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| Needing a haircut and sailing on the Chesapeake in 1986 |
As a much younger man – sometime in my twenties – a friend gave me his oft read and worn paperback copy of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. In his only travel book, the great chronicler of the depression, logged 10,000 American miles during 1960 in a pickup truck with a custom-made camper affixed to its bed. Steinbeck proffers that people who like a road trip, like him, are hard wired with wanderlust. He says that one knows that one is in the club if one gets the shivers just thinking about a road trip. I am a card-carrying member. My bride, Jill, on the other hand, would rather eat a pound of ground glass than be stuck in a vehicle day-after-day for thousands of miles. That would truly be torture to her. Jill is in the other club. In fact, most people I know are in the other club. My friends and acquaintances viscerally reacted to my plans by scrunching up their faces, curling their lips in horror, and saying, “Vern, you’re f*****g nuts for doing this?” To that I say: “Yes. I am.”
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| Aunt Jeanne’s beach, Naples, FL 2013 |
A road trip is always there, ready to serve up. Simmering. Even before being exposed to Steinbeck’s book, the prospect of a road trip has always excited me. Hitchhiking from Michigan to Florida and back during my junior year of high school, to Texas in my senior year; both trips slogged, thumbed, and traveled with my lifelong friend, Dan Woodcock. I have always loved to hit the road. After serving in Uncle Sam’s army, while hitchhiking from California to Michigan in my early twenties, I reconciled that this adventure would be my last long road trip on the cheap. When I read Travels with Charley, I told myself that I was going to see America from the road, once more, when I retired, too; but only if I could afford it. And if circumstances allowed for it. Well, circumstances allowing for it is really code for will my partner in life accept my need to do this thing. Here is a ‘hat tip’ and a deep adoring bow to my lovely wife, Jill, for encouraging me to get this trip out of my craw and onto the road. Thank you, Jill Rose. I know you will miss Teddi. Thanks for letting me take her, too.
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| Shelburne, VT September 2017 |
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| Miss Teddi – 2017 |
The decades have come and gone; but somewhere, tucked in the recesses of my mind, this adventure lived. Now I am retired. I have a pocket full of cash. A mission to accomplish. The time to do it is right. This trip is for me – and all about me. In part, it’s a mission to see my childhood friend in his home, all my first cousins in their homes, my sister, my daughters, my nieces, and my Aunt-Mother in Naples, Florida.
It is also about checking three states off my bucket list. Once visited, my personal life objective of seeing every state in the lower ‘forty-eight’ is realized. Two of the states makes sense, Montana and Idaho. They are kind of hard to get to. The third state, Mississippi, I guess I have just simply avoided seeing it. Who goes to Mississippi on purpose? Right? I’m sure that thought was running somewhere through my fourth great grandfather Kessinger’s mind when he and Grant’s army strolled up to the fortifications outside Vicksburg in May of 1865. Who goes to Mississippi? Indeed.
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| Sarah and Ransom Kessinger – 1860’s – Pearl, Il |
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| Lauren and Colyn Hutchings, Pearl, IL 2003 |
Like I said: this trip is about me. I do not plan to visit the places that Steinbeck visited, maybe by mistake I will hit some of them, but purely by chance. It is, however, still somewhat of an homage to Steinbeck, his dog Charley, and to his camper, too, aptly named ‘Rocinante’, after Don Quixote’s horse. Maybe I am tilting at windmills, too. Like Steinbeck, I have lost touch with America. Frankly, the America I love, and have served with a stint in the military and as an elected official, is different from the country I knew as a young man. Like Steinbeck, I will travel with my dog, and again, like Steinbeck, my rig has a name and a story, too. When a Roman gladiator retired from competition he was presented with a wooden sword, a Rudis, that symbolized his retirement and his having earned membership in the Rudiari: the ranks of the retired. If I see you on the road – check out my Vermont license plate.
Like the red jacketed hard cover journal that I studiously kept in1982, when I was twenty-seven, chronicling my first year in the New Hampshire Legislature, often writing entries on the house floor as the action unfolded, this travelogue will offer another window into my mind. An older mind to be sure. Written as it happens on the road or logged in a hotel or a restaurant after a long day on the highway or side trails. Hopefully this blog will be read with some filial interest, by my son and my daughters, not necessarily in real time, but when they look for it. No sense in finding something that you are not looking for – until suddenly you are – looking for it, that is.
