Steinbeck (82 page)

I may move on this afternoon. Can't tell yet. It's still early morning. But the roads are very long. It's a big damn country. And I find I get tired in the behind over two hundred miles. I brought one of those inflatable boat-seats and it is good to change position. Charley would like to go on today. He always wants to go on, but of course he doesn't have to drive. Must get out the map and lay out a route. Little country roads suddenly become four-lane highways. Wherever I stop people look hungrily at Rocinante. They want to move on. Is this a symptom? They lust to move on. West—north, south—anywhere. Maybe it's their comment on their uneasiness. People are real restless. Deep Maine speech is not unlike Somerset. They pronounce road and read with two syllables just as they do in the west country.

Charley wants me to go for a walk with him. He just knocked on the door with his nose. But I won't. I'm going to finish this letter and write a couple of cards. I don't write easily now. Winter kind of took the writing out of me. Funny how it comes and goes.

If I am near a phone this evening I will phone. Time to stop and housekeep a little now.

love and love and love
Freddie

Aroostook County, Maine
September 29, 1960
Thursday

Darling:

I drove very far today. Nearly to the top of Aroostook County and then in and way down. I think I am not very far from the New Hampshire border now but night caught us and rain so we are bedded down behind a bridge and it is still raining, but we are dry and I cooked lima beans and gorged on them. Maine is a monster big state. The leaves are flaming now—never saw such colors.

Charley thrives. He loves it but has taken to sleeping in the seat with his head in my lap. I still haven't combed him. What with driving and cooking and doing the truck up and down and trying to find my way and sleeping, I've had no time to comb and clip Charley. I guess he's just as glad.

It was good to hear you last night. It was in a small grocery store with truck drivers tripping over me.

I find I am terrible lonesome tonight. And so I won't go on about it. But I miss you dreadful. Been gone a week today. It seems like more.

Good night darling.

[unsigned]

On the road
September 30, 1960

Boggins:

Stopped early today—about four—right on the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. Been driving the logging roads of Maine and N.H. all day and those roads are rough and twisty. So Charley said it was all right to quit early. Besides, we are camped on a stream which he likes. I can't call you tonight. There isn't a soul around anywhere. I think I'll make my famous Spanish rice tonight. Feel much less hopeless and what am I doing here than last night in the rain. I got too tired for one thing and then it got dark and I couldn't find a place to stop until I got into that space behind the bridge. Feelings get very volatile in the rain anyway. Tonight I feel so good I might even have a drink later. But it will be with a feeling of sin. There isn't a soul anywhere about, to invite to join me. You'd be amazed how deserted much of this north country is. I had heard this and how the game was coming back. I've seen two cow mooses by the side of the road and today I had to stop because a doe wouldn't get out of my way. She wandered off after giving me a long and scornful look.

I don't have any thoughts at all. Maine seems a big empty place where people have been—and gone. And near the towns it's mostly trash—miles of junked automobiles. I hear the news on the car radio. Khrushchev's pounding and chanting seem incredible and inexplicable to me. I guess I was crazy to leave New York just at this time. I might even have seen the table pounding but can't have everything and I hope this is valuable.

Nixon invaded Maine today and made his usual speech. I heard it on the car radio. He can hardly talk for unmelted butter in his mouth. I do hope I can find some opinion somewhere. The Down Easters don't give out much if they don't know you. And as I told you there are no bars. I've haunted roadside coffee shops, drunk gallons of bad coffee but mostly they stare into their cups and don't even talk to each other. It's as though they knew each other's thoughts and had no need to say them. I wonder if I will find the whole country like that. But worried they are.

It's very odd—I haven't been very far from New York yet but I seem to have been on another planet. So much of Maine is solitary and deserted. Of course there are islands of neat, white-painted prosperity and lots of new cars but what I remember are all the houses finally crushed by the weather and deserted—big houses, and the forest has crept back. The milltowns are humming—the paper towns with their sour smell of fermenting wood pulp, but it's like a quick cancerous growth, and on the outskirts the woods creeping back. It's something very strange. Now I'm about to hit the ragged centers, the Youngstowns and Detroits etc., crawling with production. I can't avoid them. There they are—right in the way. I only know they make me nervous.

Nixon says, “Hi there. So nice to see you. I see you've got California weather for me.” How we laughed because it was pouring. Then he went on to say it was pretty good for a country to be able to rain like that and he wasn't one to run down rain. But on the other hand he didn't come out for it either.

This letter goes on and on. It comes of stopping driving before I am exhausted. I guess I shouldn't do that. It has fooled Charley. He thinks it is bedtime and the sun isn't even set yet.

 

Later—My lima beans smelled so good that I had them again instead of my fabulous Spanish rice. It wouldn't have been so fabulous without you to ooh and aah it anyway. Now, I've had dinner, peed Charley, read a little Robert Graves and I completely forgot the drink I was going to have. Too late now I guess. Late meaning it is 7:30 or quarter of eight. A dark, clear night and a little chill but not cold enough for the scarlet underwear.

And that, my fair, is about that. Tomorrow night I will probably put up at a motel for the sake of a bath and if I can find one with a phone I will call you.

Good night, darling.

[unsigned]

On the road
October 1, 1960

Dear Whamfort:

Writing this sometime after talking to you this evening. And I must say I am glad I will be seeing you soon. I said I had no thoughts but I have impressions. One is of our wastes. We can put chemical wastes in the rivers, and dispose of bowel wastes but every town is ringed with automobiles, machines, wrecks of houses. It's exactly like the Christmas Eves I described—opened and thrown away for the next package.

