Cannery Row, Monterey, CA
I try to avoid most tourist spots, at least during the hours of 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Despite its obvious tourista sensibility, Cannery Row still lets even the casual observer hearken back to an earlier day when Monterey Bay was a global capital for sardine harvesting. Imagine that time in the '20s, '30s and '40s described so vividly by John Steinbeck in Cannery Row (1945) when the purse seiners arrived loaded to capacity with fresh catch. What was then called Ocean View Avenue would come alive as townsfolk raced for spot employment cleaning, preparing and packaging the sardines.
Of course, we fished the living daylights out of the Monterey Canyon and by 1973 all 17 of the longstanding canneries had been shuttered. Thanks to some effective marine management since that time, however, Monterey Bay has returned to life. This would have been a source of pride for Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck's best friend and the inspiration for the "Doc" character in both Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday (1954).
Steinbeck's work is joyous for so many reasons. He wrote with such simple elegance, believing that accessible words, short sentence structures and compelling narrative communicate best. Too much writing today is turgid and unnecessarily opaque, seemingly designed to hide meaning rather than reveal it. A visit to the National Steinbeck Center in the author's hometown of Salinas is a worthy destination for any student of literature, Americana or Californian history. (www.steinbeck.org)
I try to avoid most tourist spots, at least during the hours of 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Despite its obvious tourista sensibility, Cannery Row still lets even the casual observer hearken back to an earlier day when Monterey Bay was a global capital for sardine harvesting. Imagine that time in the '20s, '30s and '40s described so vividly by John Steinbeck in Cannery Row (1945) when the purse seiners arrived loaded to capacity with fresh catch. What was then called Ocean View Avenue would come alive as townsfolk raced for spot employment cleaning, preparing and packaging the sardines.
Of course, we fished the living daylights out of the Monterey Canyon and by 1973 all 17 of the longstanding canneries had been shuttered. Thanks to some effective marine management since that time, however, Monterey Bay has returned to life. This would have been a source of pride for Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck's best friend and the inspiration for the "Doc" character in both Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday (1954).
Steinbeck's work is joyous for so many reasons. He wrote with such simple elegance, believing that accessible words, short sentence structures and compelling narrative communicate best. Too much writing today is turgid and unnecessarily opaque, seemingly designed to hide meaning rather than reveal it. A visit to the National Steinbeck Center in the author's hometown of Salinas is a worthy destination for any student of literature, Americana or Californian history. (www.steinbeck.org)