Travels with Brad: Rules for Living in a Jeep with Your Father across America

Rule #1: Do it.

“You should have known that sending me this book was a bad idea,” read my dad’s text.

The book in question was John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley – in which he has his truck, “Ricanante,” fitted out as a camper and sets off with his titular dog to see America.

What my father meant by his text, of course, was that sending him the book was a decidedly good idea, in the sense that it would unleash upon him the inevitable pull to make life imitate art.

You see, by the time you're reading this, the two of us will have set out from Branson, MO on a ten day road trip across the United States in which we will be living, eating, sleeping, and performing nearly every other human function — besides disposing of human waste — from the comfort of  his Jeep. 

That last function, in case you were wondering, will be relegated to the truck stops, little hamlet diners, and Waffle Houses that dot the roadsides of America.

The Jeep, I should add, is a recently-purchased (but previously well-used) rig with multiple bumper stickers that in various ways insinuate that the driver is heavily armed and prepared to commit various acts of violence upon provocation. Like I said, the vehicle is used — and the stickers came with it. 

just silly!

And my dad, though certainly not the type to go intentionally brandishing his 2nd amendment rights via bumper sticker — is also not quite the type to go to great lengths to remove such brandishings. 

I think that somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind, he can see himself as Clint Eastwood in the Spaghetti Westerns, enforcing vigilante justice where necessary, delivering killer lines whether necessary or no. And he probably doesn’t mind you seeing him that way either.  

But I digress. Back to the road trip.

We hope that it will consist, like any good thing, of order and planning at the right places and chaos/adventure in the right places. 

Here’s what I mean: this adventure, in some ways, is a completely spontaneous one. 

When I sent my dad the Steinbeck, I knew, of course, that the trip was inevitable. I knew the book, I knew my dad, and I knew what would happen if I combined the two. Sending the copy in the mail was knocking down a domino. Perhaps inception is not as difficult a task as Christopher Nolan and co. would have us believe.

My dad, if you’re a Steinbeck reader yourself, was apparently the character study for Sam Hamilton in East of Eden — one of those rare older men you will meet who has all the vitality of a young man — who has never quite lost that knowing twinkle in his eye — who has a deep sense of morality and purpose but a sense of joy that seems to run from somewhere even deeper — a sense that life is, at bottom, a gift to be enjoyed.

I sometimes wonder if anyone in our generation — with its whirlwind changes and cynicism and irony and post-irony and TikTok — will still end up like that. I hope so.

My dad was fully gray at age 30 (a genetic sin that is quickly being visited upon the sons as we speak). Perhaps he made some sort of deal with Providence that by giving up the youth of his hair he would obtain the youth of his soul — a foil to Dorian Gray (I’ll leave the puns to you, dear reader). If so, it was a good deal. 

bad genetics

Anyway, like John and Charley, we hoped to make a trip in which we might really see the country we live in. And this would require a form of travel different altogether than the kind we were used to. 

This is far from our first road trip, as you might expect from what you know so far of my old man. Growing up, our family was always hitting the open road — vacations, beaches, national parks, fights over who controls the music, souvenir shops with inappropriate t-shirt slogans I was too young to understand, and the like. 

But we hoped for this road trip to be different.

On most trips growing up, the destination would almost inevitably — though unintentionally — render the journey obsolete. The American highway system is great for getting to places at a breakneck pace, for facilitating eccentric family car games, and for proliferating signs that say things like God is Real and Hell is Real and Gas Next Right (is Real) and Adult XXX Store (is Real) and Support Israel. 

But it is very poor at allowing you to truly get a whiff of the flyover country you are driving over, supposedly on to bigger and better things. 

To quote Chesterton, “the traveler sees what he sees; the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

But this time, we wanted to obey the wisdom of various self-help books and Pinterest quotes and let the journey, not the destination, be the thing. 

So it was decided. No highways. No Apple Maps. And no destinations. 

Utter spontaneity. 

We would end in Salt Lake City, because it boasts — in addition to a lot of friendly Mormons — a lot of cheap flights back to L.A. (for me) and a fairly manageable solo drive home (for my dad).

But between Hillbilly Vegas and Latter Day Saint Mecca, we would be simply wandering the road and seeing the country.

We soon discovered, however, an age-old paradox: spontaneity in one area means order in another. Freedom means rules. 

So to protect the sanctity of our meandering little adventure, we devised a system of rules — our Ten Commandments.

And now the rules are being put into action.

Yesterday, we set out from that fated port, Branson, veritable Ishmaels to the open seas of America.

Today, we visited our family, both living and dead, in our ancestral Kansas home.

Tomorrow, only God knows where we’ll end up. I look forward to finding out. 

When I have told my friends that we’re taking a trip inspired by John Steinbeck, they have joked that they hope it’s not inspired by The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men. I hope so too.

But you never know. After all, shooting twice is just silly.