James Fulford’s blog post John Steinbeck In Maine: White Migrant Labor, 1959

From: Bill Steigerwald [Email him]

 I saw James Fulford’s item about the great Steinbeck's alleged encounter with those migrant Canuck potato pickers during his 1960 "Travels With Charley." I also just read Fulford’s  2011 post about my Reason article [Sorry, Charley, April 2011] and the NY Times' story on me and my discoveries, which I had missed. (My Google alert isn't perfect, I guess.)

Thanks for that 2011 plug. Just in case you or your readers are interested in following up my expose, it has been turned into Dogging Steinbeck, a literary exposé/American travel book that reveals all of Steinbeck's many fictions and fibs as well as the virtually unknown fact that the French Canadians have colonized the top edge of Maine without us Flyover People knowing.

Watch out, Homeland Security may be planning to recover out lost territory even now. (Not that I, a seasoned ex-libertarian newspaperman who riddled my book with libertarian thoughts and asides, believe in the sanctity or sense of arbitrary political borders drawn by politicians 200 years ago.)

If anyone wants to buy my book, there are paperback copies available at my favorite bookshop on the border with Canada, the Calais Book Shop in downtown Calais, Maine. Otherwise, people will have to buy Dogging Steinbeck at Amazon.com.

Bill Steigerwald is the oldest member of the Pittsburgh multimedia family that includes his TV sports brothers John of KDKA-TV and Paul of the Pittsburgh Penguins and rock guitarist Dan of Kingdom Come. His website is here.

James Fulford writes: Thanks for the letter. As for the Open Borders sentiments, all I can say is that when Steinbeck went  “In Search Of America”, he didn’t look in Quebec.