Tag Archives: National Steinbeck Center

The man who saved John Steinbeck’s van, RIP

Gene Cochetti, 1938-2020 (Photo by Jon Sall.)
Gene Cochetti, 1938-2020 (Photo by Jon Sall.)

Like a hitchhiker with roses, the small things that connect with people can surprise me. Wealth is not measured by the cars you drive or the places you visit.

The Camper Book (A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream)” was published in 2018 by Chicago Review Press. In a pre-pandemic bliss from June 2016 until March 2017, I traveled to twenty-four states, covering 24,222 miles in my 2015 Ford Transit Van. Photographer Jon Sall and I were on the road most of June 2016.

We met some remarkable people and I gathered some fine interviews: Actor/roadie/musician Jeff Daniels contributed the foreword, former Cubs manager Joe Maddon talked about RV life and the late John Prine told me about his affinity for KOAs. He said at least one person came up to him at every KOA, but added “I haven’t got roped into any campfire sing-alongs.”

But one of our most memorable stops has turned out to be the National Steinbeck Center in downtown Salinas, Ca.

The former museum director Dr. Susan Shillinglaw loved the idea of our book and she liked my van, adorned with the searching birds of my friend, Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick.  Shillinglaw allowed us to go inside Rocinante, the camper van that John Steinbeck used in his 1962 book “Travels With Charley: In Search of America.” The van is generally off-limits to museum visitors. Steinbeck named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse because friends called his cross-country trip “quixotic.”

Rocinante (Photo courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center.)
Rocinante (Photo courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center.)

Somewhere in our long and winding conversation, Shillinglaw mentioned that the Salinas gentleman who restored the van was still around. Jon and I scrambled to find a man named Gene Cochetti.

We had nowhere to go, except to Lulu’s, Merle Haggard’s favorite diner in Redding, Ca. And Gene’s body shop wasn’t far away from the museum. After an impromptu phone call, Gene immediately invited us over.

Gene had never talked publicly about restoring Steinbeck’s van until we showed up. I wrote an essay about Gene and it did not make it in the book. It landed on the Camper Book website which I visit now and then. Here is “The man who saved John Steinbeck’s van.

Gene had never read any of Steinbeck’s books. And restoring Rocinante was a big and expensive project.  He could have said, ‘It is what it is,’ but on a deeper level, he knew what it could be. Gene did it for free to give something back to the community.

I’ve been amazed at the people who wrote to our website to thank Gene for his dedication. Were they Steinbeck fans? Devoted roadies? Or did they admire Gene’s humble service? Some of the greatest feedback towards The Camper Book wasn’t even in the book!

Over the weekend, I learned that Gene had died.

He passed away peacefully in his home on June 25, almost four years to the day after we met. He was 82 years old.  He had been ill for a year. His Salinas obituary carried no mention of his work on Rocinante. The obituary did mention his commitment to the community. Gene served in the United States Navy and spent hours volunteering for the Salinas Steinbeck Youth Football Organization, volunteered at the California Rodeo for many years, was a member of the Salinas Elks Lodge, a founding member of the Cherrie’s Jubilee Car Show, and was an active member and usher at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Spreckels.

The world is a more divided place than when we met Gene.  People stand in their corners. Shillinglaw once told me, “You have to participate in the actuality of experience. Steinbeck said ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ was written on five levels; you’ll see as many levels as you have in yourself. Are you really going to slow down and experience and participate in the narrative?”

Gene Cochetti worked on cars his entire adult life, helping take people to other places. Yet, he slowed down and lived by the foundation of home. He made his community a better place. He knew all the levels he had in himself.

 

The man who saved John Steinbeck’s van

Rocinante
John Steinbeck’s Rocinante

 

SALINAS, Ca.–Long time Salinas body shop owner Gene Cochetti had never talked publicly about resorting John Steinbeck’s historic Rocinante camper van until we showed up in our camper van.

And we did not have to be towed to Gene Cochetti’s Auto Body Shop in downtown Salinas.

In 1990 Rocinante was delivered to the same body shop.  “It was a real piece of junk,” Cochetti said during a mid-June, 2016 conversation in his body shop garage.  “It came on a tow truck. We had to do everything.  We had to put tires on it. We had to get everything running. And then I had to research the color, the camper shell, the wood of the camper, because it is very, very heavy. It was three-quarter ton with an eight foot box, which is really rare. There must have been ten guys pushing it into our shop.

