Derby woman takes road less traveled
Elizabeth Benton , Register Staff 09/24/2004
Vicki Cain has a hunch about America.. She's willing to travel across the country to test it.
Armed with a video camera and flanked by her Australian shepherd, Judy, Cain Thursday began the same 10,000-mile journey that author John Steinbeck started 44 years ago to the day. Following in the tire tracks of Steinbeck, who took the journey with his poodle, Charley, Cain will stop in small-town luncheonettes, bars and churches to see what, if anything, has changed.
"I think I'm going to find that things may look different - there will be more McDonald's, more roads, maybe a little more uniformity - but people are still the same," Cain said.
Cain, 40, of Derby, is making the three-and-a-half week road trip - with Judy riding shotgun - in her 1978 Cruise Master RV. Her intent is to create a documentary about her travels.
The journey will take her from Sag Harbor, N.Y., to Northern Maine, through Erie, Pa., over to Chicago, across North Dakota to Montana, then through Seattle, down through California across Texas, on to New Orleans, and back again to Long Island.
"Has the capitalistic success of America driven the small ranchers, the traveling actors and the fire-and-brimstone preachers into extinction?" is Cain's question.
Despite the rise of cell phones, the Internet and mass media conglomerates, Cain believes little will have changed since Steinbeck's journey.
But some important technological advances have been made since Steinbeck's original trek and the publication of his account, "Travels with Charley: In Search of America in 1962."
Cain will use video cameras and a Web log to document her trip.
James Brown, an amateur videographer, has joined Cain for the first leg of the trip and will serve as director of photography for the documentary Cain hopes to produce.
"The whole idea has been made with PBS in mind," she said.
Cain works at the Yale Art Gallery and calls herself an "occasional op-ed writer, enthusiastic traveler, passionate dog lover and usually long-winded storyteller."
She explains her motivation. "I was reading 'Travels with Charley' for the 34th time about a year and a half ago. I woke up one morning and thought, 'Oh man, wouldn't it be great to take the trip'," she said.
Since that fateful morning, her road trip has grown into a major artistic and educational endeavor.
Cain said she is not the first Steinbeck fan to make the trip, but she believes she is the first to make a comparison documentary.
Steinbeck, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, died in 1968.
Cain has already scheduled several interviews with people featured in Steinbeck's own log. She will meet with Brenda Gilchrist in Deer Isle, Maine, who is living in the same home her aunt lived in more than forty-years ago when Steinbeck came through.
"I have a feeling that (Dear Isle) is a traditional New England community and probably hasn't changed much," Cain said.
She will also meet with Ruby Bridges in New Orleans, who was a young student when Steinbeck wrote of her brave efforts to integrate the New Orleans public schools. "The school is now segregated again, except it's all African American," Cain said.
She is also writing her own book to document her journey. She has already written the introduction, which begins with Steinbeck's words: "We do not take a trip; a trip takes us."
To finance the $4,000 road trip, Cain refinanced her home, but she is still looking for sponsors for the film production, which she estimates will cost more than $100,000.
On Thursday, Cain hit a slight bump in the road when her RV broke down in "the middle of nowhere in Massachusetts," she said.
"It's all part of the story," she said.
Megan Doyom, Cain's co-worker at the Yale Art Gallery, has no doubts that Cain will complete her journey. "If anything happens, even if it's a set back, it will become part of the story," she said. "Vicki will have a great experience writing about it, living it and retelling it," she said.
Before leaving Connecticut, Brown carefully read "Travels With Charley" and outlined potential shots in each town, which he hopes will show how American life has changed in the past four decades.
"We went through the book looking at different shots, but now we have to see if they're still there," he said.
Friends and fans can follow her journey through a daily log on her Web site, travelswithjudy.com.
Entries from each state are marked by click-able paw prints on an interactive map of the country.
© 2004 New Haven Register