#1599 Underway! Tracing Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” Journey

m About an hour after I expected to go, but I was pretty pleased to get on the road in that way. It was still wintry. It was still winter really there. In fact, it's rained every day so far, sometimes Huge rains, to the point where it's hard to drive. so I saw my first son this morning, but now, as we, as we record this later in the evening, on the 30th of April 2024, a Storm is coming in.

So you may hear a little. I'm sitting in the airstream. I'm at this campground. There are probably, I don't know, 30.

Campers 30 trailers. many of them are fifth wheels. Some of them are those giant $200,000 bus campers, the kind that you would expect Willie Nelson to be in. I'm the only airstream. There was one other last night.

It was a. it was an old, retro airstream. It's nothing the way it will be. I was in a campground the other night in Mankato, Minnesota, and Campground holds 200 units and I was one of three people In that campground. it felt a little actually Lonely and desolate, but I suppose in a few weeks this Amana Colony campground will be absolutely full.

It's pretty quiet now.

so that's my only bonafide listening to America moment so far, but, as you say, as the Memorial Day comes and as the Sun starts to shine,

You have to have the bike rack. and it was sent to me. and I had been so busy I'd been in Norfolk, Virginia. I had been interviewed for a Ken Burns film on Henry David Thoreau. I was Completely distracted by packing and everything else that had to happen.

So I hadn't had a lot of time to put it together. so on the eve of my great trip, I Decided to put it together in my living room. I spent three or four hours at this. the next day two more. I have bloody knuckles and fingers to show for it.

the the instruction manual was the worst instruction manual of anything that I've ever attempted to assemble. and Then I went to a video, an Airstream video. The guy who was demonstrating how to do it kept his back to the camera most of the time, So I couldn't see what I needed to see. it's up and it's working. But that was the the first incident.

The only other incident was. I got into a grocery store parking lot and, As you know, Russ, it's easier to get into some of these places than out, because you can't just turn on a dime. and so I was Had to. I'd have a strategy, and I wound up having to go down a semi one-way Boulevard for a little time, but no, no, no cops so far, No vandals, no thugs, No magic encounters. I Haven't damaged anything except my own pride and confidence.

Well speaking as someone with no experience.

So I'm not afraid. I've hauled u-hauls behind even cars across the country, but it's a little different because of course The whole world is watching since we've loudly Announced all of this, and so if I roll the thing tomorrow, that will come back to haunt me. and also, you know we're talking about not a U-haul where you pay the extra four dollars a day for the insurance. We're talking about a spectacular New airstream and I don't even if I scratched it.

I mean somebody might ask why the heck are you doing this?

I was going to be a roving Associated Press Photographer traveling the world and I had this dream of having an RV, a Much bigger one, and I was gonna put a dark room in it, if you can imagine. and this was going to be my life. And so I've been dreaming of the road since I was 17, really, and I've had, I've owned an RV for a period when I was directing the Great Plains Chautauqua, and A couple of years ago. I had a truck camper that I spent a fair amount of time in. So this is one of my really deep dreams.

and and here's the thing about it, Russ, you know, I know this country pretty well. I've been in all 50 states, But I've really only been in about a third of them in anything like a big way. for take your own, North Carolina I've never been to Salisbury or Raleigh. I've never been to Asheville. I've been to the Outer Banks, But I know, I can't say that.

I know, North Carolina or upstate, New York. So it's really all discovery. So part of it is this is, in a way my last chance to really, Really, really see What Steinbeck called this monster country, and I want to do that. This fulfills a really deep Wanderlust kind of dream in my life, and I was talking to your niece, Becca dragnet, who's occasional host on this program, and she said how do you work on the road? And I said well, The only reason I can do this is that I learned to work on the road.

if you can't work on the road, You can't travel, because, as you know, if you're going to produce a book as you are on Steinbeck's cannery row, that's hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a Screen in a small room with your books around you, and it gets harder when you leave the comfort of that Home office in that home library, so I'm, I'm not worried about this. Although it's been a little hectic so far, Because I'm learning this. the learning curve is straight up on so many things, but a rhythm is starting to Starting to gel and I've been writing every day, Posting on our Facebook site, listening to America Facebook site. There's a new piece in our newsletter and on the site. You have a piece on the site.

