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

  “It’s economic, but it’s also a mindset,” he said. “If you go 50 miles south through Franconia Notch, you can get $10 more an hour and better benefits.” He knew he could move to where the better jobs were, but he was living exactly where he said he wanted to be. “It’s paradise here. It’s God’s country. I love to be here, but it’s hard to make a living.”

  Gallick was only the second person I spoke to at the farmer’s market. I stopped at his booth when I noticed his panoramic photos of downtown Pittsburgh and the confluence of its three rivers. It turned out that Gallick, like Mike from Sag Harbor, was an ex-Pittsburgher – 31 years removed. He was part of the Great Diaspora of young people who left during the Pittsburgh region’s deindustrialization in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Hundreds of thousands of ex-Pittsburghers like Gallick who went looking for jobs after the mills closed are scattered around the USA. It was eerie how we found each other so easily, since neither of us was wearing a stitch of the city’s holy colors, Steelers black and gold.

  6 – Maine, the Big Empty

  Steinbeck Timeline

  Monday, Sept. 26, 1960 – Deer Isle, Maine

  Steinbeck writes that he left New Hampshire and drove across the neck of Maine and stops at a motel near Bangor. He says he was so put off by the sterile and plastic environment in his room that he went out and slept in the back of his truck. In fact, he drove 250 miles from New Hampshire to Deer Isle, Maine, an island south of Bangor, where he was expected at the seaside home of Eleanor Brace. On the night 70 million Americans watched the first Nixon-JFK debate from Chicago he slept at Brace’s place in the back of Rocinante.

  Bound for Bangor

  Saturday afternoon I cruised east into and out of the White Mountains as New Hampshire’s fall colors blended seamlessly into Maine’s. In age and ruggedness the White Mountains fall somewhere between Pennsylvania's ancient dying Alleghenies and the jagged young ranges out West that are still growing.

  Steinbeck took the same route to Bangor, then dropped south to Deer Isle on the Maine coast. He would have recognized this part of his highway, too. Though a short stretch of U.S. 2 near the Maine border was under major reconstruction, little was new from 50 years ago. I passed the same farms, same houses, same white churches, same frozen-in-time intersections he did – at the same speed but in far greater comfort.

  Not that I am especially sensitive to such things, but nothing I saw screamed "urban sprawl" or "development" or "over commercialization." In fact, a few of the drab Maine towns hanging on U.S. 2 – Rumford in particular – could use some national homogenization from a chain like Bob Evans. When I asked a young Maine state trooper washing his windshield at a gas station in Rumford where I could get something decent to eat for dinner, he thought hard. Being an honest cop, he pointed across the road and, with a mix of civic embarrassment and empathy, said, "There's the Subway."

  Several hours and 170 miles later, after following a spooky dancing glow in the sky that I eventually realized was the Northern Lights, I reached the outskirts of Bangor. I thought I’d try doing what Steinbeck did fairly often on his trip – pull into a campground (what he called a “trailer court”) and sleep there in my car. At about 10 p.m. I turned off the highway and followed the signs down a dark gravel road a mile into the pinewoods.

  The campground was deathly quiet. The orderly rows of tents and RVs were dark and with my headlights off I couldn’t see a soul. Where was the damn office? My RAV4 sounded like a Panzer tank. I was afraid if I turned on my lights I’d be shot. I knew nothing about the kamping kulture, which apparently goes to bed at 8 p.m. I decided then and there it was too late to learn. I managed to turn around and crunch slowly out of the campground to U.S. Highway 2, where I plugged the address of the nearest Wal-Mart into my GPS and aimed for the bright lights of Greater Bangor.

  The Wal-Mart address in Bangor came from what turned out to be the secret weapon of my trip. Months before I knew I’d be chasing Steinbeck’s ghost around America, I impulsively bought a 2010 Rand McNally Road Atlas for $5.97 at a Wal-Mart. Along with the usual state road maps with fonts too small to read if you’re over 55, it contained a detailed directory of every Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club in North America and Mexico – all 4,600 of them.

