‘Cannery Row’ Nets Tourists, Not Sardines, These Days : Monterey: Steinbeck fans mourn the loss of so many of the area’s old buildings and so much of its character, including the fish canneries that gave it its name. But tourism keeps it alive and thriving.

MONTEREY —  Tourists, not sardines, are the big catch now--something that would dishearten the writer who loved and made famous the poetic grit of old Cannery Row.

After half a century, little more than nostalgia remains of John Steinbeck’s famous stretch of waterfront.

The sardines that were disappearing even then are long gone, and the canneries that gave the area its stink and clamor closed decades ago. In their place are hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and a huge aquarium.

“I’m afraid he’d be a little disgusted. It’s become very commercial,” said Virginia Scardigli, a friend of Steinbeck’s in the 1930s during his Cannery Row days.

“There are still people who love Steinbeck’s work and make a pilgrimage, but there are a lot of people who are into this thing because it’s a moneymaker.”

Scardigli and many other Steinbeck admirers mourn the loss of so many of the row’s old buildings and so much of its character. But they’re encouraged by the author’s enduring popularity and are celebrating this year’s 50th anniversary of the publication of “Cannery Row.”

Critics generally don’t consider “Cannery Row” among the greatest of Steinbeck’s works, such as “The Grapes of Wrath.”

But it remains one of his best-loved books, a seemingly simple story of waterfront inhabitants, centering on Doc, a character based on Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and Steinbeck’s closest friend.

The book is a “kind of love poem” Steinbeck had to write, said Susan Shillinglaw, director of the Steinbeck Research Center at San Jose State University, which co-sponsored a recent symposium on “Cannery Row” in Monterey.

“It was a . . . tribute to his own past, his friendship to Ricketts, the ecological perspective he shared with him, California, to the common people, to humor,” she said.

Steinbeck, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, knew well the canneries and people on what was then Ocean View Avenue. He was born in 1902 in Salinas, about 20 miles east of Monterey, but spent boyhood summers at the family’s cottage in Pacific Grove, next to Cannery Row.

In those days, Monterey was one of the nation’s busiest fishing ports. Dozens of corrugated metal canneries centered on an eight-block stretch of waterfront.

Steinbeck also lived and wrote in Pacific Grove off and on as an adult. In 1930, he met Ed Ricketts, who ran a biological-supply business on Cannery Row, named Western Biological Laboratory in the book.

Ricketts had an enormous influence on Steinbeck, who dedicated “Cannery Row” to him. Steinbeck described Doc as “the fountain of philosophy and science and art” whose “mind had no horizon.”

Steinbeck also turned the rows’ vagrants into Mack and the boys, whom he called “the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties.” The prostitutes became Dora’s Girls. The Wing Chong market became Lee Chong’s store, a “miracle of supply.” The only commodity it lacked “could be had across the lot at Dora’s.”

In the early 1940s, Steinbeck moved to New York and later was a war correspondent in Europe. He said “Cannery Row,” published in January, 1945, was “born out of homesickness” and a desire to give soldiers an escape from war.

But by then the real Cannery Row was in decline. The overfished sardines began to disappear and, by 1950, the canneries were closing.

Some of the buildings burned, while others eventually were torn down. But restaurants also opened as tourists came looking for the book’s landmarks. The street’s name officially changed.

“It became Cannery Row when Monterey decided it wasn’t offended by John’s book,” said Scardigli, now 83 and a retired high school instructor who taught Steinbeck’s works. Many people had objected to Steinbeck’s depiction of lowlife characters.

Development began to take off in the late 1970s, with hotels going up and a few remaining old buildings becoming mazes of gift shops and galleries. The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in 1984, drawing millions of visitors. Tours are available for those who want to see the few places that survive from Steinbeck’s time.

The nondescript, weather-beaten building that was Ricketts’ lab became a private club after the biologist’s death in a 1948 train accident two blocks away. The city bought the building in 1993 and plans to preserve it.

Across the street is The Old General Store, once Wing Chong’s. The bawdy house that served as the model for Dora’s has burned down, but La Ida’s, another brothel in the book, survives as Kalisa’s Cafe, a bright, yellow stucco building.

Steinbeck, who died in 1968, did revisit Cannery Row in his later years. But he regretted the changes, said Elaine Steinbeck, who married the writer in 1950.

“He was sorry it was being so commercialized,” said Elaine Steinbeck, 80, who lives in the couple’s New York apartment. Still, Cannery Row was one of the first stops during a tour he took her on to show her the places he loved.

“Cannery Row was something that stayed with him all his life,” Elaine Steinbeck said. “He loved the place. He loved the people.”

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“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.”

--John Steinbeck

“Cannery Row,” 1945

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‘Cannery Row’ Excerpts

Every morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest. . . . It is the hour of the pearl--the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.

*

In a world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals and bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys.

*

Doc has the hands of a brain surgeon, and a cool warm mind. Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him. He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure. . . . His mind had no horizon--and his sympathy had no warp. He could talk to children, telling them very profound things so that they understood. He lived in a world of wonders, of excitement. He was concupiscent as a rabbit and gentle as hell. Everyone who knew him was indebted to him. And everyone who thought of him thought next, “I really must do something nice for Doc.”

Source: Associated Press