Meet Rafferty.

Rafferty is a dog.

Sadly, Rafferty is not my dog but he is a dog of spirit and character.  In a park near to where I live in Southampton there is a coffee stall that is literally little more than a tuk tuk with a coffee machine. If you are not familiar with tuk tuks then I suggest you Google ‘tuk tuk Thailand’ then select ‘images’ and you will get a sense of the scale of the operation . What makes this coffee stall different is that there are no tables and chairs, customers simply perch on a collection of logs to drink their coffee. To my mind, this is far better than the usual chain of coffee shop, as customers and dog walkers sit and chat informally to each other. If you don’t want to chat that’s ok, it is just a very sociable and easygoing arrangement for those who do.

Rafferty takes his owner there every day and leaves him to talk whilst he sets about assessing approaching customers and the chances that they are carrying dog biscuits. I have no dog biscuits sadly so I am usually of little interest, although I once had a very rich chocolate brownie that I bought at the stall and having taken a couple of bites I re-wrapped it and placed it under my thigh as I took my ease on one of the logs. Unattended chocolate brownies are fair game in Rafferty’s world and so the moment my attention wandered I felt a movement and looked down to see a doggy nose buried deep beneath my leg. Having retrieved his prize, Rafferty then withdrew to a distance and was last seen throwing my chocolate brownie into the air before catching it and swallowing it whole, plastic wrapper and all. The dog’s cheekiness amused me, but the plastic wrapper alarmed me, his owner offered to buy me another but I had eaten enough and thankfully, Rafferty suffered no ill effects as a result.

There is a quality about Rafferty that makes him stand out from other dogs. Undoubtedly intelligent, and swift, he has an air of insouciance, not arrogance just happy to take his chances where he can. He is friendly but not overly so and will allow you to pat his pom pom for a while before moving off. To my mind, Rafferty walks the line somewhere between dog and human, he reminds me of someone who knows he’s good but doesn’t have to tell others how good he is. When I look at Rafferty, I see a 1970’s disco king straight off the dancefloor decked out in carefully crafted flares and jacket – think John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever, and that is where Nick and I come in.

When I first set eyes on Rafferty I was completely taken aback because he was, to my mind, the personification (dogification) of the eponymous Charley in John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels with Charley’ written in 1960, the year I was born. Nick and I have both read the book and to my mind it is a fine account of a roadtrip around the United States at a time when the country was on the cusp of great change. Steinbeck could not have known the changes that were to take place but he certainly sensed that America was on the move both economically as the industrial sector moved towards greater mechanisation and socially as it moved towards civil rights and much more besides. Steinbeck’s motivation for the journey was, in his own words,

‘I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America, was working from memory, and the memory is at best faulty.’ A little further on he adds, ‘ So it was that I determined to look again , to try to rediscover this monster land. Otherwise, in writing, I could not tell the small diagnostic truths which are the foundations of the larger truth.’

And so he set off a few months before winter to go and explore his country. I have plotted his route on Google Maps and share a non-expandable image here which at least gives an impression of the route he took. Beginning at Sag Harbor on Long Island before weaving north, avoiding busy routes where he could, until he passed Grand Falls on the Canadian border. Heading west to Chicago and Seattle, then down the west coast to his hometown of Salinas in California. From there, he travelled east to Montgomery, Alabama and then north through New York and home. This is a screenshot of his route:

I first came across this book courtesy of a bookshop, whose name I have forgotten, somewhere between Baseline and South Mill not far from ASU (Arizona State University) in Tempe. I went in and asked for three American books of note. I walked out of the shop with ‘Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ by Robert M Pirsig, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller and finally John Steinbeck’s – Travels with Charley. I have still not found a corner of my heart for ‘Zen’ but I am open to trying. ‘Catch 22’has become so steeped in language (both sides of the Atlantic) that I thought I knew it before I read it, whereas ‘Travels with Charley’ was a bright revelation that had me cheering. I have since discovered that Steinbeck was quite a difficult character, and even cruel at times, but his writing is spare, unflinching and touched with a great simplicity which is the mark of a true artist. It was twenty years beyond before I got anywhere near touching his America and another forty years before I turned a single page of ‘Travels’. Coincidentally, he was touching 60 when he undertook his epic journey and there is a grain of comfort in that for us all.

In an earlier post, Nick tracked down his vehicle which Steinbeck named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s nag.

Travels With Chuckster

Last summer, Nick and Lori came over to London to check out that the UK was still functioning as a country. It was a hot, sultry day which sapped the strength of us all as we walked to Afternoon Tea close to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. For those unfamiliar with British dining terminology, Afternoon Tea or High Tea is not a cup of Britain’s favourite hot beverage, but the full works with sandwiches, fancy pastries and cakes. It is a veritable meal in itself.

The outcome of all this is that we later were forced to repair to Nick and Lori’s hotel in Canary Wharf (one time called ‘The Isle of Dogs’ – perhaps appropriate given the subject of this post) to recover. Once ensconced in the hotel lobby with suitable refreshment we discussed ideas for our own ‘Journey Through America’ and to cut a long story very short, decided that Steinbeck’s own route might be ours but with side visits to family and friends along the way. The idea of retracing steps laid down long ago with the flavour of 21^st century variables is very appealing. I think that my absolutes are visiting the truck that Steinbeck used and probably visiting the town where he grew up and the Long Island home that was the start of his quest.Nick may well weigh in with other ideas which I look forward to, but for me I have a sense deep down that the United States as a country, as an entity and as an idea is still intact in the sense that I am sure that despite the difficult times that we all face that friendship still remains as does community, good stories and a strength of spirit that survives so that our journey becomes a living entity that takes us where it will and shows us things that we hadn’t imagined.

We once travelled to the Rockies with a tortoise (turtle) called Barstow, Barstow had many adventures and we trust has had many more in the intervening years. But should we travel with a pet? Possibly a dog or a rabbit but not a rattler or a skunk. My personal favourite would be a raccoon which could sit on my head like a hat when going through customs, a beaver could do the same job.

Sadly, Rafferty is not available he has too many chocolate brownies to follow up.