Travels With Charley: In Search of America

by John Steinbeck

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.

There are so many modern designs for easy living. On my boat I had discovered the aluminum, disposable cooking utensils, frying pans and deep dishes. You fry a fish and throw the pan overboard. I was well equipped with these things. I opened a can of corned-beef hash and patted it into a disposable dish and set it on an asbestos pad over a low flame, to heat very slowly.

If I were a good businessman, and cared a tittle for my unborn great grandchildren, which I do not, I would gather all the junk and the wrecked automobiles, comb the city dumps, and pile these gleanings in mountains and spray the whole thing with that stuff the Navy uses to mothball ships. At the end of a hundred years my descendants would be permitted to open this treasure trove and would be the antique kings of the world.

the truth is that I simply like junk.

In the bathroom two water tumblers were sealed in cellophane sacks with the words: “These glasses are sterilized for your protection.” Across the toilet seat a strip of paper bore the message: “This seat has been sterilized with ultraviolet light for your protection.” Everyone was protecting me and it was horrible.

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

But of all, the hot-soup machine is the triumph. Choose among ten—pea, chicken noodle, beef and veg., insert the coin. A rumbling hum comes from the giant and a sign lights up that reads “Heating.” After a minute a red light flashes on and off until you open a little door and remove the paper cup of boiling-hot soup. It is life at a peak of some kind of civilization.

The food is oven-fresh, spotless and tasteless; untouched by human hands. I remembered with an ache certain dishes in France and Italy touched by innumerable human hands.

I said, “You know, I don’t have a fishing license.” “What the hell,” he said, “we probably won’t catch anything anyway.” And he was right, we didn’t.

I have never passed an unshaded window without looking in, have never closed my ears to a conversation that was none of my business.

If this people has so atrophied its taste buds as to find tasteless food not only acceptable but desirable, what of the emotional life of the nation? Do they find their emotional fare so bland that it must be spiced with sex and sadism through the medium of the paperback? And if this is so, why are there no condiments save ketchup and mustard to enhance their foods?

I remember retorting, “Maybe the People are always those who used to live the generation before last.”

No effort had been spared to make the cabins uncomfortable and ugly.

new houses with wide lawns and stucco schools where children are confirmed in their illiteracy.

“Cuñado mio,” I said sadly, “I live in New York now.” “I don’t like New York,” Johnny said. “You’ve never been there.” “I know. That’s why I don’t like it.

Swimming pools where frogs and crayfish used to wait for us. No, my goatly friend. If this were my home, would I get lost in it? If this were my home could I walk the streets and hear no blessing?”

The crowd, no doubt, rushed home to see themselves on television, and what they saw went out all over the world, unchallenged by the other things I know are there.

My own journey started long before I left, and was over before I returned. I know exactly where and when it was over. Near Abingdon, in the dog-leg of Virginia, at four o’clock of a windy afternoon, without warning or good-by or kiss my foot, my journey went away and left me stranded far from home. I tried to call it back, to catch it up—a foolish and hopeless matter, because it was definitely and permanently over and finished. The road became an endless stone ribbon, the hills obstructions, the trees green blurs, the people simply moving figures with heads but no faces. All the food along the way tasted like soup, even the soup.