Dogging Steinbeck: Discovering America and Exposing the Truth about 'Travels With Charley': Discovering America and Exposing the Truth about 'Travels With Charley'

by Bill Steigerwald

  In 1960 Steinbeck covered some of the same interstate miles I was driving. After he left New Orleans he only wanted to get home fast. Hardly sleeping, he took U.S. 11 to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and hopped on the PA Turnpike. He flew up the Jersey Turnpike and thought he was home free. But he had a last-minute glitch when he was turned away from the Holland Tunnel because of his potentially explosive propane tank.

  Was that true, or a final metaphor from the great novelist? Were propane tanks really considered that dangerous in the bad old days? Steinbeck said in “Travels With Charley” he ended up having to take the ferry from Hoboken across the Hudson River to Manhattan, something you no longer can do with a car. Then, as he described in the ending pages, Steinbeck got hopelessly lost in evening rush hour in his own backyard. He was forced to get directions to his townhouse on East 72nd Street from an “old-fashioned” cop who called Steinbeck “Mac” and thought the bearded, road-bedraggled and flustered old gent was drunk.

  Lost in New York, New York

  Sag Harbor was 139 miles and almost three hours away from my motel in north Jersey. My plan was to outflank Manhattan to the south and reach Sag Harbor via Staten Island and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. But I never got close to Staten Island. While answering a call on my cell phone from a Sag Harbor newspaper writer, I missed a key directive from my GPS Person. Before I knew it, I was sucked into the mouth of the Holland Tunnel and spit out into the madness of Lower Manhattan.

  Gridlock at 9:42 a.m.

  New York City has 8 million people. At least half of them were in the street pushing or pulling carts, surging along the crowded sidewalks like they were on speed or trying to walk while staring into the glare of their smart phones. The other half of the Big Apple’s population was cops. NYPD traffic officers in light green vests stood in teams of four at every intersection and in the street, waving and pointing at cars and delivery trucks with nowhere to go. It didn’t matter where the GPS Person wanted you to turn or what color the traffic lights were. It was the cops’ call. They pointed. You drove.

  For half an hour I drove around in squares trying to escape from New York. At one point it got surreal. I found myself inching along the same teeming stretch of West 34 Street I had walked down three weeks earlier when I went to the Morgan Library to read the manuscript of “Charley.” Past Macy’s. Past the Empire State Building. Past the FDNY ambulance being loaded with a gurney containing a strapped-down victim of assault, murder or second-hand smoke.

  I thought I’d never see Long Island. A corner I shouldn’t have turned took me to a NYPD precinct station where 30 uniformed cops were standing in gangs on the sidewalk taking a smoke break. “Help,” I shouted over to them from the red light. “I’m trapped in New York. How do I get to Sag Harbor?” Half a dozen cops pointed behind a block of buildings. All I heard was laughter and “Midtown Tunnel.”

  Thanks to the first of what would be hundreds of acts of distracted driving on my trip, I had eerily repeated the end of Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” journey. Fifty years after he did – or said he did – I too was lost in Manhattan seeking help from cops. Eventually my GPS Person led me to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, which blew me like a poison dart under the East River and into daylight and the open road.

  After five minutes of congestion I was permanently free, exploding east at hyper-interstate speed. The LIE – three smooth fast lanes plus an HOV – was better and wider than any road in Metro Pittsburgh. As I tunneled my way through the trees and concrete sound barriers separating me from millions of Long Islanders, I could see little of their flat, pizza-and-beer-based civilization. I couldn’t even find Billy Joel on the radio.

  While I was lunching at a Wendy’s along the LIE, National Public Radio producer Peter Breslow called. For weeks I had tried to reach his boss at “Saturday Morning Edition with Scott Simon.” I wanted to pitch my transcontinental Steinbeck-chasing expedition to her as a weekly feature for the show. It was a natural for radio and especially for NPR’s small but literate audience. Though I had an inside-connection at NPR who touted my journalism skills like I was the ghost of Edward R. Murrow, I got no response to half a dozen emails and phone messages to Bridgette Kelley, the executive producer.

