Down John's Road: The Middle |
| John R. Olson | Wednesday, 28 September, 2011 | |||
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John R. Olson continues in John Steinbeck’s tire tracks through Indiana’s Amish country, Deer Isle, Maine, Groton, Connecticut, Sag Harbor, Long Island, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
"I am who I am. There are no secrets around here."
The third week of September I hit Amish country. Serendipity came in Shipshewana, Indiana, a town of 536 people and the only Indiana location in the original best-seller 1,000 Places to Visit Before You Die. Amish farms and buggies were everywhere. I maneuvered through mounds of horse manure like a student driver on a pylon course. Behind a general store, I parked near a buggy in which a young Amish father and his two children were waiting. “Mind if I take a picture of your buggy?” “Go right ahead.” “How about a photo of your rig and my truck?” “Be my guest.” “I’m traveling the country and it’ll be a neat photo next to an Amish rig. You sure have a handsome horse.” “That’s Arnie the trotter. He’s got it easy. I must say, you’ve got a pretty nice horse there yourself,” the Amish man said pointing to my truck camper. His name was Dan Schwartz. His demure wife Lena had finished shopping and climbed into the buggy. Dan was bemused by my rapid-fire questions. Dan stared with piercing blue eyes. He wore a perfectly starched, collared white shirt. His wife or children rarely spoke. I asked Dan why some Amish men had beards and others not? “You grow the beard once you get married.” “So it’s kind of an off-limits sign to other women?” “I suppose you could say that, but that’s not how we would view it.” Dan asked why I was in Shipshewana. In 100 words, I told him about Steinbeck’s journey and my re-enactment. “Have you ever heard of John Steinbeck?” “I suppose I should have. Books were never my thing in school. I should have listened better I guess. I pretty much stick to the Bible these days.” “Well, if you only read one book, I guess that’d be the one.” Raindrops caused steam to rise off Arnie’s back and flanks and spattered off the buggy’s metal black rims. “They never go flat, that’s for sure,” Dan said. With that, they drove off to their ten-acre farm, three miles outside town.
****
Above: A vintage Holiday Rambler truck camper inside the RV/MV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana.
Americans love Halls of Fame. Along my route were halls devoted to Rock & Roll in Cleveland, toys in Rochester, New York, and bicycling in Davis, California. One day, the spacious Recreational Vehicle/Motor Home Hall of Fame drifted by my windshield outside Elkhart, Indiana. Inside the museum today are dozens of vintage RVs. RV raconteur Al Hesselbart, the museum’s historian/archivist, granted an interview and tour one morning. I wanted to learn about pickup truck campers. My interest resided in specifically in where Steinbeck’s Rocinante and my Gabilan have their roots. Al said the museum has photos and an ad flyer for piggy-back, truck rigs resembling campers from back to 1915. “I don’t believe back in 1915 that they made pickup trucks. It was a runabout with the trunk removed and this contraption sat on it. So the concept of a slide-in truck camper is basically as old as the automobile. The very first campers were quite simply, a box set on top of the bed.” What about Steinbeck? I asked. Did Travels with Charley have effects on the RV industry? “It surely didn’t hurt. But perhaps more than Steinbeck, five years earlier was the Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz movie, The Long, Long Trailer.” The 1953 movie was based on a book by Hollywood radio personality Clinton Twiss and his wife Merle. They had bought a huge Airway Zephyr travel trailer and a stately new Chrysler New Yorker intending to see the country for two years in the late 1940s. Their travel travails only lasted one year, but the hilarious trek spawned a screenplay. Hesselbart said RVing took off in the late 1950s spurred by baby boomers, easy money, and the expanding Interstate. That was about when Thomas Steinbeck said his father saw a truck and camper on Long Island while contemplating his trip. Hesselbart said Steinbeck’s truck and camper would be similar in form and function to today’s rigs. “There are only so many things you can do with an eight-foot box. The floor plan and functions of a Fifties truck camper are not much different than the plans and functions of a truck camper in 2010.” As I departed, Hesselbart said one true thing about Americans, John Steinbeck, and me. “Americans are vagabonds.”
****
Above: Steinbeck went to Niagara Falls because he had never been before; I went because Steinbeck did.
Rolling northeast toward Niagara Falls, winter’s harbingers arrived. It seemed just days ago I wrestled with flies and ninety degrees in Montana. Now municipal trucks were sporting the metal rigging for snowplows. In front of hardware and garden stores sat rows of snow blowers where, in prior states, had been lawnmowers. Flocks of geese landed in cornfields plucking precious kernels before departing south.
