Traveling with Steinbeck

Taking a break from reading. I'm re-re-reading Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck. Its one of those books that never quite got the notice his other books like Grapes of Wrath, or Of Mice and Men recieved and that's too bad. Almost sad, really.

Those other books are good, great even, but there is something about them doesn't really resonate with me. That is particularly true with Grapes of Wrath. Maybe the themes are too big, or maybe my brain is too small. Either way, I feel awash in the prose and somewhat buffetted by them. Not so with Travels with Charley.

Travels with Charley is, as far as I am concerned miscast. One usually finds it in the amongst the fiction of Steinbeck. It is not fiction, but a travelogue. In the early 60's Steinbeck decided to become reaquainted with America. He figured, and rightly so, that since he wrote about America and the American experience he should get to know America. So he had a small camper built on a pickup truck, got his standard sized Poodle, Charley and set off to rediscover his country. Or as he put it:

One of my purposes was to listen, to hear speech, accent, speech rhythms, overtones and emphasis. For speech is so much more than words and sentences. I did listen everywhere. It seemed to me that regional speech is in the process of disappearing, not gone but going. Forty years of radio and twenty years of television must have this impact. Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable process. ...with local accent will disappear local tempo. The idioms, the figures of speech that make language rich and full of poetry of place and time must go. And in their place will be a national speech, wrapped and packaged, standard and tasteless.

Reading Travels with Charley is like looking at a backwards mirror. I do find it to be a modern day prophecy. When I read Travels with Charley I have to do it in small doses, a page or two, sometimes just a paragraph. Reading the book almost fifty years removed from the actual writing has the feelin of literary archeology.

I have a strange affinity for Steinbeck. I'm not sure why, maybe it has something to do with the fact that he and I share a birthday, granted his was 72 years before mind and he was dead a full seven years before I made my squalling appearance, but for some reason Steinbeck's words resonate and rattle my brain cage when I read them. Full discloure: I tried, but have never gotten through East of Eden, if there is a heavier handed book I have yet to meet it.

There are passages in Travels with Charley that stick with me, particularly those rare occasions when I am traveling. I usually get whacked in the head from Steinbeck when I am in a motel. I make it a point to leave nothing behind because of something he writes about when he stops in Chicago.

There is an audio recording of the book, but it is only on audio tape; trust me, I have looked for it on cd. The book is read by Gary Sinese. Sinese's gravelly voice really captures the prose and the rythym of the book.

So, I shall go back to 1960 and drive with John and his dog Charley and rediscover America. I wonder what I'll learn this time.

Bookshelves, Once Again

I am essentially done cleaning my father's office. I took the last batch of books, 13 boxes, to HalfPriceBooks this afternoon. That was the second of two loads, actually. The first was taken earlier in the morning. All told, today's "haul," if I can call it that amounted to fifty bucks. We were able to get roughly 200 dollars for everything. That's about a hundred dollars more than we were offered by a "bookdealer" who came to look at my dad's library about two weeks ago.

As I've written earlier, my dad had very definite interests, mainly World War II, presidential history, and Civil War. There were other topics, but those were the main three. A few years back he decided to take off all the dustcovers of his books. He did this to "make more room" on his shelves. It wouldn't of been so bad if he hadn't thrown away said covers, but he did. So, as a result the value of the books (monetarily to a collector, let's say) was cut by more than half. I have learned that the book collector doesn't necesarily care about what's inside the book, so long as the bookcover is pretty.

I should have kept count of how many box loads I took out. I probably took about twenty boxes today all told; I kept using the same boxes over and over again. So, now I have his empty bookcases. There are actually five. Three of them match, the other two don't match. The other two are from Walmart, or someplace like that and we're going to get rid of them. One of the bottom shelves is broken, but the other bookcase looks to be in pretty good shape. The other three, are big 'cases. They were made by a parishoner of my dad's in South Dakota. They're probaly close to 45 years old, if not a bit older than that and they are still in pretty good shape. They're banged up a bit, that shouldn't be surprising since they moved around the country five or six times. They have little black lines on them, those lines are actually kind of endearing. My father took a Sharpie marker to them one time. He marked off where the shelves went on each case so he could set his books up liek they were before we moved. I used to get on him about that, telling him to clean them off, but he wouldn't and, in retrospect, I'm kind of glad he didn't. It is those kind of things that bring a smile to me when I think about him.

Today, after I was all done with the books I sat down on the rug in his old office and just looked at the empty shelves. I smiled a little bit and I think I might of choked up a bit, too. It is strange the attachment we put on inanimate objects. Those bookcases: 7' tall, 39" wide, blonde wood. They are on hand, just bookcases. Well built bookcases, but bookcases. However, they are more than that, at least to me and my mom. Soon, I will start moving some of my books onto my dad's shelves. I guess they are technically "mine," now, but I will alway refer to them as "my dad's shelves." I know that I've used the picture that sits atop this entry before, but for some reason, I really love that picture. It doesn't show all of his books, but it shows the vast majority of them.