  I had nothing against Wal-Mart and had defended it enthusiastically in op-ed columns for saving American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars over the years. But we were a Costco family. I never dreamed that someday I’d need to know the address of the Wal-Mart in Bangor or Bismarck, North Dakota. But unlike Steinbeck, who could and did travel like an archduke whenever he wanted, I had to travel cheap. I was sleeping in my car whenever it made sense. And thanks to founder Sam Walton, who long ago made it corporate policy at Wal-Mart to encourage RV-ers and truckers to park overnight in his company’s parking lots, it made sense for me to become a frequent sleeper at Wal-Mart.

  Finally spotting Wal-Mart’s blue sign in a maze of malls at about 11, I joined a dozen RVs in a corner of an otherwise vacated parking lot. I was dead asleep in my berth within 10 minutes. Not that Bangor is known for its warring drug cartels, but I slept easy knowing that Wal-Mart’s crack security detail was on patrol 24/7. The only catch to Sam Walton’s hospitality is that Wal-Mart keeps its properties lit up all night like high school football stadiums. I woke at 3 a.m. and took a photo of my RAV4 bathed in what looked like sunlight. My joke – that you could have performed a heart transplant on my hood – was no joke. Only my blackout curtains saved me from the glare.

  When I crawled barefooted out of my car shortly after dawn, Wal-Mart’s lot was actually darker than it had been at 3 a.m. Overnight crisp sunny Indian summer had changed to cool gray fall. It was barely 50 degrees and the start of a damp and chilly Sunday in Maine. I changed out of my shorts into what would become my traveling uniform for the next 40 days and 20-plus states – blue jeans, golf shirt, old red crewneck sweater, baseball cap, Keen sandals and no socks. I had no interest in interviewing my Wal-Mart sleep-mates or exploring Bangor, even if it once was the lumber exporting capital of the world.

  I wanted only to do what Steinbeck did in 1960 – cut through the city quickly on my way to the seacoast paradise of Deer Isle, where he spent two days at a gorgeous old house I hoped to find. Driving into the suburbs on state Route 15, the 55-mile trip to Deer Isle became a highlight reel of Maine’s L.L. Bean culture. Boats and RVs of every size, truck caps, kayaks, logs, shingles and gigantic piles of firewood lined the roadside or adorned front lawns. Gas was $2.62 a gallon. The billboard "Guns, Ammo and Camo" pretty much said it all. The closer I got to Deer Isle, the farther back in time I went and the more upscale and artsy-crafty things got.

  By the time I reached Caterpillar Hill and its panoramic view of Deer Isle and the rainbow-arched bridge that connects it to the mainland, I had passed dozens of pottery studios, antique shops, art galleries and ceramics shops. Plus Sow’s Ear Winery and Sunrise Cottages. Not one sports bar or McDonald's. No doubt they were illegal. Neon apparently was outlawed too. But there were lots of U.S. flags flying from utility poles, plus roadside gardens of political campaign signs and 25-foot ships parked in nearly every third front yard. Roller-coasting Route 15 eventually delivered me to the ocean and the impossibly picturesque "Down East" fishing village of Stonington.

  Seeing the harbor, the boats, the weathered piers and docks – not to mention the charming/funky mix of beautiful homes and old buildings holding on to the hillside or hanging over the water's edge – I understood why Steinbeck thought it was unlike any American town he'd ever seen.

  Steinbeck Timeline

  Tuesday, Sept. 27, 1960 – Deer Isle, Maine

  Steinbeck says in a letter to his wife from Deer Isle that on Tuesday he “saw the island and talked to people.” He visits the fishing port of Stonington, where he buys a kerosene lamp at a nautical hardware store on Main Street. He eats a lobster dinner at Eleanor Brace’s house with Brace and her woman friend. He goes to bed early, sleeping another night in his camper Roc
inante.

  Where Cell Phones Can’t Roam

  Reachable from the mainland only by boat or the beautiful suspension bridge on Route 15, Deer Isle is about as far “Down East” Maine as you can get without sleeping with the lobsters in cold Penobscot Bay. Hikers, kayakers, birders, sailors, naturalists and artists swarm to the rural, spruce-covered island each summer, swamping its permanent population of 2,500. Steinbeck reluctantly diverted to Deer Isle at the insistence of his long-time agent and friend, Elizabeth Otis. For 30 years she had been renting a small rustic cottage by the ocean owned by Eleanor Brace and Otis kiddingly told Steinbeck he’d better stop to see her favorite paradise or find another agent.