I want to come back to that and you'll be doing a fair amount of writing for listening to America about Steinbeck, But not just about Steinbeck. So I'm not worried about it. You know, I think there are many things that I have not anticipated that are going to be Factors and it won't be as smooth as I think I have dreamed, but in some ways it's going to be better.

They've already hit the trail. So it's a whole different rhythm. but yes, I mean a dog is a disarming thing and, as you know, Steinbeck would release Charlie and Charlie would go, get into some kind of ruckus or trouble, or bark or make friends or whatever, and after 20 minutes Steinbeck would would walk out and and Fetch the dog and then apologize, say he's harmless. But, as you know, then he would say, hey, later, Why don't you stop over and I'll give you a cup of coffee. And so he used this to break.

Into conversations to break the awkwardness and it worked, and my daughter Did some dog sitting in New York City and she said she was never treated better Than during the periods when she was walking a dog in Central Park. that people automatically trust somebody who's walking a dog.

Welcome back to listening to America. We're talking with clay Jenkinson, who is comfortably ensconced in his Airstream camper in the Amana colonies of Eastern Iowa. clay, you are on your way to Sag Harbor and really, until you get to Sag Harbor. Everything is is.

Anyway, as you know, but I said, no, if you're gonna do this, you have to start at the tip of Long Island, You have to start at Sag Harbor. Otherwise, it's not authentic. And what that means? I have to get there and so I have to drive all the way out in order to drive back. So, from a carbon footprint standpoint, it's not the wisest of all things, But I wouldn't do it any other way.

and then, you know, he also went to the top of Maine, Because he always wanted to go to the top of Maine. What he discovered was Maine is enormously long and time-consuming and it's mostly just trees, but I'm gonna do that, too. I don't think you can do this by cutting corners and deciding where to start, where to stop. I'm gonna do everything he did. the roads will vary a little because some of those roads are gone and there are other things I want to see along the way, but I'm gonna stay as close as I can to it because I think it's important and You know one of the things I'm going to be writing about Russ and talking about is America in 1960, Steinbeck's America and America in 2024, a very, very different America in most respects.

And so, yes, I have to get there. But what I did to justify this was to plan events along the way. So just, for example, I went to Pipestone, Minnesota, Which is a Pipestone, is a quarry where much of the pipe material for Great Plains Natives has been quarried for thousands of years. It's kind of a demilitarized zone where people's at war, would you know, put down their weapons and cooperate? I went there first because I wanted to start at a place of peace and and spiritual Potency, and then I went to Mankato, which is on the other end of the spectrum.

It's the site of the largest mass execution in American history 38 Dakota natives were hanged simultaneously on December 26 1862 in Mankato in Reprisal for the Minnesota uprising of 1862.

. So I did those and they'll be reported on our website and on Facebook. and then today I came to to college here in Cedar Rapids. and Why? because, as you know from your reading of?

Travels of Charlie, one of the books that he carried he carried a number of books, and one of them was William L. Shire is the rise and fall of the Third Reich, Which had just been published, and maybe he had an advanced copy, because it there's a little something a little off on the dates. But he had it, and so William L. Shire is one of my heroes. I portrayed him in Chautauqua long ago and he went to college here in Cedar Rapids And I wanted to see how they commemorate him at Co Turns out not much, but I had a splendid day.

They have 150 feet of Archive, so they have the bulk of the Shire archives here, Including, they think, the manuscript for a rise and fall of the Third Reich, which at one time was twice as long as the one That was eventually published. a thousand page published version is only about three-fifths of the original. I didn't get to spend much time with the documents, you know, that's a painstaking business. But I also suggested that they do a Shire, a symposium, and that they create a Shire Endowment or a Shire shrine.

He wrote about this in his book An American Journey, and it's a fabulous story when he not to go into great detail, But when he was, he put in his application that all the English-language Newspapers in Paris was turned down at every one and was just about to give up his dream when he got a note under the door of his.