  Finally, three days before I left home I caught Kelley at her desk on a Sunday morning. She apologized profusely for ignoring me, couldn’t have been nicer, and said she was interested in the idea. She told me to expect a call from Breslow when I was on Long Island. I was looking for national publicity from NPR for my “Travels Without Charley” road blog, which I was writing each day for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But I was also hoping I could make a few hundred bucks as a freelance reporter. Breslow quickly disabused me of that pipedream. I was the story, not the reporter. But we agreed he should contact me in a week to arrange a time for Scott Simon to “join me” on the road in Vermont or New Hampshire.

  Town Without Chains

  A hundred miles east of Manhattan on a narrow county road I closed in on the village of Sag Harbor. The closer I got the more I understood why the Hamptons are where the 1% of New York City go to play and hide. Old trees, old neighborhoods, old homes tucked into the old trees, pricy vacation homes, quaint country stores. Nothing out of place or shabby. Nothing modern or crass or commercial, just overly nautical.

  The shine and smell of big money was everywhere. So was the conspicuous absence of affordable chain motels or cottages that would allow tourists, journalists and other members of the lower classes to sleep overnight in Zip Code 11963, where, not surprisingly, the 7,000 residents skew older, whiter and considerably richer than average.

  At 3:30 p.m. a bumper-to-bumper stream of vans poured at me from the direction of Sag Harbor. They were the contractors, plumbers and electricians who made their daily livings fixing and primping the shingled and over-mulched homesteads they could buy only if they hit the lottery. The road to Sag Harbor’s waterfront was like a string town for the Town & Country set. Everyone had at least one European car with a backyard on a bay. The harbor was a forest of sailboats and yachts, some more than 100 feet long and owned by billionaires. Sag Harbor’s downtown, humming with small-town commerce, exuded the well-preserved character, class and charm befitting a listee of the National Register of Historic Places.

  Main Street was lined with flapping American flags, trees and handsome old red brick buildings with time-warped storefronts – a cramped stationery store, a hardware emporium, a five and dime, the Sag Harbor Movie Theater. Mixed in with the old and new Americana were art galleries, Bike Hampton, Book Hampton and Marty’s Barber Shop, where Steinbeck got his haircuts. A real-estate office window looked like it was advertizing the homes of Third World despots. The Georgica Pondfront Estate in East Hampton was a steal at $39.5 million.

  At 4 p.m. the sidewalks were busy and impressively age-diverse. Little old ladies, mothers and kids. A bald young father with his hot pregnant wife, 1.6 children, yellow Lab and $500 stroller. As two Latino day laborers with cell phones to their ears waited on a bench for the bus out of town, a scruffy high school kid weaved by on a skateboard without fear of complaint or arrest.

  Unfortunately, the first Sag Harborite I picked at random to speak to was the Village Creep. The graying Baby Boomer was sitting on a folding chair in front of an antique store called Our Gig Too – “Whatever.” He held a book on his lap but spent most of his time glowering at passing people. The front door of his store was propped open with a white ceramic lighthouse.

  After taking a quick spin of his nautical treasures, I said my usual friendly hello, identified myself and waved my Professional Reporter’s Notebook around at the general streetscape.

  “Has much changed in 50 years?”

  “Have you?” he said, not looking at me.

  “I mean the town,” I said, a little off balance.

  “You can figure that out yourself.”

  Not a good start to taking the pulse of the American people. Maybe he was a cranky right-winger who thought I w
as a member of the stinking mainstream liberal media. I should have told him to screw himself, but I moved on. I’d met his miserable type before. I didn’t know it then, but he would be the only certifiable asshole I’d encounter during the next 42 days.

  Licking my wounds, I dashed across Main Street and ducked into the American Hotel and restaurant/bar. It smelled 168 years old, felt rich and had one of the scariest menus I had ever seen. I didn't actually see what the day's featured entree was because I averted my eyes when I saw that it cost $110. Maybe it was for 14 people. I didn’t know yet where I was going to sleep that night, but it sure wasn’t the American. A room went for something like $230, only $170 over my budget.

