Salinas, Calif. – Thom Steinbeck was only 18 when his father John set out to see the country. In what came to be called Travels with Charley In Search of America, the Nobel Prize winner admitted that he wasn’t sure he knew his own country anymore. So he set out to rediscover it, with nothing but his French poodle Charley, a rig named Rocinante, and an extensive supply of hard liquor in the trailer.

Like any teenager, Thom wanted to see the country, too. And like any father of a kid about to graduate, John wouldn’t let him go. This trip was work.

According to Travels with Charley, on his way out of town John Steinbeck stopped by his younger son John’s school. The pupils ran out to the parking lot to try out his rig, begging him to let them go along, and he later had to stop to make sure he was not inadvertently taking along any “stowaways.” “My own son will probably not forgive me,” he wrote.

When we sat down with older son Thom at the 26th annual Steinbeck festival in Salinas, Calif., in early August, we were surprised to learn the real reason, according to Thom, his father made the trek. “Steinbeck knew he was dying,” Thom told us. “He went out to say goodbye.”

Thom was born on Aug. 2, 1944, so three days before our interview he had turned 62, about the age his father was when he published Travels with Charley and won the Nobel Prize.

It is widely reported that Thom, like his father, is shy. But with us he was relaxed and gregarious; when he talked about his father he leaned forward in his chair and his eyes lit up. This did not appear to be a man living under the weight of his father’s fame. This was a man who delighted in his father’s memory.

He really was an incredible man. He dressed just like any other person on the street, usually looking like a seaman. But we were never “in his shadow” because he carried his children on his shoulders out in the light of the world. If I had to rate my father on a scale from zero to ten, I’d give him an eight-and-a-half or nine. I keep that extra point away because I’m a snotty little bastard.

This may be true. On Oprah a few years back Thom acknowledged that, as a kid, he had to do a book report on East of Eden, and earned a D. This in spite of the fact that his father had dedicated the book to him and his late brother John. But over the years, Thom told us, he has read Travels with Charley again and again, and has himself made the trip across the country too many times to keep count.

Incidentally, sitting in on this interview were Sara Lee Guthrie, granddaughter of Woodie Guthrie and daughter of Arlo Guthrie, and her husband Johnny Irion, who is playing guitar in the background.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 | Email This Post

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