Pantheon. the night before he and his friend were going to go back to the u.s. And come back to Cedar Rapids and live a middle American life, Got a note from one of the English-language Newspapers of an arm of the Chicago Tribune saying if you get here this afternoon, you've got a job. and when he got there he got his first job in international reporting and He was assigned the desk and the guy next to him was James Thurber, you know, he met James Joyce. He met Hemingway.

he met. He met Sinclair Lewis. he met F Scott Fitzgerald, he met Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, you know this. Then he went on for the Chicago Tribune to Afghanistan and over the Khyber Pass and he.

he became friends with Gandhi and wrote a memoir of Gandhi. I mean this was think of it. the making moment of this young man's life was this college president saying I see something in you. I know you don't have the wherewithal to fulfill your dreams. His father had died when he was a boy.

I'm gonna give you this hundred dollar bill and it made the difference in Shira's life. So if that's not an empowerment story for the undergraduates at Coe College, I don't know What is. so I'm, I'm trying on the way to have as many of these cultural? Moments as possible. I'm going to Big Bone, Lick, Kentucky, where Jefferson got Lewis and Clark and George Rogers Clark to dig mastodon bones for him.

but behind Steinbeck's back, His wife contacted Shire and asked him to convince Steinbeck not to go Overseas, and Shire told her that it would be good for him. Not only as a man, but as a writer.

He produced this immense.

biography of Hitler really, but also the Third Reich, and it became an international bestseller. He became a millionaire and all his troubles were in some sense over. Steinbeck has a copy of it. It feels like it's an advanced copy to me.

your view is that it's not just to see America that he's sort of been neglecting for a long time, but.

This was exacerbated by the fact that his health, you know, I think you can argue that his health had been falling since the war, since he came back from the war in the mid 40s and Then throughout the 50s. He had a series of Many strokes. at one point. He suffered a horrible fall off a balcony in New York that he's lucky to have survived.

and at the point, you know, he was only 58. And what we? what we found out after he passed away, he didn't know. then, you know, he had an undersized heart. he had some, some issues That would eventually kill him.

So.

Steinbeck felt he was in danger of becoming a Professional. sick man was the term he used. that's what he says.

you know that way that has kind of nursed and and Indulged. I'm still a man, and you know man, with a kind of a capital M. And so, yeah, I think that's why one reason. I think you're absolutely right, Of course, that that's one reason that he's on this trip. from that point of view, He survived it, But how well do you think he did in terms of really being robust enough for a journey of this sort?

his wife, Elaine Flies out to meet him in Chicago, which he acknowledges, and after that, you know, almost immediately after that, the trip becomes less of a meandering Roadside thing and more of a sprint from this story to the story. It's still entertaining. It's still funny at times. It's moving at times, but You're not feeling the countryside that he's passing through. And I think this really continues all the way until he and Charlie are in the desert when they're headed to Texas and They they decide that that it's Charlie's birthday and you know They're gonna have a birthday cake.

and I don't know. Steinbeck seems to rebound after he seems a different person to me In Texas and in New Orleans, you know, New Orleans is sort of a dark Part of the book, you know from an American history standpoint, but You know Steinbeck had complained all along the way, you know, I can't find anybody with the opinions and He certainly found people with opinions in New Orleans. They may not have been admirable, but He just seems to engage again at that point. And of course, as soon as he leaves there then it's a sprint home. so I think he did have some sort of Burst of energy rebirth in that way and maybe it was just looking forward to being home, but I do know from reading those Kavici letters I never realized this to this extent, but he struggled with the book as Kavici.

Is there anything there at all? He says I just don't see anything. I don't feel anything Said. I've never been this unsure of a work in my life. You know, and to me, the reason I think it worked, the reason I like the book is because I think, If you read it carefully, These things that were taking place, you know in his life and his mind come across in the book, you know It's not overt, but it's there.

I.

it's a very confessional book. It's not Overtly confessional, but he reveals a great deal, and it's some of. it is quite sad, I think, and you do get a sense of it's kind of a valedictory book. I should just say, for those who haven't read it, that what happened in New Orleans is that he saw the agony of integration in its most disgusting form, and these were called the cheerleaders, these white women bigots who were shouting and spitting and Using language that he said he had never heard from anybody, man or woman, before. and at that point He was so disillusioned that he just bolted for home.

