I will find the information on the internet. That’s how it is done now. The World Book Encyclopedia is in the land fill. Perhaps I will have won and I can give Don a check-taxes paid-for a million dollars. Through an intermediary, of course, with a great, deep, almost British accent.
.....When Herb and his animal were about twenty yards beyond the border of the property line, striding down the center of the roadway, the large retriever in the yard tested the line of the electric fence and found it was not working. Whether it was not on or it was not working properly the black collar did not shock and the dog came out of the yard like a shot. Herb’s smaller terrier (approximately one quarter the weight of the larger yellow Labrador) didn’t have a chance. In a flash the Lab sank her teeth into the back of the small dog and began to shake it furiously. Herb didn’t give a moment’s thought to what he had to do. He ran into the snarling tangle of dogs and put his boot (he didn’t have a walking stick with him that day!) up the ass end of the large, yellow dog. More from surprise than from injury the larger dog loosed its grip and looked around. In that split second of confusion Herb took one more shot at the head of the attacker, connected with a glancing blow, and yelled with such fury that it ran for home. Both their hearts pounding, Herb and his dog headed for home as well....
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