“Everything was maple inside, which was very hard to match and to refinish. We took the camper off the truck and repainted the truck completely. It had to be a certain green. We had to put the six ply tires on brand new and then take the wheels off. We painted the rims. We researched it so we had to pinstripe the wheels and put all new rubber on to make it look new. We took off all the chrome that was tarnished and rusted and put on all new chrome. It was a big project. That’s not a big problem with me. But we did it for free. I wanted to give something back to the community that has been so wonderful for me. I wanted to give back to the people who helped me be successful for 40 years.

“We’re the oldest independent auto body shop in the Monterey County.”

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Steinbeck center photo by Dave Hoekstra

It took Cochetti nearly two months to bring Rocinante completely back to life. Cochetti has always been a collision specialist except early in his career in the 1950s and 60s when he restored custom hot rods and vintage cars. He found more money in car wrecks.

“We had to get it running because we couldn’t push that big monster around,” he continued. “It ran fine. Except we had to tune it up, put in plugs and make it worthy for the road. We didn’t farm anything out. We did it all in here. We got it all ready to go and they came back and told me, “Oh, by the way Cochetti, you have to drain every liquid out of that truck. Gas, all the oil, drain the fluids off. And then we’ll call a tow truck and have it taken to the Steinbeck Center. So we had to to this all over again, not thinking that when you put a vehicle in a locked-in building, you have to make everything dry. Once we did all of that, they were happy and we went down the road.

“It was a fun project.”

Gene Cochetti, June 2016 (Jon Sall portrait)
Gene Cochetti, June 2016 (Jon Sall portrait)

Cochetti was born in Schenectady, N.Y. in 1938 and arrived in Salinas in 1952 with his mother Estelle and father Salvador. Salvador Cochetti was a barber in New York and came to California to become a fisherman. That didn’t work out so he became a house painter. Estelle worked in Salinas area restaurants.

Today, the population of Salinas is about 155,000 people. Cochetti said the population was around 40,000 when his family came to town.  “It is basically all ag,” he said. “It used to be mainly lettuce. No hard peaches and no hard watermelons. Then the grapes come. The grapes are big because of the wineries. And now strawberries are the big thing. So the lettuce is sort of just there.”

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Cochetti’s first car was a 1941 Plymouth, a ride that he stretched out through the Salinas Valley.

“I bought my first hot rod in high school,” he said. “We played with that for a while and I left for the Navy. When I returned I had a good time. And then I got married and that was the end of that. The funny part is that my wife was in junior high with me. And I knew her. But I never took her out. I knew her in high school, never saw her after graduation. And then one day after I came back from the service I was at my dad’s place. I happened to be driving to work and I saw this foxy gal walking down the street with high heels on and nice legs. So I looked and said, ‘I’ll be darned, that’s Rusty!’ And I pulled over and said, ‘Do you want a ride to work?’ And there was only like, a block and a half to work. And she said, ‘Uh, yeah.’ So that’s how we met again. And from there on, we got married and had a couple of kids and a great life.”
Now semi-retired, Cochetti was married for 45 years. Rusty passed away in 2007. “The shop has always been self owned,” he said. “My son (Chris) has taken this thing over. He’s way better than I am. He’s a computer genius and car genius. I taught him when he was in elementary school. He’s going to be 50 pretty soon. And we’ve had a great relationship, an important relationship with your dad and your son.”

Steinbeck camper van interoir (Jon Sall photo)
Steinbeck camper van interoir (Jon Sall photo)

Cochetti did not feel a close connection to Steinbeck while working on the camper van. “I didn’t know the man, I never read one of his books,” he said. “Everybody said he was a great writer.

The hard part was researching this thing. They wanted it just like if it came from the dealership to me. It’s probably way better than when he had it. Now, a lot of people see it. And we have a little plaque that says, ‘Work done by Gene Cochetti Auto Body Shop in Salinas.’ We started with about nothing and now it will be there (in the National Steinbeck Center, just a few blocks away)  when I’m gone and everybody
else is gone.”

In Defense of the Trailer

 

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COEUR d’ ALENE, ID.—Over the weekend I was driving south on 395 from the Canadian border along the Kettle River in northern Washington.

I saw a trailer with two empty lawn chairs side by side.

