READ ME: What this blog is and how to use it!

2013 Steinbeck Institute participants pictured at Pacific Biological Laboratories on Cannery Row. 

This blog has been designed with educators and students in mind, but it is certainly a valuable resource for anyone with a keen interest in the collected works of John Steinbeck. 

Cannery Row is Steinbeck’s attempt to holistically recreate his Monterey, California and his personal experiences in the place at a specific time. While no depiction of life can be truly all inclusive, Cannery Row is Steinbeck’s valiant attempt to capture “ a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream” for the reader that, to the best of his ability, encapsulates the mystique and vitality of an environment that he loved dearly in his own lifetime (1).

This blog, lovingly assembled by a participant of the 2013 Steinbeck Institute, is a collection of photos that were amassed during the NEH funded program. All of the photography on this blog, unless otherwise indicated, is original source material. Programs like the Steinbeck Institute make projects like this possible.

How is this resource organized?
Cannery Row is made up of a preface and 32 chapters. This blog proceeds chronologically through the book with a photo-based entry for each of the 33 entries made by Steinbeck. Great care was taken to mindfully place photos, music (links at the end of various entries), and artwork that would enhance a reader's experience. Reading is one thing; seeing while reading is another thing entirely... for educators with students who struggle to visualize setting, scenery, and characters, this resource should prove to be invaluable throughout the teaching process. 

How should I use this resource?
My suggestion is that you utilize these photos in tandem with the Google-based document I created (key vocabulary, chapter summaries, and suggested activities) and the 5 specific lesson plans I built after attending the institute. View the shared folder and my Cannery Row instructional resources HERE.

What grade levels and classes is this material appropriate for?
Cannery Row is an overlooked gem. For secondary English teachers like myself, class time is at an all-time premium. With monstrous state standards, common core requirements, AP/IB/Honors/Interdisciplinary exams to worry about, it can be difficult to "squeeze" in books, especially "risky" new books. Unlike some of John Steinbeck's more lengthy tomes (which I highly recommend as well!), Cannery Row clocks in at approximately 180 pages. Each chapter could technically stand alone as a short story. There is an underlying narrative. There are cool philosophically-driven "inner" or intercalary chapters for socratic seminars and philosophical chairs activities... I teach this book to Honors 9th graders but I think it has a place in any American literature course--or even, dare I say, an ecology or biology classroom!

First things first. Read (or re-read) the book... come on... I dare you!

I don't have much time. What should I do? 
Most teachers don't have time for "additional" texts in our terrifyingly fast paced and increasingly standards driven lives. Cannery Row is comprised of a preface and 32 chapters. If a teacher was short on time, they could simply skip the majority of Steinbeck's "inner" or intercalary chapters (these are marked in the blog as [inner] prior to the chapter title) and focus on the main narrative and characters. Please see the document in my Google drive folder HERE called "schedules" for suggested pacing and abbreviated lesson ideas. This could easily be a component of a "short story" unit...

The book seems cool, but what good is it to my students?
Cannery Row IS life... students, once properly primed, respond to the characters and situations in this book with energy and enthusiasm. I require my students to create a Blogger account though Gmail (our school system uses "G" accounts for each student) and respond to a prompt of some sort for each chapter or set of assigned chapters. See the file called "Vocab, chapter summaries, and suggested activities" HERE for my dialectical blog/journal activity ideas. I skip a few, given time constraints, but students are required to respond to the text (annotating and also reflecting) each time they have assigned readings. I find making the writing assignments about "them" (my students) creates powerful content. Reading this book is a community building event!

“If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.”

-John Steinbeck, from East of Eden

What is up with the chapter names? Steinbeck just uses numbers!
Yep. I "titled" each of the 32 chapters as I closely reread the book while constructing this site. These are not "official" titles but I find them easier to refer to and remember with the titles. Take them, change them, suggest alternatives, whatever! Just use this!

Do you know of any other Steinbeck resources?

Start here:

The Steinbeck Institute
San Jose State University - Steinbeck
National Center for Steinbeck Studies
NEH Steinbeck Lesson Plans

Blogs from Steinbeck Institute participants:

Mark Miazga's Blog: Epiphany in Baltimore
Dan Clare's Blog: Steinbeckia

To close, I'd like to warmly acknowledge the many fine individuals who made this project possible--specifically Susan Shillinglaw, William Gilly, Maria Judnick, Charlie, and all of my 2013 Steinbeck Institute colleagues. Ad astra per alia porci!

The Preface: "Look from the tide pool to the stars..."

A picture of Cannery Row from the deck of a whale watching vessel in the early morning.

"The hour of the pearl" as seen from the inter-tidal zone at the Hopkins Marine Station

“When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves" (Steinbeck 3).