It has been a cathartic excercise, this. Sifting through a life through books, I know I've written that before, please forgive my repetion. But it has been a good experience. Going through his books, touching them, it has been act of "letting go." I didn't cry or really mourn my father's death. I think part of the reason is my Faith in the Word of God, but also the fact that I had a month with him after he got sick. We were able to say our goodbyes, it wasn't a surprise. In fact, on some level there might have been relief, as horrible as that might sound. I knew that if he had survived he would have hated life. So, I was able to talk to him as I went through his books. I found myself "asking" him why'd you get this book dad? Did you ever even read this one? I flipped through each book to look for things he might have squirreled away. I found piced of paper that held his place where he left off reading, I found pamphlets from places he went to that had something to do with the topic of the book (I didn't find any money or anything like, though).

On a weird level, it was fun. I enjoyed going through the things. It was also satisfying on another level being able to discover him. Yes, he is missed, but I'll always have him through his bookcases. And for that, I am well pleased and grateful.

On Books and Bookcases

I slept like a rock last night. I don't think I moved an inche. That's a good thing because I moved a mountain of books yesterday, this included a bookcase. I got serious yesterday about my dad's books. I went through everything. I seperated books by topic, sort of. In the process they got mixed up, but that's okay. I seperated theology books (this includes a full box of Luther's Works, not the whole set, but probably about ten or so). There are six boxes of theology books sitting by the window. They may be taking a trip to the Fort sometime this summer. Give em to the cash strapped seminarian, right? Hopefully, it won't make me cash strapped to take them up there... gas at four dollars a gallon?

I have, I don't know, seven boxes of things to go to Half-price books. They won't give me anything for them, but they'll be out of the house. Those boxes contain mainly softcovers and things like that. And then there are four bookcases full of books that hopefully, we'll be able to sell to someone who we contacted. He seems interested in them, hopefully he'll be able to come on Thursday to look at them.

Don't worry, I kept some books. Not many, I have too many of my own, but I did keep a few; mainly, art books, some books about NYC, and a few of his presidential biographies that looked interesting. I keep telling myself that I can't keep everything. I can't, and I really don't want to.

Because of what my father did for a living, minister, he had a lot of books for study, but he also had rather varied interests. He was a history buff and loved to read biographies. He was a New Yorker by birth, a Brooklynite, and when he was a kid he would go to Broadway from time to time to see a play. When he went to seminary in Springfield and then took his first call to South Dakota he couldn't just pop over to Broadway on a whim, so he had broadway come to him. He got involved with a bookclub that would send him a play script a month, hardbound. Really nice, actually. He was a member of this club for over thirty years, so he had a lot of playscripts. He also had playrecords. Full plays recorded. He loved nothing more than going into his office, shutting the door and putting on a playrecord and listening to it.

Its not that much fun. Its a lot of work, but I have found some comfort in the process. There are few books that I kept mainly for sentimental reasons. Those books I know meant alot to him, or there is a story behind them.

The picture at the top of this post is my dad's library. I took it one evening when I was fooling around with my digital camera. I took it a few months before he died. If you look carefull you'll see three fairly large, "blonde" bookcases, and a smaller darker colored one. The three big bookcases are over 40 years old. They were made by a parishoner at my dad's first church in South Dakota. They are about seven feet tall and four feet wide and are strong as ever. Supposedly the original plan was to make them one big unit, but the guy who made them decided it would be easier to three individual instead one big one. This actually turned out to be a good thing. They have been moved around the country six times and have been used as a faux wall at least once between rooms. Those, I'm keeping.

The process continues. Slowly, but it continues. Its alot of work.

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Steps Back Into the Career Stream for Another Go at It

I don't know what to call what I had today. Was it an interview? Maybe. Let's call it an interview just for fun and semantics. A friend of mine has gotten a job as a librarian in one of the universities in Atlanta. He works at the reference desk at IUPUI's main library. I stopped by last week to wish him well and godspeed. While I chatted with him I gave him my resume and asked him to pass it along to the person in charge. He did and also added a recommendation to it. I got an email the other day saying that the librarians wanted to meet with me and talk about the job. So, today I went and had a little sit down with them.

It has some bad and some good aspects to it. I think the good outweigh the bad. The good is the pay. Its an hourly position, but the pay is quite a bit more than I'm makeing now at my current position for my current company. Also, I would be considered a part-time librarian, not a "reference assistant," or a "graduate assistant," or something like that; so, for resume purposes, it would look better on the resume. I would not only be manning a reference desk for some of the time, but also doing other library functions and behind the scenes work. This is experience I badly need.

Another "good," if you will is it would be a tremendous foot in the door for me. I'd like to work in the academic realm and getting this position would be a definite step in that direction. Also, since gas has decided to go up to the stratosphere in price being 12 miles from home is nice, too.

There are two bad aspects that aren't bad, bad, but might cause some concern eventually. There are no benefits, that is health, etc. And it might not be there after a year. Its a "soft money" position. That means that it is funded, but it might not be funded the next year. I would have to go down to part-time at my current position at the bookstore, approximately 20 or 25 hours. I can't go much lower than that because I wouldn't be able to keep my health benefits.

