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."
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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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