What you should not miss if you are in Monterey, CA visiting the Monterey Aquarium!
During one of our trips to the Monterey Aquarium, my family was invited by an old friend of ours to visit him and his wife in Salinas. He had just gotten a new position with Dole after working for so a few other produce companies. Since Salinas is synonymous with vegetables such as lettuce and many other derivatives, our friend was in the right position to give us a tour of the manufacturing. It was so great to see how the vegetables that are served on our tables were prepared. We had to wear some overalls and hard hats. It was time to walk around and see the vegetables get refrigerated, packaged and read for sale. It’s a huge factory with lots of machines running every where one can see. The workers were quick to select the best vegetables. Quality control was the norm. At the end of the tour, I realized that various measures of safety were applied. Touring the cold storage and seeing the various packages of vegetables ready to be shipped to customers was not the highlight of my trip though.
Literary Tour of the City
I was a sucker for all the beans on John Steinbeck. More than anything, I wanted to see the center that bears or is named after him. Salinas to name a center after this great literary figure in 1997! Well, that’s what happened after the elite of Salinas composed mostly of the growers, planters and literary figures and city officials realized that there was some money and recognition to gain from giving a special place to this native son. For the longest time, Salinas was considered a persona non grata in his own beloved Salinas. No matter what the powerful group of planters and growers thought about him, he was proud of his birth place. He seized every opportunity to say the best things about it. He considered himself lucky to be born there! He was born there in Feb. 1902, studied marine biology at Stanford, but left for New York without a degree. He wanted to be a freelance writer, but soon realized that he could not cut it there and returned to the Salinas area to write in complete solitude.
What caused the produce industry’s wrath?
2002 will bring John Steinbeck’s 100th birthday. It’s time to celebrate!
Well, all of it was due to the power of his words. He was denouncing the abuse and exploitation of the have-nots by the haves. It happens that the growers and shippers were the ’’kings of the hill’’ in the great and fertile Salinas Valley. One of the pillars of Western literature is the ’’Grapes of Wrath’’ which is held high by people from everywhere fighting for labor rights. For sure, he was standing with the ordinary men, the laborers. He was advocating for the labor rights of the Joads, the migrant workers. This is where the themes of this book are so universal. The impact of this book is still resonating in the farms of this country, the maquiladoras and many third-world countries industries and multinationals. Through his work, we can his affinity to social activism, empowerment of the poor, the proletariat, his characters and his ability to be a keen observer of the human conditions. John Steinbeck’s novels got on the nerves of the Salinas’s agricultural establishment. They did not want to be nice to a guy who appeared to be against their interests and livelihood. It was no laughing matter.
Fortunately, after so many years of disdain, healing has taken place. The same people who were against him ended up contributing to the construction of the National Steinbeck Center. Just like my family and me, visitors from all over the world can now see the multimedia, the interactive museum and art space. More than anything, his novels are there for all of us to appreciate and read. Among some of them, we can cite, ’’Tortilla Flat, ’’ ’’In Dubious Battle, ’’ ’’Of Mice and Men, ’’ ’’Cannery Row, ’’ ’’East of Eden, ’’ etc.
Monterey Aquarium and Cannery Row
We had bid our family friend goodbye and headed toward the Aquarium!
After watching the shows at the Aquarium, it was time for me and my family to hit the chic stores on Cannery Row. But first, I had to have a good lunch. We selected a seafood restaurant right on the beach by the pier. While the fees were high, the food was great. We then stepped down to put our feet in the sand and fresh water. My kids could not be happier to play in the sand right by the pier! It was fantastic.
Before going to our hotel, we stopped by a few stores selling all kinds of merchandises with John Steinbeck. I bought a copy of ’’East of Eden’’ to add to the two books by John Steinbeck.
I would recommend this tour to anybody visiting the Salinas Valley or Monterey. You will see lots of merchandises with John Steinbeck’s name. At least, posthumously his birth place is giving him his dues. He is very popular and loved by the whole world.