Travels with Charley blog post

I’d been staying with some friends – the Spinellis – in their home in Ohio when a visitor came through. The Spinellis live in a mobile home, and this visitor was traveling in some sort of contraption where he had a very small home perched in the back of his truck. He sat with us out front and we chatted for a long time before I figured out he was John Steinbeck. I was excited to meet a writer I so admired in person, but I didn’t let on – I didn’t want to embarrass him. In any case, we had an interesting conversation.

Mr. Steinbeck was asking the Spinellis about what it’s like to live in a mobile home, and if they feel unrooted because they can move whenever they want to. The Spinellis were saying that they thought it was overrated to be rooted to a place – that it’s better to be free than to be rooted. I can see where they’re coming from. Of course I know the pull of the road; that’s why I’ve been traveling all this time. But at the same time, I feel more comfortable traveling knowing I have a home to return to. I think my roots are what allow me to travel so easily. And I disagree with the idea that Americans have always been unrooted. While pioneers, say, weren’t tied to a specific place, they were rooted to a group of other people. The same goes for hunter-gatherer groups, and other nomads – when people habitually travel, they give up their ties to a specific place, but never their ties to their community. To me, this is the crux of rootedness in the first place. So if the Spinellis have a group of people they feel connected to, I don’t think they are unrooted at all, even if they have the freedom to move around. The problem, in my opinion, and maybe the problem that Mr. Steinbeck was worried about, is when people stop feeling rooted to other people. I think it’s possible to be happy without any ties to geography, but I don’t think it’s possible to be happy without feeling a connection to a community.

That being said, though, I left the Spinellis the next day and continued on my way. I love to connect with old friends and meet new people, but I also love to be on the road. Mr. Steinbeck sure gave me a lot to think about as I drove on.