Let me ask you a different kind of question, Russ, you know I'm going to be interviewing the bad boy of Steinbeck, Bill Steigerwald in Bethany, West Virginia, and.

You know, we're kind of frenemies, we're friends. He wrote a nasty book about Steinbeck, but an important book, and I'm eager to sit down with him. I'm gonna interview him right here in the rig and the first question I'm gonna ask him is why do you, how does it feel? to be the the loathed Person in Steinbeck studies, of course, he'll love that. I mean that's, that's just the kind of person that he is.

but but he. but he did something important and, as you say, He wasn't the first, but he was. he was the foremost, saying Steinbeck didn't sleep in the rig all the time. He was with Elaine, way more than he. lets, you know, he was staying in Luxury hotels, quite often just an interesting.

And I think you can apply. I think you can apply that to anything Steinbeck wrote. I think you could do a Steiger wall type Work on Sea of Cortez. No, I think you could do it on Walden, too.

Right.

It is time for another break. play, Come back. Maybe you can share a little about where you're heading, what your expectations are for this trip. This is listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, and we'll be right back.

get up in the morning. I do some writing, I do some posting, then I have a little orange juice and some coffee. Mighty Missouri coffee of Bismarck has supplied coffee for all of our Becky and encounters. Then I bottle up the rig, get on the road. But here's what I've learned that really will help us think about this.

I'm going about 250 miles a day. That's two tanks of gas you can get. Get about 200 miles, 180 miles per a tank of gas. Luckily, gas is at 325 a gallon out here. That's not bad, It's very inexpensive.

So by the time you stop good gas a couple of times and you know how, you go to a pharmacy or the store to get whatever it is you need and then you check into the the campground around four, You're rushing a lot. You're spending a lot of the day just moving in order to keep up with the rhythm of this thing. So at times when Steinbeck left Elaine in Chicago and was trying to rush to see her in Seattle. The critics are right. I mean he was sprinting across the Great Plains, And so how he had time for anything except moving is unclear to me.

I'm guessing that you know that he really I don't. I know that so sound more critical than I mean it to be, but in Some sense he was faking it that he was. he was not seeing America. How could you? you're rushing from one point to the next?

I think the ideal would be to go about 200 miles a day and to every third day to spend two nights at a campground. So you do get some time to do laundry and you know, catch up with the writing and do maintenance and so on. I think even 250 miles a day is a pretty heavy Travel schedule if you're really wanting to listen to America and while you're out there.

I'm going to do a civil rights tour. I'm going to go to Selma and Birmingham and Montgomery And Atlanta, because I've never done this before. I've never been to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I've never been In Montgomery, so I'm going to do that because I think that one of the things that's different now is that We are, I won't say, obsessed with race, but we are deeply concerned with race in a new way, Thanks to the George Floyd killing and Black Lives Matter and All the 1619 project and the whole cultural war debate about critical race theory. I feel that I owe it to myself, Since I have this opportunity to really go see these places for myself and to drink in Those extraordinary moments, some of the great moments in modern American history, and they change the world.

I've been to the Lorraine hotel motel In Memphis, where Martin Luther King was struck down by James Earl Ray in April of 1968, But I want to see all these places. I've never been to the Muhammad Ali Museum in Louisville, So i'm going to make that a priority and then i'm going to come see you. You have a celebrated study that We all hear about, but very few people have ever seen.

It's not a good time. I mean, this is really a crisis time in american understanding of itself, where our national self-confidence is shattered and and I think all of us are bewildered by what's happening and how unpleasant things have become, how paralyzed our Politics are and our media and so on. And I want to go see if that's really true. I don't think it is. I think the country is less Disintegrating than it looks, But we decided that you know america 250, coming in just a couple of years.

It's a really good thing to try to listen about, and so i'm trying to gear my questions about how people feel about this country, what they love about it, what they don't like about it, what What the narrative is in their minds, Whether we're in decline or holding our own or still Progressing on that trajectory of justice. I don't really know what to think. But I want to hear from people and I had the great conversation with this young couple up in fergus falls at their rv resort the other night and they were very optimistic and said It's still a country of just unbelievable opportunity and mobility and freedom. and you know We are really a very fortunate people. So i'm hoping that what I hear is increases my hope and optimism, but but I think that You can't let a holiday like this america 250 go by without some serious national self-reflection And serious conversation about how we got here, how we're doing, Where we're headed, and I think many people that I know and many listeners to our program Have this concern.