  Steinbeck wasn't sorry he took that side trip to Deer Isle. He flipped out over Stonington’s architecture and timeless, "enchanting" feel, saying it reminded him of an English fishing village on the coast of Dorset. It still would. Its shingled houses with their oversized windows stare out at a harbor that buzzes with real work from May to September, when lobstermen go to sea before 5 a.m. to pull their traps and bring in their catches to the co-op’s docks in the afternoon.

  Stonington is the top lobster port by value of catch in Maine, I was told several times, and the creatures are so plentiful kids trap them in the harbor behind the shops on Main Street. The fishing port Steinbeck liked so much still has its character, but it had changed in important ways. In 1960 Stonington’s granite quarries, which gave the town its name and would provide the stone for John F. Kennedy’s memorial, were the major employer. In 2010 the granite industry was long gone. Today most young people have to leave to get good-paying jobs. The 1,200 citizens make their livings from the sea year-round and from the tourist invasion in the summer.

  On Main Street, which is often too narrow for sidewalks, the businesses sprinkled among the houses include the Stonington Ice Cream Company, Island Fishing Gear & Auto Parts and Seasons of Stonington restaurant. There’s also Boyces Motel, a friendly family-run place that cost me $60 for a small room with no view of the harbor.

  Chester Carter Jr. was the oldest of several Stonington natives I met. In a Maine accent with a hint of Georgia he told me he lived in Stonington in the summer and Savannah in the winter. Carter was 78. In 1949, seeing little he wanted to do in Stonington, he left town. He made his fortune down South as an insurance salesman, but he always came back home for summer vacations. Now he owned two houses in Stonington, one to live in and one to rent. Carter said Stonington was still filled with good, hard-working people. And many of the summer people have been returning for so long they were like natives. But he remembered when Stonington had its own car dealership, its own high school. And Main Street had a grocery store, a fish market and a bowling alley. “Now it’s galleries and photos for sale,” he said with stereotypically dry Maine matter-of-factness.

  Though the hotels and motels were full, on Sunday evening Stonington’s drizzly waterfront was library quiet and post-card quaint. A “reduced” real estate sign on Main Street swung in the chilly wind. The Bangor Daily News in the newspaper box was four days old. A little old lady in a floppy fisherman’s hat walked her dog below the historic Opera House, which now serves as a movie theater and performing arts center. A tourist couple in matching sweaters walked hand-in-hand past several antique shops and pricy seafood restaurants that once were homes.

  I ate by the harbor’s edge at the spacious Fisherman’s Friend. Dozens of local families and tourists feasted on fresh lobster, halibut and $11 Stonington crabmeat rolls, which are nothing more than hunks of crab and a large gob of mayonnaise on a top-sliced hot dog bun.

  Nearby, in the little parking lot on Main Street that passes for Stonington's town square, two public pay phones stood side-by-side like relics from 1960. They had not been preserved by the local historical society. They were necessities. Cell phone signals still couldn’t make it to the southern coast of Deer Isle, so landlines and public phones were as important to Stoningtonians in 2010 as they were in Steinbeck’s day – especially to lobstermen coming off their boats.

  Stonington was a rare place, an accidental theme park. But it was real, not artificial, and it wasn’t prettified much for the sake of tourists. Its natural and man-made beauty was in constant collision with the tools and colorful junk of its lobstermen. Stacks of lobster traps and coils of rope sat in side yards. A fishing boat listed on a front lawn. A 1950s car rusted picturesquely in the weeds by the wharf. As long as hundreds of independent lobstermen lived and worked on Deer Isle, Stonington would never change or become too quaint to visit.

  Treasure House

  My main job on Deer Isle wasn’t to sightsee. It was to find the old Eleanor Brace house. I asked around Stonington, figuring everyone over 50 would know the famous story about the local woman who hosted the great author John Steinbeck for two nights. No dice. Eventually I learned Brace’s place was on the west coast of Deer Isle, near Sunset, five miles away.

