In 1960, John Steinbeck decided he wanted to tour America. He packed a few essentials and his dog, Charley, into a camper he had named Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse.
Why did he go?
A skeptic might answer that he was a writer, and, by natural inclination, went to write, but that’s not the reason. He went because he could, and because he had to. We all want to go in search of hidden truths. It’s universal! Everywhere John Steinbeck went, he found people with faraway looks in their eyes who all said the same thing. “I wish I could go with you.”
What did he find there?
He found fellow travelers, mobile homeowners and RVers, who were proud of the decisions they had made to skip the confines of fixed foundations and huge mortgages.
In Maine, he found migrant families coming across the Canadian border to harvest potatoes, happy to put extra money aside against the demands of the coming year. Happy families, working together for their mutual benefit. And they didn’t have to climb over a wall to do it. Imagine that!
JS found a potential stunt double for Barnie Fife, an officious protector of private property and “No Trespassing” signs. It looked as though John Steinbeck would have to pack up and move along, but guess what? When he offered the man a whiskey and a bit of his story, a transformation took place. His former tormenter became less like Barnie Fife and more like Aunt Bee. “You stay as long as you like.”
John Steinbeck ran up against more brainless bureaucracy at the Canadian border. After a long stretch of road, he had to turn around and take another route. The custodians of the border crossing said Charley, the dog, might be contagious in some unknown and mysterious way. Unneeded rules at the border must be obeyed, no matter how inconvenient.
When Charley needed medical attention, John Steinbeck found a vet who was just putting in his time and didn’t want to be bothered. Fortunately, a little farther down the road, he found another vet who actually cared.
In Texas, John Steinbeck enjoyed some Texas hospitality while staying a few days with affluent acquaintances. But, then he ran into a wall of bigotry in Louisiana. Armed forces had been called in to protect little black children, the first to integrate their elementary school.
It is a stain on our history. Women called “cheerleaders” were celebrated by a mass of bigots for hurling obscenities at those children. A man named Leander Perez held a meeting attended by 5,000 like-minded bigots.
In short, John Steinbeck uncovered the best and worst of America, and I am here to tell you that all of the good and most of the bad is still with us, 65 years later.
The racists of 2025 get defensive when someone points out the racist implications of their half-baked opinions. They have encased themselves in a gigantic bubble of justifications that do nothing to obscure exactly who and what they are. They get upset if you call them a racist, but they are. They are filled with the same righteous indignation the “cheerleaders” in Louisiana had. In a more perfect world, they’d choke on it.
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