The chairs overlooked a ravine filled with lush pine trees and a distant river that twisted like a question mark. I determined this scene to be romantic.

I pulled over to take a picture. It was around 10 in the morning and there was a jig to my rig after a nice Friday night meal of trout and rice and a good night’s sleep in Grand Forks, B.C.

As I approached the van from at least 30 feet away, an elderly, heavy set woman in a scraggly nightgown peered out through the lean front door. She was tough. She inquired about my intentions. I didn’t have any fancy camera equipment, just my cell phone. The space was open and lush, void of any “No Trespassing” signs.

Suddenly a large man emerged behind the woman. He wore a scraggly tee-shirt and had the chiseled face of Garrison Keillor gone bad. He looked over her shoulder, looked me in the eye and shouted,

“You keep taking pictures and I’ll blow your head off!”

This is the sense of place I’m getting at as I travel around America for my next book:  Here was a remote stretch of highway in rural Washington, two people tightly wound together and they’ve drawn a line around their trailer. This is their section of the world.

Maybe this is how you react when you feel the world closing in on you.

It has been a grueling couple of weeks and this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and collect my thoughts. I’m at the Coeur d’Alene RV Resort, which is actually in Post Falls, Id.—between Spokane, Wash and Coeur d’ Alene (named after a Native American tribe who were skilled traders, i.e. heart of an awl.)

Coeur d' Alene RV Resort, 6/20/16 (D. Hoekstra photo)
Coeur d’ Alene RV Resort, 6/20/16 (D. Hoekstra photo)

 

It’s a beautiful night and the Summer Solstice skies are crisp and blue. I’m getting a kick out of people smiling at Tony Fitzpatrick’s birds on my van Blue Bird, although tonight some new friends I met remembered my ride as “the one that looks like an ice cream truck.”

I went thrifting in Coeur d’ Alene on Sunday afternoon. I have been to Sandpoint, Id. but only knew of Coeur d’ Alene from an Iris DeMent song.

Lake Coeur d’ Alene is beautiful but the vibe was too dressy and upscale for my tastes. The town felt like Traverse City on steroids. So tonight I opted to stay in the camper van.

Unplugging the van and locking down stuff  just run an errand gets to be cumbersome. So I passed on some of Coeur d’ Alene’s fine restaurants and walked over to a nearby Wal-Mart to fetch a frozen dinner and Diet Mountain Dew.

I’ve never been much of a Wal-Mart guy but now I know why they are such a big deal with wheel people. I’m to the point now where I’m conditioned to buy sidebar stuff for my van every time I walk into a Wal-Mart.

On this visit I purchased  a stapler for only $2.79, a George Strait CD for $11 and a tiny miner’s head lamp I used to laugh at when I went tent camping with my ex-girl friend. Now I have a tiny miner’s head lamp and it only set me back a dollar.

As the light fades away I find myself going to bed earlier than I do in Chicago. I brought along lots of stuff to read and picked up Willy Vlautin’s “Northline” at Powell’s Books in Portland. Vlautin’s crooked and elegant “Lean on Pete” is one of the best road books I’ve read in recent years. But after long days of driving, fiddling with my van’s inverter and setting up interviews, I haven’t had much time to read.

Of course I brought John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley (In Search of America)” along for my trip. I love the appointed heart and plain speak of that book and the stop at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Ca  is one of the highlights of the initial stretch of my research trip. I don’t want to get to deep in my re-read of Steinbeck’s 1960 travelogue because I want to maintain the clarity of my voice.

Inside John Steinbeck's camper van, 6/13/16 (Jon Sall photo)
Inside John Steinbeck’s camper van, 6/13/16 . I don’t have flowers. (Jon Sall photo)

But I am forever indebted to museum director Susan Shillinglaw for granting us rare access inside Steinbeck’s beloved Rocinante camper van. Photo journalist Jon Sall made some great Rocinante pictures and shot video.  My interview with Susan will air this Saturday night on Nocturnal Journal, WGN-720 AM in Chicago.

Steinbeck set out on his journey to listen to the rhythm of speech in America. He wanted to listen. He thought he was old but he was hungry to hear new ideas. Although Steinbeck was a fan of television and radio, he believed the rapid development of communication was destroying regionalism.

As I learned very clearly over the weekend, each place can still have its space in America.  All you have to do is look someone in the eye and listen.