Chapter 1: "Lee Chong and Mack and the Boys"

The Wing Chong Building in Monterey - the grocery store Lee Chong's was based on.

"Acme" beer. Possibly a brand sold at the Wing Chong grocery and enjoyed by Doc.

A photo of the walkway that traverses Cannery Row.

A shrewd businessman...

Photo taken at the Steinbeck House in Salinas, CA

Cannery Row's primary economy...

Photo taken on Cannery Row (these placards commemorate the now defunct canneries)

[inner] Chapter 2: "the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces"

A photo from the Hopkins Marine Station early in the morning.

Chapter 3: "The Bear Flag"

Dora Flood, based on actual Cannery Row madam Flora Wood, had a brothel called "The Lone Star"

The vacant lot where Dora's once stood. A beautiful mural stands next to a bust of Kalisa Moore.

Harvest Moon (Link to music)

[inner] Chapter 4: "The Chinaman's Eyes..."

A close-up of the mural in the vacant lot across from Doc's. Note the Chinaman in the bottom right corner...

A photo of Cannery Row from the Hopkins Marine Station.

For the eyes spread out until there was no Chinaman. And then it was one eye--one huge brown eye as big as a church door. Andy looked through the shiny transparent brown door and through it he saw a lonely country-side, flat for miles but ending against a row of fantastic mountains shaped like cows’ and dogs’ heads and tents and mushrooms. There was low coarse grass on the plain and here and there a little mound. And a small animal like a woodchuck sat on each mound. And a small animal like a woodchuck sat on each mound. And the lonliness--the desolate cold aloneness of the landscape made Andy whimper because there wasn’t anybody at all in the world and he was left. (Steinbeck 21-22)

Chapter 5: "Western Biological and Doc"

Western Biological (Pacific Biological) on Cannery Row. Home of Doc.

Concrete tanks behind Western Biological that housed "the larger animals, the sharks and rays and octopi..."

An assortment of chemical bottles still on display in Doc's basement...

Ed "Doc" Ricketts, 1897-1948. This photo hangs on the wall in Western Biological.

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, the fabulous and multiform little brothers, the living moving flowers of the sea, nudibranchs and tectibranchs, the spiked and nobbed and needly urchins, the crabs and demi-crabs… (Steinbeck 23)

From this room come smells--formaline, and dry starfish, and sea water and menthol, carbolic acid and acetic acid, smell of brown wrapping paper and straw and rope, smell of chloroform and ether, smell of ozone from the motors, smell of fine steel and thin lubricant from the microscopes, smell of banana oil and rubber tubing, smell of drying wool socks and boots, sharp pungent smell of rattlesnakes, and musty frightening smell of rats… (Steinbeck 24)

Gregorian Chant (Link to music)

Chapter 6: “Collecting at the Great Tide Pool”

The tide pool early in the morning...

The tide begins to come in...

Anemones and sea stars!

A colony of anemones...

A deeper, colorful pool...

Our collection of animals from the tide pool excursion...

LINK to a video of octopi collecting in California... (click here)

Hazel loved to hear conversation but he didn’t listen to words--just to the tone of conversation...Quite often he went collecting with Doc and he was very good at it once he knew what was wanted. His fingers could creep like an octopus, could grab like an anemone. He was sure-footed on the slippery rocks and he loved the hunt” (Steinbeck 29).

“The remarkable thing,” said Doc, “isn’t that they put their tails up in the air--the really incredibly remarkable thing is that we find it remarkable. We can only use ourselves as yard-sticks.” (Steinbeck 34)

Chapter 7: "“Making the Palace Flophouse Home…”

Steinbeck's ancestral home in King City, CA. This is at the Hamilton Ranch. Since the "Palace Flophouse" does not exist today, this post will feature some of the "homes" John Steinbeck knew as a youth and as an adult. Since we draw from our own experience, some elements of these homes may have lent components to the setting in Cannery Row. 

"The Steinbeck House" in Salinas, CA. This is where John spent his formative years. In spite of the grandiosity of the old Victorian, John's family was middle class. 

John and his first wife Carol Henning's home in Pacific Grove, CA (adjacent to Monterey, walking distance to Cannery Row). They moved here in 1930. Meager beginnings!

A training army which has not been equipped with guns and artillery and tanks uses artificial guns and masquerading trucks to simulate its destructive panopoly--and its toughening soldiers get used to field guns by handling logs on wheels. (Steinbeck 35)

[inner] Chapter 8: “The Malloys and the Hediondo Boiler…”

An abandoned tanker car (half buried) on Cannery Row. While not a boiler, when we encountered this I immediately thought of the Malloys... Cannery Row is littered with these industrial castaways.

