The observant, shy but often mischievous only son had, for the most part, a happy childhood growing up with two older sisters, Beth and Esther, and a much-adored younger sister, Mary. 'I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer-and what trees and seasons smelled like.' 'I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers,' he wrote in the opening chapter of East of Eden.

As a child growing up in the fertile Salinas Valley -called the 'Salad Bowl of the Nation' - Steinbeck formed a deep appreciation of his environment, not only the rich fields and hills surrounding Salinas, but also the nearby Pacific coast where his family spent summer weekends. His mother, the strong-willed Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, was a former teacher. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, was not a terribly successful man at one time or another he was the manager of a Sperry flour plant, the owner of a feed and grain store, the treasurer of Monterey County. John Steinbeck was born in the farming town of Salinas, California on 27 February 1902. He eventually decides that the changes are inevitable, though, and by the time he arrives in his unrecognizable hometown, he has accepted that the America he longs for is already well in the past.Steinbeck in 1909 with his sister Mary, sitting on the red pony, Jill, at the Salinas Fairgrounds. He worries about these changes, yearning for a time when life moved at a slower pace and people made time to enjoy their surroundings and build communities. In every place he visits, he finds that people are always in a rush, driving quickly, moving away from their hometowns in search of better opportunities, and eating bland convenience foods.

During his travels, he finds that his country’s landscape and culture have changed even more than he expected: The huge technological and industrial advancements of the post-World War II era turned formerly small towns into bustling cities, and the growing interstate highway system bypasses the rural landscapes he loves. He embarks on the trip as an attempt to delay this inevitability and to reconnect with his country as a whole after years of skipping over the American interior in favor of living in coastal areas and traveling abroad. Steinbeck wrote Travels With Charley at a transitional period in his life his career as an author was winding down, and he felt the rapid advance of old age.

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