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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 21, 1963)
3? I Rediscover America .By JOHN STEINBECK WlniMr of 1962 NoUl Pri for IJtoraturof Pulltmr frit-winning author of "Tho Grapot of Wrath" The urge of wanderlust and the beauty of our great country are two things keenly understood by this famous writer Editors' Note: It was ts year since John Steinbeck had toured America, and he thought it was about time he got another firsthand look at the land he write about. So, accompanied by hi poodle Charley, he et out or. u "voyage" of rediscovery. Hi vehicle pickup truck with a cabin built on the back for living quarters was named Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse. His journey took him through New England, across the heartland, up through the North west, down the West Coast, eastward through the Southwest and South then north again to home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. Steinbeck's incisive impressions of what he saw were published in "Holiday" and later in hi beet-selling book, "Travel with Char ley." The following brief excerpt was se lected a being especially appropriate to the theme of this special issue. UNDER THE BIG oak trees of my place at Sag Harbor sat Ro cinante, handsome and self-contained, and neighbors came to visit, some neighbors we didn't even know we had. I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the na tion a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, any place, away from any here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and un anchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move. One small boy about 13 years old came back every day. He stood apart shyly and looked at Rocinante; he peered in the door, even lay on the ground and studied the heavy-duty springs. He was a silent, ubiq uitous small boy. He even came at night to stare at Rocinante. After a week, he could stand it no longer. His words wrestled their way hell-bent through his shyness. He said, "If you'll take me with you, why, I'll do anything. I'll cook, I'll wash all the dishes and do all the work, and I'll take care of you." Unfortunately for me, I knew his long ing. "I wish I could," I said. "But the school board and your parents and lots of others say I can't." "I'll do anything," he said. And I believe he would. I don'' think he ever gave up until I drove away without him. He had the dream I've had all my life, and there is no cure. I drove as slowly as custom and the im patient law permitted. That's the only way to see anything. Every few miles the states provided places of rest off the roads, I ' B JPSSIf - HP Steinbeck and Charley with their special vehicle. sheltered places sometimes near dark streams. There were painted oil drums for garbage, picnic tables, and sometimes fire places or barbecue pits. At intervals I drove Rocinante off the road and let Charley out to smell over the register of previous guests. Then I would heat my coffee and sit comfortably on my back step and contemplate wood and water and the quick-rising mountains with crowns of conifers and the fir trees high up, dusted with snow. Long ago at easter I had a looking-egg. J Peering in a porthole at the end, I saw a lovely little farm, a kind of dream farm, and on the farmhouse chimney a stork sit ting on a nest. I regarded this as a fairy tale farm as surely imagined as gnomes sit ting under toadstools. And then in Denmark I saw that farm or its brother, and it was true, just as it had been in the looking-egg. And in Salinas, California, where I grew up, although we had some frost the climate was cool and foggy. When we saw colored pictures of a Vermont autumn forest, it was another fairy thing and we frankly didn't believe it. In school we memorized "Snow bound" and little poems about Old Jack Frost and his paintbrush, but the only thing Jack Frost did for us was put a thin skin of ice on the watering trough, and that rarely. To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it She said the autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. "It is a glory," she said, "and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise." f.opM In Travail wffl, Ckariar" 4 ntStlt ay aaldal mlala "tWWn." caarriaM O !! ar H c.rtu PaMIMw Ca.. lac. COVER: you plan to tour the US., like thi family photographed by L. Willinger, don't proceed without a good look at this spe cial auto travel and recreation iue. 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