Above: The bridge to Deer Isle, Maine, was reinforced after the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in 1940.
Eventually, I figured out the route to Deer Isle, Maine which had had a Svengali hold on Steinbeck. As I arrived on Deer Isle, its chief harbor, Stonington, was under storm warning. The wind blew whitecaps in the distant inlets. I decided to find a hotel room overlooking the harbor. I was ready for a night outside Gabilan, where I had slept nightly since Ohio. Stonington appeared to be a major player in the lobster fishing world. Scores of lobster boats bobbed at anchor. Around the harbor, knuckle-like rock formations reached out to the sea. Even an experienced, sharp-eyed lobsterman must find them difficult to navigate. All the restaurants in town were closed on the stormy Sunday evening. Two small hotels remained open. Only one gave me the view of Stonington’s harbor I desired. I paid $95 for a superb waterside room. It would be my last hotel room for twenty-nine days. The storm settled in deeper. The wind blew harder. Rain began to pelt. Eventually the power went out – my $95 of amenities wasted. In 1960, Steinbeck stopped a state patrolman for directions to Deer Isle and found him aloof, standoffish – a nominee for Mount Rushmore, Steinbeck wrote. With my hotel room settled, parking my oversized rig on tight Stonington streets presented problems. So I too approached a policeman sitting in his cruiser near the docks. He was anything but aloof. “Can you recommend a place to park this rig overnight?” “Just park in any parking spot downtown, we won’t bother you.” “But my rig is pretty long, it sticks out.” “Those spots are big enough. Yours doesn’t stick out as far as the rigs I see all summer.” “What about this parking lot right here? Can I park here?” “No way. Not allowed. The lobstermen will be here first thing in the morning. They won’t be happy seeing you here. All these spots are reserved. Better to take one of those spots downtown. You’ll be fine.”
**** In Maine, I learned of a love affair. I read moose news, witnessed moose events, felt moose innuendo everywhere, but never saw a moose. However, I did see a man selling moose antlers, Budweiser signs blazing “Welcome Moose Hunters", moose meat processing for fifty-five cents a pound, moose scat on the roads, a moose taxidermist, moose-tagging stations and a moose statue near Houlton, Maine. Just when I gave up hope of seeing an actual moose, at dusk, 5:10 p.m., October 20, 2009, something moved in a clearing.
Above: In central Maine, after much teasing and false alarms, I spotted my only moose of the trip - Brownie.
Was it a bear? A horse? Bigfoot/Sasquatsch out walking? The nearer I drove, full reality hit me. Looming was the huge, molasses-brown, 100 percent ugly moose I named Brownie.
**** Rolling into Groton, Connecticut late one night, I pulled into a Walmart. In the distance, a man pushed a shopping cart on a straight line toward me. He was talking to himself, whistling and singing. He was black, handsome, young, and engaging. His name was Dave. I liked him from the first minute and that minute was near midnight. “Where can you get a rig like this?” I told him my rig was from Michigan, both truck and camper. But truck campers are built all over America I said. I asked him where he lived. The story unwound about why the winsome young man was pushing a shopping cart through a midnight Walmart. “Well temporarily I am living over in New London. It just hasn’t been working out in some of the other places.” “Where are the other places?” “Anywhere I can find.” “Are you homeless?” “Not really. I always manage to find some place to sleep.” “You got a job?” “Every now and then I’ll work, but it won’t be just any job. Maybe I’ll put in an application here. I only been to this Walmart once. The last time I was here, I got into a truck with a couple guys. Then I got out and they took off with all my stuff. It wasn’t much. But it was all I had. I never saw them again.” “Did you ever think about joining the military? The Army or the Navy?” “Yes, I think about it. Thought about it a lot. But sometimes they tell me my thinking isn’t quite right. What about you? Why are you in Groton?” I revealed my Steinbeck reason and showed my route. “So, you’re taking a journey about John Steinmen?” “No, Steinbeck. You know, he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men.” “I gotta admit, I never heard of them. And I like to read man, I really do. I’ll have to look him up at the library. That’s another place to stay warm. Staying warm, that’s the thing.” His bus was coming. He ran off to the bus and disappeared around the rear bumper; his shopping cart was left in the grass. I went over to see if he had left a remnant of identity. The cart was empty. I had known Dave for eight or ten minutes, and surely, I will never see him again. Would Dave ever think of me again? Life does not permit such answers.
