Noticing xiii - Cannery Row

This morning a FB friend asked people to share their favorite first line of a novel, citing this article as his inspiration. Although I didn't play along, the line—nay, the paragraph—that typically comes to mind when I consider this question is the first paragraph of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.

I live just a few miles from Cannery Row—but I do I ever go there? Hardly. Not because it's too touristy, but because . . . it doesn't occur to me. But the other day a new geocache was published on the rec trail that parallels the Row, and so I thought, given the above nudge, why not head over there today? Take some pictures.

And so that's where the dog and I went for our afternoon stroll. The photos are presented here in the order in which I took them, with associated explanation (from plaques etc.) as/if available. The Cannery Row murals are by a Salinas artist, John Cerney. Click to view large on black.

Mac and the Boys
"Mack was the elder, leader, mentor, and to a small extent
the exploiter of men who had in common no families,
no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and
contentment. But whereas most men in their search for
contentment destroy themselves and fall wearily short of
their targets, Mack and his friends approached contentment
casually, quietly, and absorbed it gently." (Cannery Row)

Beginning in 1874, the completion of the Monterey & Salinas
Valley Railroad saw the introduction of viable rail
transportation for the area's fresh produce and emerging
fishing industry to regional markets.
This scene represents a typical workday in 1910, after the
arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Ed "Doc" Ricketts (1897–1948)
He usually is holding a flower or some other
gifted memento.

Cannery Row quote with this mural:
"The nature of parties has been imperfectly studied. It is,
however, generally understood that a party has a pathology,
that it is a kind of an individual and that it is likely to be
a very perverse individual. And it is also generally
understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is
planned or intended."

The area now known as Cannery Row was an
industrial area of canneries, rendering plants,
and warehouses. In 1935, Grace Aiello
photographed these six men waiting for the
fishing boats to arrive at the start of their shifts.
Upper left to right: Manuel Muñoz, unknown,
and Vince Manetti
Lower left to right: Joe King, Frank Bergera
(married Grace Aiello in 1937), and Don King
Descendants of these men continue to live in the
Monterey area

One sign near these shacks reads,
The Filipino Community
Filipinos were attracted in large numbers to California after
the 1924 Immigration Act excluded the Japanese, who had
been a major part of the state's agricultural labor force.
By1930, as many as 35,000 Pinoys—young, single,
male Filipino laborers—were working in California's
fields, hotels, restaurants, and private homes. During
World War II, a number of Filipinos from the island of
Luzon, north of Manila, worked in the canneries and
reduction plants.
When Filipino laborers weren't operating screw-cookers,
rotary kilns, or grinders, they might be found playing cards
with friends or socializing in one of the Monterey Chinatown
flower-dancing clubs. The Salinas-based Philippines Mail
reported on life in the larger Filipino community.

Doc's Pacific Biological Laboratories: the real thing.
It was owned by a group of Doc's friends until 1993,
when they sold it to the City of Monterey.
Tours of the lab are given periodically.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is just a couple of doors down
from Doc's lab. It opened in 1984, "bringing the fish back to
Cannery Row."

John Steinbeck (1902–1968)

A mural at McAbee Beach, and kayakers

The first large-scale cannery on Cannery Row was built in 1908.
The industry's heyday was short, a mere ten or so years in the 1940s.
Enterprise Cannery was one of many that sprung up in that
decade. It eventually made way for a luxury hotel.

Cannery Divers Memorial
Monterey's world-famous sardine industry depended on the
courage and skill of cannery divers. Sardines were pumped
ashore from floating hoppers through underwater pipes
that had to be installed, repaired, replaced, realigned, and
maintained in order for the canneries of the old Row to
operate a full six-month season each yer. Monterey could
never have become "the sardine capital of the world"
without their heroic underwater exploits. Two Monterey
cannery divers, Henry Porter and Tom Pierce, died in the
performance of their dangerous work under the waves of
Monterey Bay.

Jelly-fitti in cannery remains on San Carlos Beach