Tonight I pulled into this trailer park. Run by a square-jawed, crew-cut, National Guard officer. I asked him to have a drink. He never touched the stuff. I asked him for coffee. His wife was the coffee maker. He lives in a red trailer about the size of our house, only longer. I phoned you from one of the rooms. There must be six. All through my travels I've seen thousands of these trailers. People live in them. They don't move them. Build them up with cement blocks. This man tonight told me one out of four new houses is a trailer. Made of aluminum and plywood. I asked him if he thought it was a lack of permanence. He said, no. They want to see what's coming out next year. They trade them in like automobiles. They're called Mobile Homes—only they aren't mobile. They can't move legally on the highways (except by permit). I've seen them with big overhangs of jalousies and awnings. They are cheaper to buy than houses.

He is a young man who has quarreled with his father and gone into the trailer-court business. His wife says he is in training for something but she doesn't know what. Apparently he doesn't touch
that
stuff either. His trailer is 20 miles from where he was born. This trailer business is very important. It means you will throw away a house the way you consign a car to the junkyard.

These are Martians. I wanted to ask them to take me to their leader. They have no humor, no past, and their future is new models. Their present is exactly that of the White Leghorns that produce the eggs in batteries. Maybe I've finally found it. We live in batteries and any product is no better than the chemicals we take in. I wish I had a week with this young man. It would take a week because he can't talk.

If I ever am looking for a theme—this restless mobility is a good one. Just now I went out in the moonlight to pee. A picture window was clear, looking like a quarterdeck. I said to the owner, “That looks like an architect's office.” He said, “It's my home!” That's dreadful! A home accumulates. A home has a roof of hope and cellar of memories. That's our kind of home. But there's a new kind. That man meant it. That plywood and aluminum thing is his “home.”

It's quite a cold night—maybe one for my space suit underwear. It was brilliant of you to make me bring it.

I begin to think if you were in Chicago Wednesday or Thursday it would be fine. And I would be ready for a break too. Then I wouldn't start west until the following week.

Love,
Merlin

On the road
October 10, 1960
Monday

Dear Flouncefoot:

I'm very glad you came out and it was a good time wasn't it? It took the blankness off a lot.

Today I wafted up out of Illinois and into Wisconsin and am encamped right now near a place named Mauston, about halfway between Chicago and Minneapolis. Came through the Wisconsin Dells, a beautiful and strange country. And all of it very rich, black soil and corn, but forests too and round hills not unlike Somerset. I find I brought the hotel key but forgot to bring the ash tray I stole. So it's still a coffee can. I can't seem even to be properly dishonest. I am camped in a cornfield behind a truckers service place and coffee shop. Talk was all of baseball and little else. I heard the game on the radio and it was a fine one. There is great joy here in the Pirates. No politics, just baseball. This is cow country, so Rocinante is full of flies. I have put Charley in the cab while I sprayed them dead. It gives him the wheezes.

It's easy to see how this part of the country is important. Good lord, it is so rich—corn and pigs and cows and cheese everywhere—cheese centers, cheese stores, cheese ice cream, I guess. I'm too well fed after the weekend to take advantage of it. I'm going to have a bowl of soup and hit it. But I do have a good feeling now and I'm not so lonesome. Probably will be by the time I hit Seattle.

From here I'm aiming an angular course for Fargo, North Dakota. I can't tell you why except I have heard of the weather in Fargo all my life. When it is cold, it is said to be colder than the North Pole. Also it is almost exactly in the center of the country. I mean if you fold a map of the U.S., Fargo will be in the crease. You can see how important this is. Maybe this whole trip is just as silly. It is odd that everyone except you tells me how I should do it.

Of course one of the reasons for it must have occurred to you—I nearly told you that one in Chicago. American men of a certain age are very likely to get the George Albee disease. They become habitual sick men. After my illness I have had every chance to develop this state. It's so nice to have things done for you, to have loving people take care of you. Then you begin to take care of yourself and gradually you have the George Albee disease for good. If this trip does nothing else, it will remove the possibility of that trouble. You see, I can read a map. I can drive a truck, I can make do. And I can stand the loneliness as you can. There it is. It's an antidote for a poison that gets into very many men of my age and makes them emotional and spiritual cripples. But we're not going to have that, are we? I'm still a man, damn it. This may seem silly but to me it isn't. I've seen the creeping sickifying creep up on too many. But you married a man and I'm damn well going to keep him that way.

That's all for tonight. I love you.

Charley's uncle.

Not far from
Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
October 11 [1960]

Dear Monsoon:

Seems impossible that you went yesterday morning. It seems very much longer ago than that. I've been through so many kinds of country. I'm camped in a row of great cattle trailers—longer than box cars. Got to talking to the man at the gas pump and he invited me to stay. These big trailers have taken it away from the railroads. This is also turkey country. Just below this hill the earth is black with them. There must be ten thousand turkeys in the one flock.

I guess Wisconsin is the prettiest state I ever saw—more kinds of country—hills and groves like Somerset, and the Dells a strange place of water and odd mushroom-shaped rocks. Lousy with tourist places but nearly all closed now with signs saying—“See you next spring.” Then I got into St. Paul and Minneapolis. There must be some way to avoid them but I didn't make it. Crawling with traffic. Took a good time to get out of that. So I've been in Minnesota all afternoon and now am not far from the North Dakota border. At breakfast a trucker told me how women drove the big trucks during the war. I said, “My god, they must have been Amazons,” and he replied, “I don't know. I never fought one.” I've talked to lots of people today. Stopped quite a lot. One argument-did you know if you bake a doughnut, it will float? I'm just repeating what I heard. And I heard that Dag Hammarskjöld could easy be President. When I suggested that he was a Swede the reply was—“What of it?” I think I'll write that to him.