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 gathered and scattered, tin and iron
and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and
junk heaps, sardine canneries or corrugated iron, honky tonks,
restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and
laboratories and flophouses.
- Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
This Wherigo Cache will take you on a short walk around historic
Cannery Row, and the various settings and characters of one of John
Steinbeck's most beloved novels, Cannery Row. Except for Doc
Rickett's Lab, the starting point for the associated Cartridge,
many of the places mentioned in the novel have been demolished
and/or rebuilt. It will probably take less than an hour to
complete the Cartridge.
The Plot
The first order of business will be to download the Wherigo
Cartridge:
Sea of Cortez Cartridge
The Cartridge will take you to the following locations mentioned
in the novel:
Western Biological
Laboratories:
Western Biological deals in strange and beautiful
wares. It sells the lovely animals of the sea, the sponges,
tunicates, anemones, the stars and buttlestars, and sun stars, the
bivalves, barnacles, the worms and shells... You can order anything
living from Western Biological and sooner or later you will get
it.
Also known as
Pacific
Biological Laboratories , this is the starting point for the
Cartridge. Originally owned by Ed "Doc" Ricketts, who was a
close friend and confidant of Steinbeck's, the Lab is now owned by
a Gentleman's Club and is listed on the National Historic
Register.
Hovden
Cannery:
The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the
canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is
advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the
bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be
metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying.
Both omnipresent and sinister, the canneries are something of an
unspoken character, a living, breathing hub of human activity, in
the novel. The Hovden Cannery is long gone, except for the
boiler, which stands on display inside the lobby of the
Monterey Bay
Aquarium.
Lee Chong's
Grocery:
Lee Chong's grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a
miracle of supply. It was small and crowded but within its
single room a man could find everything he needed or wanted to live
and to be happy...
I'm not sure how much of the original grocery store still exists
at this location, but there is a small set of shops where it is
reported in the novel Doc would buy his beer, and Mack and the boys
would "liberate" certain items from the shelves of the store.
The Palace
Flophouse:
Lee's mind leaped ahead at the possibilities - no they were
probabilities, and his finger tapping slowed still further.
He saw himself refusing Mack's request and he saw the broken
glass....Then Mack would offer a second time to watch over and
preserve Lee's property - and at the second refusal, Lee could
smell the smoke, could see the little flames creeping up the
walls.....The boys moved in and the fish meal moved out.
The Flophouse, long gone, has been replaced by various office
buildings. The railroad tracks, once the life blood of the
peninsula, is now the Monterey Coastal Bike Trail.
The Bear Flag
Restaurant:
This is no fly-by-night cheap clip-joint but a sturdy,
virtuous club, built, maintained, and disciplined by Dora who,
madam and girl for fifty years, has through the exercise of special
gifts of tact and honesty, charity and a certain realism, made
herself respected by the intelligent, the learned, and the
kind.
Patterned after a resident of Cannery Row, the establishment
that Dora ran that used to stand next to the railroad tracks
is now home to various shops that cater to the tourists that
frequent the area.