Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

A former colleague of my husband’s is recently retired and is transferring his work writing skills to his personal writing. He recently created a Substack account called Into the Blue, and after just one post, I immediately subscribed.

In this post, Jeff describes a “van” road trip to Portland, Maine, he and his wife took this past fall. They brought along their dog Rapha and had a particularly special encounter with a gentleman at a communal table at Foundation Brewing in Portland. Jeff’s retelling of this encounter was so poignant and bittersweet I reposted it on my Substack and asked Jeff if I could post it here on my website. So with his permission here is his post entitled “Portland, Maine.”

Jeff’s post reminded me of John Steinbeck’s 1962 travelogue Travels with Charley: In Search of America about his trip around the United States, his only companion being his standard-sized “bleu” poodle named Charley.

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck spends considerable time planning this trip where he planned to follow the outer border of the United States. He wanted to see America one last time as he was battling major health issues. That being said, he managed to convince his family to allow him to go alone on this road trip with only his dog as a companion. Steinbeck bought a GMC pickup truck and had it custom-fitted with a camper shell that he would live in on this journey. He named it Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse. He and Charley had many adventures on this trip and met many interesting people, most of whom readily talked to a stranger (this is distinctly the age of pre-social media and the internet and Steinbeck was unrecognizable to most) partly because of the adorable dog by his side.

Many of Steinbeck’s stories of his encounters with the people he met during this journey made the book so much more than a travelogue, and even though there has been scholarly questions about whether the book is 100% nonfiction or highly fictionalized, it is classic Steinbeck and part of the body of work that earned him the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. I highly recommend it if you haven’t encountered it yet.

But, back to Into the Blue and “Portland, Maine” with Jeff. My husband and I will celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary in June of this year. We are as of next week one full year into our retirement stage. We are really enjoying spending so much more time together, traveling, working out together, being a bit more spontaneous with our even more mundane daily activities, just enjoying a simple meal in front of the TV watching whatever we are streaming at the time. Jeff’s recounting of his conversations with the gentleman he met in Portland made me tear up, because I can so easily slip into “wait for the other shoe to drop” mode when I think how happy I am right now. How stress free my life is. How even though I fought being retired (and to be honest it took four tries to make it stick), I absolutely love it.

So, my suggestion to you on this fine Saturday afternoon, when the weather in the DC metro area can’t quite decide what it wants to be, if you have a free minute or two, give Jeff’s essay a read. I think you will enjoy it. If you happen to be fluent in either French or Greek, Jeff has you covered as he translates his work into both languages!

Have a great rest of your weekend! More book reviews coming soon!