Travels with Charlie

I’m reading an excellent book by John Steinbeck, "Travels with Charlie" that my friend Jeremiah got for me at the famous Powell’s in Portland. It’s a story of the writer deciding at 58 to travel solo around the country in a truck with a camping topper to really see the country in his stories. I’m less than a third of the way through, yet I’ve observed many of the same phenomenon he witnessed 45 years ago, including the shrinking of small towns and the growth of big cities.

I even met one of the character types that he met in a diner. The waitress he desrcibes as one "who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a greyness in the air about them" (47).

Yesterday just before the sun set under a low cloudy ceiling I crossed the empty border from Canada into Idaho. As I pulled up to the window a man came to the only open booth waving for me to stop. It turns out I’d coasted through the first of two stop signs one car length apart. After not seeing any cars in either direction for a few minutes, I guess I figured I’d just roll up to the window and get the crossing over with. For some reason I always get nervous at borders because the border officers have so much power at their disposal, they can hold and search you, make your crossing very difficult. And there’s not much you can say. After appologizing several times to an unaccepting shaking head, I pulled out my passport and handed it to the Irish grinch. He thumbed through it more carefully than I’ve ever experienced. He skipped the Russian and French visas, and asked about my many stamps from England and the Chunnel. Then he picked up the Irish ones and asked before I could answer his previous question, what I’d done there. I said instictively I’d gone to Ballynahinch to visit my grandparents. To which he quickly responded "County Gallway, ok." He said the Sweenies are part owners, which totally surprised me. Not only did he know of this small lake area but he also knew the names of some of the owners. I asked if he was Irish and received a curt "yeah". I thought this commonality between us would crack the frigid facade. The tone of his last utterance should have contradicted my assumption, but it didn’t, I tried to ask another question as he rapidly closed the window and waved me on. He went back and sat at the computer that he was blankly starring into as I pulled up. Mind you, no cars had come or gone in either direction during this exchange, so there was no rush.