Travels With Charley

I have been asked to mention books I am reading about my travels. Webb Chiles mentioned John Steinbeck’s travel book which set me thinking a while back. He didn’t talk of it by way of recommendation but I thought about it a bit and found a copy on my Libby app. 

Libby gives you access to your library account online so you can check out audio books or electronic books and read them on your device.  A lot of the value of the app depends on how extensive your home library is, and I’m lucky the Monroe County library has a wide range of titles. 

The funny thing about Libby is that you can only borrow books as they become available just as though you were picking up a physical book at your branch. However this app is just another of the incredible tools that make nomad life so enjoyable and remarkable in the 21st century. 

I do carry a couple of paper books for the pleasure of reading but an electronic Kindle is essential to me. We use Express VPN when outside the US to make it look like we are at home and thus have access to books and movies through our home accounts. We don’t make money off the internet so we haven’t yet bothered with the Starlink connection, especially as it has very limited service outside North America and Europe. WiFi and cell service works just fine aboard GANNET2.  

All that by way of explanation but as far as Travels with Charley goes I am quite surprised how relevant the story is. Steinbeck grew up in Salinas California, a region I am very familiar with as I lived almost 20 years in Santa Cruz on Monterey Bay, but he moved to Long Island away from his home town critics, in an act of mutual rejection. By 1960 he was ready to explore his homeland and he took to the road in a pick up truck with a camper shell. Oh and a dog called Charley. Does this remind you of anyone? 

The astonishing thing for me was how similar our rigs are! He ordered a complete camper from the dealer and as you read the description in the book you discover not too much has changed fundamentally between now and then. Give some latitude for improved technology and of course electronics and the way he traveled that Fall of 1960 isn’t so different from how we travel aboard GANNET2 in 2022, sixty years later. For details about the vehicle and it’s restoration follow this link to a superb description: 

http://www.thecamperbook.com/man-saved-john-steinbecks-van/

I have read some of his novels -and watched the movie versions of his stories. I read his other well known travel book set in the Sea of Cortez and I think among Nobel Laureates (1962) he is among the most readable. Many of the prize winners  I try and find them impenetrable. Steinbeck is very approachable and this story is funny and incisive and meditative by turns. I have felt exactly as he has felt during our recent tour of the United States aboard GANNET2. 

Modern academics dissect the book and argue over the truthiness of the stories contained in his travel stories. They debate the veracity of his descriptions of people met along the way and how much of the conversations he made up and they forgive him because he was a writer and a novelist and he is allowed much latitude. I don’t care about all that intellectual debate. I can tell you his story of driving across America rings true to me, details be damned. 

I see so many of my thoughts and opinions about the road, the general state of the country, the joy of travel reflected in Steinbeck’s writings I find it hard to believe he made the trip in 1960. I empathize with his occasional pursuit of hotel rooms for hot baths ( we use modern truck stops! ) and I rejoice that I have Google maps to stop me getting lost all the time like he does. 

I am astonished to find a brother on the road in John Steinbeck. Webb Chiles pointed me there so I shouldn’t be surprised. You might enjoy his story too.

NOLA Art

With Laynes’s declared remission from arthritis, and the subsequent long path to vaccination stability we can at last date to behave as though Covid may not kill her. The New Orleans Museum of Art seemed a good place for a first cultural outing. 

Charles Giroux, a Louisiana road scene from 1875. 

There is a remarkable amount of art packed into the heart of City Park in NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) and we took two weekdays to Cody the sculpture garden one day and two more hours the corridors of the museum itself. Photographing art is a skill I don’t possess and therefore neither the tools so in reproducing the pictures I offer only a faint outline of the richness within. 

My favorite room and the one I returned to contained the snapshots of Louisiana captured in the last decades of the 19th century. The paintings offer a glimpse into life of the era but don’t hint at the controversies and social miseries of the time. They are street views in the style of the time not exposes or social commentary. 

South Shore Lake Pontchartrain 1880 by Marshall Smith. 

The boats, the human and animal figures set in the darkened landscape  set me to wondering who lived there and how they coped. I can’t imagine the agony of life before DEET in these boggy places or the awkwardness of unremitting poverty to the passerby. And yet as I stood there I saw the reality depicted reflected in my own recent travels in Mexico land of stark social contrasts. I stood in this room a long time. 

And then the full on Frenchness of France dominated the room next door. A female portrait painter…revolutionary…

And then suddenly the exhibit of instant photos of artists in the city by a photographer well known in the city but unknown outside. 

The simple equipment: 

The man himself not portrayed in the exhibit but whose portrait I found online. The article at Go Nola is well worth a read: 

https://gonola.com/things-to-do-in-new-orleans/polo-silk-the-picture-man

There was so much more in the building, furniture jewelry and all the objects that create beauty in the home.  It was overwhelming for a one day visit. 

Oh and let’s not forget the dog stealing lunch at the French Market. 

Outside the Besthoff sculpture garden glowed in evening sunlight. I hope the pictures give an idea of the pleasure of the walk. Admission here incidentally is free. I’d spend a piece of every day passing trough if I lived here. We walked only half of the entire outdoor art museum here.