Hopefully, I'll find out sometime in the next week or so wheather I get the position. I feel pretty confident I will. They seemed to be impressed with my limited resume, which is always a good feeling.

Well, I guess we'll see what happens.

The Final Piece

The above picture is a polaroid of my father's headstone. It was placed last week or so. My mom and I haven't been to Accident, MD yet, to actually see the stone, but we will sometime in the near future.

My dad would of like the stone. It fits the cememtary and isn't ostentatious at all. It blends in nicely. The most important part of the whole thing is that he is amongst his congregation. Many of the folks he ministered to when he served St. John's are around him.

Dad's Daily Journal

My dad used to keep a daily journal. Matter of fact, he kept it for 58 years. And when I say daily I mean it, literally. There are twelve letter boxes and two magazine boxes full of his journals. He started writing them when he was about 12 or so. He always told me that he had been inspired to keep a journal by Archie, the comic, I don't remember if he said he had seen it in a Sunday comic or if he had heard about it in a weekly Archie radio broadcast. Either way, he started a journal.

The first journals are written in little pocket notebooks. They aren't much more than a few lines about this and that. As he got older he graduated to regular sized notebooks. His college years are chronicled in Brooklyn College notebooks. Eventually, he graduated still further into five subject, spiral bound, college ruled notebooks. He wrote on the front and back of each page.

His journal changed over time. When he was in high school and college, he would clip out newspaper articles about news and current affairs and paste them into his journals. By the time college rolled around he wasn't doing that so much, though from time to time, there are pictures pasted in.

He also took pictures, lots of pictures. He always had a camera around his neck. After he graduated from college and seminary, he went back and typed up his journals, put pictures with the words and made some really nice scrapbooks. Those scrapbooks go from his first semester of college in in 1954 to just about the time he moved the Lyndhurst, New Jersey in the late '60's. There are thirteen of them. One summer, when I was in high school, I read these journal/scrapbooks. It was truly a fascinating thing to do. I learned a lot about my father, but also about his family and friends. It was quite a lot of fun.

At the end of every year, he would write up a "year end epilogue." A few years back, I asked him if he'd type up his year end epilogues for me so that I could read them. His handwriting was never very good, neither is mine, I like to think that handwriting is hereditary, which, to some degree, I'm sure it is. He started to type up the epilogues. Somewhere along the line, he and my mom decided to make it into a bigger project. They would take pictures from our photo albums and "illustrate" the year end epilogues. He would type up the epilogues and then start going through photo albums to put the pictures to the words, a la his college photo albums, except these were put into clear plastic sheets and the into three ring binders. There are, I think, about seven or eight of them so far and they only got up to the 90's I think before my dad got sick.

So the project continues. I have been typing his last year-end epilogue, 2007. Its been slow going because I've had to stop often and decypher his handwriting, but it has been an enjoyable experience. For a while, I've thought about posting his year end reviews here on blogger, but I'm not sure if that is a good idea. Many of the people who appear in his journals are still alive and some our still in ministery. That's the main thing. He had some rough times during his ministry that he wrote about. As a matter of fact, he went to a counselor to make sure he was really suited to be a minister because it got so bad. According to my mom, after taking a battery of tests he was informed that he was very suited to the ministry and should stay in it. He told the counselor about his journal and the counselor told my dad that the journal was the thing that probably kept him sane and on an even keel. He was able to write it out and get all his hurt and anger out of his system by putting it on the page.

As he typed up his epilogues he dredged up some of the unpleasant experiences he had in his ministry and it actually affected his mood and his sleep patterns. Both my mom and I couldn't wait until he got through those times. After he got through those years, from about 1979-1986, or so, his mood lightened and he became a much happier person.

The journals are the greatest gift my father left for me. That and the tape recordings he made of dinners and phone conversations over the years. He may be gone from here, but he certainly is here with my mother and I.

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Dips His Big Toe Into the Pool of "Normalcy

It felt good to type that title. It really did. I know that the "In Which Your Faithful Narrator..." titles annoy some, but for some reason I really like using them, I'm not exactly sure why, but I do.

Things have come back to normal, for the most part. My father is safely tucked into a rehabilitation center. He is happy and anxious to get going. I think he is relieved that he came through as well as he did and any damage has been "minimal." The power of prayer is evident in his recovery, I firmly believe that. He had his first good shower since Friday and he looked even better after that. His hair was combed and he had on good clean clothes. He was, for lack of a better term, a happy guy.

This incident has made me pause and think about my own life. I don't mean in regards to dying or anything like that, but how I want to live it. Where I want to live, etc. Since I am an only child, the responsibility falls on me. I'm not angry or upset about that, its just a fact that I have come to accept. As a result of this I have to weigh geography and distance in any decision I might make about applying for and taking a library job. I don't/can't go too far away. I don't know when something like this might happen again.

After the excitement of this past week, I look forward to a continued return to normalcy. That, and a nice cold beer.