And so I want to see if I can be useful in some way And trying to discern the mood of the country and and report it. I know you think about this a lot. I've turned, I turned off my television on the 4th of february and haven't turned it on again. I do listen to a little satellite News every day as I travel, but not very much. I'm mostly listening to books.

And, by the way, I want to recommend very highly doris kerns goodwin's new book An unfinished love story about her relationship with her husband, richard goodwin, who was a great figure in the great society. In fact, he invented the phrase Great society and he wrote the war on poverty speech, which is one of the great speeches of the 20th century, and so I'm going to be interviewing richard roads, who wrote the making of the atomic bomb. We'll be doing five interviews. joe ellis has agreed to five on this question. A number of other historians are going to do that.

And so i'm hoping that I can really Hear something worth putting out there for our listeners and so that we will, I hope, to help generate a conversation about this great theme when this is all over.

My voice recorder is easily transcribed. We're living in the great time to try to record this. think of how poor steinbeck had to do it, you know, without No, no possibility of tape recording anything. He had to Reconstruct these things from memory. um, we have.

we're living in the best time ever in terms of Electronic communication and and recording the things that we want to record, And you and I will be doing. you know about 10 of these conversations as we go, And so there'll be a pretty strong paper trail or electronic Trail after all this. i'm also, as you know, reading all of steinbeck. I've just begun cup of gold. I hope you have too.

you've agreed to read through steinbeck with me. We've talked about this before. it was his last big big book and he wanted it to be the book in some respects. I think a mistake that he made was that it was so personal, and so he's writing about his life, His family, his parents, his, his grandparents. It's easier to write about the jodes than it is about Your own kin.

and so what struck me when you and I have been in university of virginia and have held the manuscript of The grapes of wrath, It's the copy is so clean. He wrote it in 100 days. There's hardly a a scratched out word. You know, Unbelievable. I mean what, whatever, whatever that creative moment was, where he, he had his voice, He knew what he wanted to say.

He said it and he was satisfied with it. That never really happened again, I think.

So, 1939, He writes this perfect storm of a great american work of fiction. His next big, big big project was east of eden. It didn't quite Happen for him. The critics were saying he peaked early. He's got nothing left.

Um, he spent. he's. he's a cliche. He's. he's mediocre.

He's never been able to rise to the same level again. this hurt him deeply, Of course, how could it not? And then east of eden was going to be the redemption book, And it wasn't. um, in some ways, travels with charlie is the book that Sort of charmed the country again and and made them soften their view of him.

critics a lot of critics use that against him, um that he was a writer.

Steinbeck left a lot of tracks, as he said, and, and they're scattered all over the country.

He's a great steinbeck scholar. And then i'm going to, uh, of course, try to get on susan shilling law's calendar in san jose and in monterey. So I want to interview the great Steinbeckians that are out there and there are more coming, because a book is about to appear any month now on Essays, on on travels with charlie, and so once that comes out, I'm, very much going to want to track, read it immediately and track down those who have Interesting insights about that journey. So that's part of it. You know, you and I've been to a lot of these places.

we've been to south lake tahoe and And we're going to go to amarillo to the ranch. We think i've been working with a mutual friend of ours. It looks like that's going to happen. So I, my goal is to is to, by the time this is over, to have seen all the major steinbeck places. You know, you don't.

you don't have to see the battle of the little bighorn, you know You don't have to see seattle, You don't even have to see the redwoods, But you have to see certain other places that are sort of waypoints on this great tour. And you, when you and I have been to those places, it's thrilling. It's thrilling just to be there, and i'm hoping that you'll be able to join me, not just virtually but physically, on some of this, because it matters to you at least as much as it matters to me, and that's part of the trip is to Try to see through steinbeck's eyes a little bit, But knowing that a lot has changed since 1960.. I mean enormous social, economic, political, cultural changes from that time till this, and I think he would be.

Safe travels. We'll see you all next week for another episode of listening to america.