  Camera slung discreetly over my shoulder, notebook sticking out of my back pocket, I chose another random local to interrogate. Donnie – maybe he was 50 – was leaning against the brick front wall of Illusions, an artsy women’s jewelry store. Donnie and his brother ran an auto repair shop for foreign cars whose customers once included Elaine Steinbeck, who died in 2003. Donnie was Australian. When he and his mother moved to Sag Harbor in the 1970s there were boarded up storefronts on Main Street. “It was a hard-drinking town,” he said, claiming it had 30 bars including the Black Buoy, Steinbeck's old drinking hole.

  Artists had always come to Sag Harbor for the light, the sea and the sunsets. But in 1960 Sag Harbor’s residents were working-class Italians and Irish like the ones Steinbeck described in his 1961 novel “The Winter of Our Discontent.” His book about the ethics of success and the decline of morality in America was set in New Baytown, a fictional rendering of Sag Harbor and its citizens. In 1960 black migrants from the South lived in rundown labor camps and worked the surrounding potato fields. Today most of the potato farms are gone, replaced by housing developments or vineyards, and Latinos are imported to do the agricultural grunt work. According to Donnie, because Sag Harbor was never a stop on the Long Island RR line, it was the last town in “the Hamptons scene” to be colonized by Manhattanites.

  Donnie's friend Mike walked up. Mike, 54, earned his living building and renovating homes for rich people and getting their estates ready for sale. In the midst of the Great Recession, Sag Harbor was showing no outward signs of economic trouble. The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, compared to the national rate of almost 10. Mike said it was the super-rich who were getting beat up by the bad economy. Estate values had been battered, he said, taking no noticeable proletarian pleasure in the fact. “Estates worth $12 million three years ago can’t draw $8 million. There’s been a big drop in the market. A lot of people have money here to buy, but they’re holding it until the prices fall. Anyone who’s bought in the last five years is probably underwater.”

  Mike happened to be from Pittsburgh's North Side, the downtown Allegheny Riverbank neighborhood where my dad grew up in the 1930s and where my last newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, had its offices in the old Clark Bar candy factory. He first came to Sag Harbor to renovate a vacation house for a Pittsburgh couple in 2000. After 14 months he liked it so much he stayed, taking an apartment above a store on Main Street.

  Sag Harbor is bitter cold, wet and uncomfortable in the winter, but Mike said he didn’t mind. “It’s not as pretentious here. If you can make a living and stay here it’s a great place to live because it’s a nice quiet town.” Except for summer, that is, when the Village of Sag Harbor’s population of less than 3,000 swells to about 15,000 and a thousand pleasure boats spend their summers parked in the harbor.

  Mike was full of local knowledge and his blunt sociopolitical commentary about Steinbeck’s last hometown was more credible and a lot more interesting than any spinmeister from the chamber of commerce. He said Sag Harbor was leftwing. South Hampton was rightwing and WASPY. East Hampton was very Jewish. Jews had to buy their own golf club in Bridgehampton. “Sag Harbor is the ‘un-Hampton,’” he explained. “It’s not chain stores. It’s boutiques and art galleries.”

  Mike was happy to report that Sag Harbor’s frozen 1950s charm hadn’t been ruined by invasive fast-food restaurants and national chains. But when Mike used the word “chain” he didn't mean the Unholy Trinity of Starbucks, McDonald's and Wal-Mart. The closest Starbucks was 5 miles away in Bridgehampton. The closest McDonald’s was 11 miles away in Southampton. And the closest Wal-Mart in New York State was in Riverhead, 25 miles west. When Mike of Sag Harbor said “chain stores” he meant Saks, Tiffany and Gucci.

  Me and Steinbeck’s Ghost

  Before sunset I went out to Steinbeck's summer home on Bluff Point Lane. It was only a five-minute drive from downtown Sag Harbor. But because it was at the dead-end of a narrow private gravel road at the tip of a peninsula, the house was hard to find – exactly as the reclusive and publicity-shy author wanted.

