From time to time (not nearly often enough), I pull out an old book from the shelf and re-read it. Typically I reach for Stephen King, but I was drawn to our ole California friend, and read 'Travels with Charlie'.


I started the book years ago, but never got to finish it. I'm amazed at how much we have in common today with what Steinbeck found in 1960. I can certainly relate to the wanderlust...


“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.”

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself...."


His 1960 observations on resistance to change, the speed of life, antiseptic cleanliness, built in obsolescence, plastics, taking the back roads, good and bad food on the road... All ring true today over 50 years later. The resistance to change got me to thinking; my dad said the same about his grandpa and all the changes in the 1950's. I bet we can trace that trend back to our b.c. friends and those resistant to the invention of that round thing-a-ma-Jing.


“American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.”


I still need to re-learn this one from time to time... (as always I'm impressed with the brevity yet completeness of his writing).


“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”

 

Pretty heady stuff for a bunch of Ford owners.

 

Yeah Bill, sometimes I get in over my head.

 

I just finished "A River Runs Through It", and was looking for a reason to return to the library.

I may have just discovered my next pastime between bouts of cleaning the back yard.

Thanks, Sean.

EDIT: Checked out a copy this morning from the West Valley LAPL. It's a paperbook with rather small-font text, but it will have to do.

Again, on Sunday evening: "A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ".

I believe I'm going to really enjoy this.

Pop

 

.

"Kathy," I said,
As we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now.

It took me four days
To hitchhike from Saginaw......"

.

 

For it being the last day of Winter, it was a fine one!

I, too, felt kinda' sorry for Lonesome Harry. Though I did travel on business a lot in former years, and stayed in many, many, hotels, I happily admit I never found myself in his situation.

Pop

 

"Paying tolls to creep along a road under constant construction. Delays no matter which route you take. And I have never been there that I wasn’t constantly lost. I have been in cabs whose drivers were baffled by an address on Upper or Lower Wacker."


Above quote if from another JS reader. I always enjoyed driving around downtown Chicago on a Sunday morning; no traffic, just taking my time and seeing the sights, finding shortcuts, etc. That was before GPS - why isn't GPS software self learning?

 

You mean you have to take it there first, so it can learn how to get back there?

Progress here? Not in a hurry. So far, just west of Fargo, talking to an actor.

Pop

 

California "rude":

The miners came in '49.
the w h ores in '51,
and when they got together,
they made a native son.

-John Steinbeck-

 

I mean once I travel a newly built road, off ramp, etc, ( not on the map yet) it gets loaded to the Borg so the next guy sees it on his GPS.