Last night I hung out with my good ol’ childhood buddy Jason. We recounted tales of memorable basketball games, lake exploration, weeklong snow days and everything else that the kid in every man holds dear. It’s great to be back in touch with Jason because we had slowly drifted apart since he left to go to a different high school. A good friendship lost and regained is a blessing. Jason is living in San Jose with his girlfriend Annie. Her parents have a nice place way up on a high hill in San Francisco. They let me crash on the couch and the next morning I woke up to a panoramic view of San Francisco. After breakfast and saying goodbye, I drove out to Alamo to meet up with the guys at Matt’s grandfather’s house. Thank you to the Turner/Russell family for their gracious and warm hospitality.
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We left Alamo around mid-day destination: Salinas. I was excited. Salinas is one of the places in America that I checked off early in the project.’ John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors and Salinas and neighboring Monterey are his hometown stomping grounds that he forever immortalized. His vivid imagery is taken directly from the features of this place. When we reached downtown Salinas, I asked the first guy I saw if he liked Steinbeck. The guy was from Salinas and told me, “Not really. I don’t enjoy Steinbeck’s ‘doom and gloom’ style or his symbolism. The house he grew up in is two blocks down though.”

Just after arriving, we were met by a nice lady named Shelly, who was a friend of a friend of a friend. Shelly took us to he took us to the National Steinbeck Center. The Center is divided into two parts. One half is on Steinbeck, his life, and his works. The other half is on the agriculture of Salinas Valley. Both were interesting, but I spent the majority of time on the Steinbeck side. However, if Steinbeck himself were at the museum, I probably wouldn’t have seen him. There is little doubt in my mind which side Steinbeck would have visited.

In 1962 Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature. As a result, he was inevitably highly criticized this way and that. Unfortunately, after 1962, he wrote no more fiction.

The criticism didn’t stop Steinbeck entirely from writing. Travels With Charley is one of his most adored works. It’s about Steinbeck and his poodle Charley’s adventures across American during the Civil Rights era. They traveled in a converted truck named Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s horse). Travels, along with a couple of others books, was great inspiration for doing this project. The last exhibit on the Steinbeck side was a Dartmouth green painted Rocinante. I stood in awe. It wasn’t a replica, it was the actual truck. Steinbeck drove, slept and ate in this. I asked a fellow onlooker what he thought the truck was made of. I asked, just so I could reach over the protective glass and touch Rocinante without drawing attention to myself. I then walked around the back and peered in. The bed Steinbeck used was a fold down table, the same kind we have in Harvey.

Before leaving, I bought a paperback version of Steinbeck’s: America and American’s. I am excited to see what the man has to say.
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We left Salinas and drove down Coastal Route 1. It was breathtaking. Everyone should do it once, if they can. It reminded me of our first drive to Acadia, except with barbed wire and steep cliffs.

Harvey and Rocinante should hang out sometime.

good joss

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 4:11 pm and is filed under TYAP '05 Trip Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.