  I didn't use the driveway because John Stefanik's car was there. Stefanik has been taking care of the house since 1982, when Elaine Steinbeck hired him to do the job. The wood-sided house and its outer buildings, shallow swimming pool and shaggy lawn were looking pretty good beneath the heavy shade of tall oaks. The trees were much taller and fatter than when Steinbeck lived there, of course, especially the one that he playfully planted three feet from the front door and now nearly blocks it.

  Stefanik usually required appointments for media pests like me. But when I explained why I was there he let me wander around the 2-acre lot. Stefanik couldn't have been friendlier. While he and his son did their buzzing yard work, I walked out on the dock where Steinbeck used to park his 22-foot cabin boat. I also checked out “Joyous Garde,” Steinbeck’s restored writing shack. Overlooking Morris Cove, it’s hardly bigger than the British phone box Dr. Who flies around in.

  I didn’t ask for a peek inside the gray-painted house, which is still owned by Elaine Steinbeck’s heirs. But earlier in the week a New York Times reporter and photographer came to do a feature story about the place to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of Steinbeck’s "Travels With Charley" trip. Based on the Times’ pictures, the interior is homey, airy, simply decorated and hung with Steinbeck photos. Steinbeck was loaded, but frugal. It apparently still looked pretty much as it did when he lived in it.

  By the time the Stefaniks drove off and left me standing in the driveway, the last sunset of summer was over and fall was arriving with a rare astronomical splash. The full moon was climbing through the trees like a gigantic yellow balloon. I thought its extra plumpness and brightness were due to my tired eyes. But according to NASA’s sky-watchers, for the first time since 1991 northern autumn was beginning on a night with a "Super Harvest Moon."

  Scientists don’t quite understand why, but somehow the light from the sun and the moon combine to create a 360-degree glow that makes the full moon look wider and brighter than usual. I knew none of this “moon illusion” stuff as I stood there alone with my notebook, cameras and, I guess, the ghosts of Steinbeck and Charley, who was buried somewhere in the yard.

  Steinbeck’s ‘Act of Courage’

  John Steinbeck was especially brave to embark on his solo road trek in 1960 – and it had nothing to do with not having radial tires, GPS or air bags. Given his lousy health, his biographer Jackson Benson said the “Travels With Charley” trip could be best appreciated “as an act of courage.” As Steinbeck’s son Thom told the New York Times, “The book was his farewell. My dad knew he was dying, and he had been accused of having lost touch with the rest of the country. ‘Travels With Charley’ was his attempt to rediscover America.”

  Steinbeck’s agent, doctor and everyone who loved him tried to talk him out of his trip, which he had been thinking about taking for at least six years. What if he had a heart attack and collapsed in the middle of nowhere? He’d die for sure and he might never be found. He refused to hear such cautionary crap. He was the contemporary rival and equal of Hemingway. He was the World War II correspondent who went on daring midnight raids in PT boats off the Italian coast with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He was a future Nobel Prize-winner. He may have been born with
a heart too small for his big body, as a European doctor once told him. But he was not a famous dead author yet, literally or figuratively. He was still a man – and not an old man. He still had balls. He still had stuff to say and write and prove.

  Steinbeck wrote in letters to his agent and others that he was tired of being fussed over like a sick baby or an invalid who had to be “protected” and “hospitalized.” He had to go on his great land-voyage of rediscovery – and go by himself, even though at the last minute he would ask his wife if he could take her 10-year-old standard French poodle Charley with him for company. Defending his solo project in a letter to his agent Elizabeth Otis, he said what he was proposing was not "a little trip of reporting, but a frantic last attempt to save my life and the integrity of my creative pulse."

  The thing that came closest to thwarting Steinbeck’s big trip was a random act of violence by Mother Nature. In early September 1960, Hurricane Donna, one of the 20th century’s nastiest storms, hit Florida and wouldn’t let go of the Eastern Seaboard until it got to the eastern tip of Long Island. Donna’s oversized Category 3 eye passed directly over Steinbeck’s summerhouse, wrecking his plans for leaving soon after Labor Day and almost killing him. As he described dramatically in the opening of “Travels With Charley,” he braved Donna’s 95-mph winds to save his boat after it became tangled with other boats anchored in the middle of Morris Cove and broke free of its anchor.