The Reader Travels

It’s possible that no road trip book tour would be complete without a discussion of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: in Search of America. He talked about the uniqueness of every journey, each like a snowflake with different patterns and idiosyncrasies. Thus, he said, every different person who traveled the same road he did would have a different impression of what America really is.

Surely there are commonalities, but even the roads and the landscape are colored by weather and traffic conditions and the unique state of mind of the driver. As humans we can connect on some level with common experiences and objects, but our unique perceptions create millions of images or versions that we can’t always reconcile. So many possibilities, so many Americas.

One thing I found interesting in Travels with Charley was Steinbeck’s comments about not wanting to draw us a map about exactly where he was in the trip. He said that some people like to have the geography lined out for them so they can better imagine where he was. I admit, I’m one of those people, but I completely understood what he was getting at. The exact geography was not relevant, just something superficial getting in the way of our connecting on the actual experiences.

And just because you might know exactly what road he was on and what restaurant, doesn’t mean you could ever experience his trip. It doesn’t mean you could ever run off sadly trying to recreate his journey for yourself to touch ever so superficially upon his celebrity.

So if you traveled the same roads and ate at the same restaurants and ordered the same things off the menu and stayed at the same hotels and decked out a truck with a camper, a shotgun, a fully stocked bar and a big black French poodle, you’d be totally missing the point. Read the memoir. Meet the man. It’s the only way to connect in any human way with his travels.

In Skinny Legs and All, Boomer decked out an old Airstream trailer to look like a big basted turkey and took his new bride for a ride. But their road trip wasn’t the most interesting one in the book. The most interesting road trip was the one taken by the objects they left behind, whose drive and focus was to get themselves first to New York City and then to the holy land.

Led by a sacred conch shell and a magical painted stick, the can of beans, spoon and sock make very slow, microscopic movements, while Boomer and Ellen Cherry speed through their lives both together and apart. In this culture of instant gratification, I am inspired by these characters who take this long, hard road and persevere.

I think about my own job and how I am mostly satisfied that things are getting better every day, even though it’s all too often slower than anyone would like. If I had more time, if I had more resources, if I had fewer demands, then things could go much, much faster. But these are the limitations I live with and must accept, and knowing that the pursuit of my goal is unswerving, I am happy with the seemingly microscopic movements, and I can see the progress and feel its silvery glow.

My heart may not bleed, but I see Che as depicted in The Motorcycle Diaries as my kind of leader. He’s one who serves those he leads. I like to think of myself as a servant leader, a term I learned from a friend who was big into her church.  She told me what she was learning in her class at the church, and I said, “That’s what I am,” and she promptly agreed.

Sometimes it goes beyond servant leadership into outright mothering.  I tend to get all maternal on people with all the protecting and nurturing and whatnot. You’ve got to watch out for stuff like that because some people might take it as condescending, especially if you’re doing it to your boss or your boss’s boss. You can see it now:

Me:  “Aww, you poor thing, are you having a hard time? What can I do to help you, darlin’?”
Boss: “You can do your job and get outa my bidness. That’s what you can do. I’m The Man, and I’m better than you. Grrr.”

That kind of “empathy” can actually get a person in trouble. I’ve lost friends over it. Of course, another thing that gets me in trouble is the fact that if I’m maternal, I’m inadvertently exhibiting mothering techniques learned from my own mother, which means, I’m hyper-critical.

I had this kid come to work in my department once, fresh out of the nearby Catholic university. Having escaped from his own domineering mother in Nebraska after high school, he wasn’t quite ready to meet up with her counterpart at his first big job. He was a talented kid, but he needed to learn attention to detail. He just wasn’t ready to learn it from me.

This whole maternal protector thing has been my biggest CLT. I once did a “Whatever!”-talk-to-the-hand to the company’s CEO in the middle of an all staff meeting in lioness protector mode. I’ve taken on superiors and adversaries who abused their power and their people. Thankfully, I’ve learned a little diplomacy since then.

All I can do now is serve and lead and help others to recognize how powerful a combination that can be.

Whether you’re on the left or the right or somewhere in the middle, set your politics aside. The Motorcycle Diaries is a great movie. And I don’t care if he is two feet tall, Gael Garcia Bernal is hot.

Young doctor Ernesto Guevara takes a motorcycle trip with his best friend across South America. He is not a tourist, but a traveler, meeting the people and learning the land as he goes. Like Kerouac in his North American travels, Guevara runs across poor farm workers trying to keep their families alive. The difference is that Jack is a writer and observer, a pretentious, partying prat; while Ernesto is a doctor, a healer, who cares for patients and people.

I admit it, my heart doesn’t really bleed. I hate commercials that try to guilt me into sending my pocket change to starving kids in third world countries. I run in the opposite direction if anyone tries to motivate me with guilt. I am not appalled at war or poverty or corporate greed. But it takes all kinds of people to keep some semblance of balance in the world. Not that we really have any.

I don’t know about who Che really was, or who he became after the idealistic young doctor toured the countryside on his motorcycle. I just know I like the character they portrayed on the screen. I’d have totally done him.