  On the way over something lucky happened. It was a lightly populated area, with the seaside estates and summer homes hidden in the pines at the end of dirt fire roads. The first human to show himself was a man unloading a John Deere lawn tractor from a trailer in the driveway of a big white house. I pulled over and asked him the Eleanor Brace question. In a barely decipherable Maine accent that’s no longer supposed to exist six decades into the Age of Television, Duke Shepard said he knew where the Brace house was and enthusiastically let loose a river of directions. They were precise down to the circular dirt driveway, the little garage on the right and the name of the current occupant, Brace’s niece Brenda Gilchrist.

  Small island. It turned out Shepard had taken care of the Brace place for about 10 years starting in 1968. He knew “Miss Brace” pretty well. She was an old maid, loved to sail and was alive well into the 1970s. Shepard, 59, was a Deer Isle native who lived in Stonington and had made his living as a professional caretaker for 45 years. His accent was so strong, I recorded part of his detailed directions – which he repeated at least three times – on my smart phone. When I told him I was retracing John Steinbeck’s trail, Shepard said something like, “Ahhh nev-ah ha-red of Steinbeck. I don’t re-ad many books.” I read him what Steinbeck said about the Brace place from my desecrated copy of “Travels With Charley.” He was thrilled. “Ahhh bet Miss Gilchrist would like to know her a-unt was in a book.”

  Miss Gilchrist, of course, knew all about her Aunt Eleanor being in Steinbeck’s book. The retired art book editor from New York wasn’t home when I politely crept through the pines to her house. But I was met by a young man and a woman being pulled up the driveway by two German Shepherds. I expected them to tell me to get the hell off their property. But they must have taken me for a prospective renter or a friend of Miss Gilchrist, not a trespassing ex-journalist. I’ll never know who they thought I was, though, because they were French Canadians who spoke about 10 words of English and French is my 36th language.

  Veronique and Dominick told me the owner was not home and they were renting the blue and yellow cottage in the pine trees that Steinbeck’s agent Elizabeth Otis used to rent 50 years ago. Our mutual language and culture barrier worked to my snooping benefit. Next thing I knew Veronique and Dominick were showing me the inside of their tiny storybook love nest and simultaneously apologizing as they tidied up their bedroom and small kitchen.

  They had rented the seaside cottage over the Internet for $750 a week and were clearly pleased. By the time I took 20 photos and learned they had been living in French Polynesia and were moving back home to Quebec, a barking little dog showed up. “She is home,” Veronique said. “She,” as in owner Brenda Gilchrist.

  I went across the lawn to the motherhouse and knocked and re-knocked on the front door. Brandishing my notebook as protection, I imagined Gilchrist was taking so long because she was looking for extra shells for her L.L. Bean shotgun. When the door finally opened I beheld a graceful gray-haired woman in blue jeans and a loose shirt exactly the color of my red sweater. Though I told
her I was an ex-journalist, she invited me in. A sweet, smart, trusting woman in her late 70s, she fixed me coffee and gave me a tour of her green and gray shingled house, which was as spectacular inside as it was out.

  Architect Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, a nephew of the famous poet and a nephew of Gilchrist's great uncle, designed the house in the early 1900s. Her maiden Aunt Eleanor willed it to her in 1977. It was a true prize, filled with old furniture and drawings and art. Sited close to the rocky shore, with a dozen big windows square to the sunset, it was as great a place to live as I’d ever seen. Gilchrist and I talked for an hour. She was truly disappointed to hear of Steinbeck’s fictions and fibs in “Travels With Charley,” but she took the news like an ex-book editor. She confirmed that he definitely slept in his camper during both nights of his stay at her aunt’s house. She also explained a little “Travels With Charley” mystery.

  Steinbeck wrote in the book that Eleanor Brace bought three 1½-pound lobsters in Stonington to cook for their dinner. But in the book there were just two people. The third lobster wasn’t for Charley. Gilchrist said it was for a second woman, her aunt’s friend Madeleine.” Steinbeck never mentioned it in the book, but her shy and very proper Aunt Eleanor – who was told that Steinbeck was coming at the last moment – was so terrified at the prospect of entertaining Steinbeck alone that she had hastily invited her friend to stay-over for a couple days.