****
Above: The GMC camper “Gabilan” taking the Long Island ferry Menantic toward Sag Harbor, New York.
Above: A brilliant sunset in picturesque Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York – Steinbeck’s longtime second home.
I arrived in Sag Harbor on Long Island, New York. From a modest home on Bluff Point, Steinbeck began his journey September 23, 1960. It seems today a village where people drink tea and wine with pinkie extended. I usually hate those kinds of towns – I made an exception for Sag Harbor. In this town Steinbeck got hounded for autographs. Once he signed as Ernest Hemingway and joked the recipient hardly noticed. Once he complained, “I’m getting sick of my own name.” Trying to find a spot to park my truck camper rig would not be easy. After all, I was in The Hamptons – a playground for New York City’s elite. The next day, Sunday, I went to church and then for a long walk along a beach. I met a couple who told me about all the famous people who have lived or visited over the years: Alan Alda, Christie Brinkley, Billy Joel, and Roy Scheider (the police chief in Jaws). Colin Powell, Robin Leach, and Paul Simon had been spotted.
Above: To prove he was on Steinbeck’s Long Island property, Olson hung his GMC ball cap on tree at left.
Above : Olson, by accident, met his journalism hero, Carl Bernstein, outside a Sag Harbor 7-Eleven.
As I left town the last time, I went to the Steinbeck property on Bluff Point. Birds chirped. A deer statue ornamented the lawn. A few leaves nestled on the roof. I ventured forth on the property, boldly trespassing. The GMC truck camper was too big for the gates, so I took photos and grabbed a stone from the driveway. Later I inscribed it: 10.26.09 It sat over my desk the entire time I wrote my book.
**** I left Sag Harbor for The Big Apple. I had promised my neighbor, a huge baseball fan, that I would park my rig outside new Yankee Stadium for a photo. At the end of the day, the home of the Bronx Bombers might as well have been in Rangoon. The closer I drew to New York City, the more I became Dennis Weaver in the TV series McCloud. The story line was a NYPD detective who was actually a cop transplanted from Taos, New Mexico. In the credits, he rides a horse through New York City down the skyscraper canyons of Manhattan. That’s how I felt in my rig – a man and conveyance strangely out of place. Via Freeport, Rockville Centre, and Valley Stream, I arrived in Brooklyn and came unglued. Traffic lanes increased. Brooklyn ensnared me like a Neil Simon play gone berserk. Signs on the left and right pointed to familiar icons: Aqueduct Race Track, JFK Airport, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Flatbush Avenue. I wanted to get onto the Shore Belt Parkway, but signs screamed, No Trucks Allowed. Did that mean my truck, any truck, semi-trucks? What did it mean? There were height limitations on streets as well. Some said eleven feet, some twelve, some thirteen. I bypassed them religiously to avoid a low-hanging beam opening my camper like a sardine can. My nerves swept my mind’s radar. Yankee Stadium did not emerge as a reachable blip on the screen. I wanted out of Brooklyn and I could see people looking at my out-of-place rig as I negotiated Linden Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue, and then Ocean Avenue. The entire time in New York City, I never saw another pickup truck and camper. Nowhere was the place I was getting to – fast. Signs screamed: No trucks allowed. Buses Only. Height Restriction: 11’10”. No Stopping or Parking by Order of NYPD. Ocean Avenue blended into Prospect Expressway. Exactly then, Yankee Stadium passed from my itinerary. I coulda, woulda, shoulda gotten off the Prospect Expressway where it merged with I-278 and gone deeper into New York City. I could have taken I-478 to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Could have negotiated East River Drive, I-95, I-87 and arrived at Yankee Stadium. I could have gotten my picture taken outside the billion-dollar baseball palace and seen old Yankee Stadium nearby. I did none of the above. Instead, I punted and headed to New Jersey. By evening, I was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in a wooded campground surrounded by ghosts of the Civil War. My driving nerves were still shot. As I lay in bed, the nightmare passage through New York City still fresh, I did not ponder the World Series. The storm and rain abated. The evening turned quiet. In the dark and hush, a branch crackled and a bush rustled. “Brownie, is that you out there?”
**** My trip was two-thirds over. I still had the span of America to travel again; deep into the South, across Texas and the Southwest. More midnight misadventures at Walmart awaited me Down John’s Road. |