A close up of the rivets and patina on the submerged tanker... would this make a good home?

An abandoned industrial silo on Cannery Row adjacent to the submerged car - leftovers from a defunct cannery?

“Curtains?” he demanded. “What in God’s name do you want curtains for?”

“I like things nice,” said Mrs. Malloy. “I always did like to have things nice for you,” and her lower lip began to tremble”.... “Men just don’t understand how a woman feels,” she sobbed. “Men just never try to put themselves in a woman’s place.” (Steinbeck 43-44)

Chapter 9: "The Art of Dissembling--and a Broken Down Truck..."

A truck from the Hamilton Ranch (Steinbeck's ancestral home) that conjured up images of Lee Chong's truck (not accurate period, but cool patina nonetheless...)

Another beat up truck from the Hamilton Ranch...

Doc's Lab - where Mack goes to work his manipulative magic...

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

[inner] Chapter 10: "Frankie, part one”

Doc at work a the Lab (this photo stands at Pacific Biological today). Friend to the underdogs, big and small.

The basement / garage where Doc found Frankie cowering in a crate of excelsior. 

Chapter 11: "Ode to a Model T Ford"

Front end of a Model T Ford from the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, CA.

Interior of a Model T Ford (taken at the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, CA).

Gay was an inspired mechanic. There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works. Indeed there are men near whom a car runs better. (Steinbeck 57)

Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. (Steinbeck 61)

[inner] Chapter 12: "The Death of a Literary Man (at the Hotel del Monte)”

Monterey (Cannery Row) seen from the roof of the Hotel del Monte (now the Naval Postgraduate School)

Hotel del Monte's ballroom...

Mosaic tile wall in the Hotel del Monte (Josh Billings died at the hotel).

Modern facade of the Hotel del Monte (now the Naval Postgraduate School)

Chapter 13: "Beauty in All Things”

The Salinas River inspired much of Steinbeck's environmental description...

A scene from an early morning hike around Point Lobos Nature Preserve. Beauty in simplicity!

If you look closely enough at the seemingly inconsequential, you'll find something meaningful... (from the Red Pony ranch).

The Carmel is a lovely little river. It isn’t very long but in its course it has everything a river should have. It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools...A few miles up the valley the river cuts in under a high cliff from which vines and ferns hang down. At the base of this cliff there is a pool, green and deep, and on the other side of the pool is a little sandy place where it is good to sit and cook your dinner...Little water snakes slipped down to the rocks and then gently entered the water and swam along through the pool, their heads held up like little periscopes and a tiny wake spreading behind them. (Steinbeck 68-70)

Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spat, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his fingers, drank from the jug, belched and sat down by the fire...Men all do about the same things when they wake up. Mack’s process was loosely the one all of them followed. (Steinbeck 70)

[inner] Chapter 14: "The Hour of the Pearl”

The hour of the pearl...

Sign in front of the beach at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station on Cannery Row

Hopkins seen from the whale watching vessel. The other side of the ubiquitous "bird rocks" :)

Perhaps the beach occupied by the soldiers and their dates in chapter 14. From the Hopkins Marine Station.

The soldiers did not even seem to hear him. They smiled on and the girls were stroking their hair over their temples. At last in slow motion one of the soldiers turned his head so that his cheek was cradled between the girl’s legs. He smiled benevolently at the caretaker. (Steinbeck 80)

Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground to look for fish heads. Silent early morning dogs parade majestically picking and choosing judiciously wheron to pee. (Steinbeck 77)

Chapter 15: "Frog Warfare…”

A mural inside the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, CA. I think this captures the ethos of the event perfectly...

“since my wife went into politics, I’m just running crazy. She got elected to the Assembly for this district and when the Legislature isn’t in session, she’s off making speeches. And when she’s home she’s studying all the time and writing bills.” “Must be lousy in--I mean it must be pretty lonely,” said Mack. (Steinbeck 82)

The kind of women who put papers on shelves and had little towels like that instinctively distrusted and disliked Mack and the boys. Such women knew that they were the worst threats to a home, for they offered ease and thought and companionship as opposed to neatness, order, and properness. They were very glad she was away. (Steinbeck 82)

A few frogs lost their heads and floundered among the feet and got through and these were saved. But the majority decided to leave this pool forever, to find a new home in a new country where this kind of thing didn’t happen. A wave of frantic, frustrated, frogs, big ones, little ones, brown ones, green ones, men frogs and women frogs, a wave of them broke over the bank, crawled, leaped, scrambled. They clambered up the grass, they clutched at each other, little ones rode on big ones. And then--horror on horror--the flashlights found them...never in frog history had such an execution taken place. (Steinbeck 85)

Wagner - Ride of the Valkyries (Link to music)