"The view was a veritable ocean of sardines, pouring into the canneries that gave the street the name by which it is universally known," Montagne says.ĭoris Bragdon was a teenager then, living a few blocks away from Cannery Row. Fourteen canneries lined Ocean View Avenue in the 1930s, when the novel takes place. John Steinbeck began his story this way: "Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light. In a two-part report for Morning Edition, NPR's Renee Montagne tells the tale of Cannery Row, the place, and Ed Ricketts, the real-life Doc of Steinbeck's Cannery Row, a loveable intellectual who ran a lab amid the foul-smelling strip of sardine canneries and honky tonks. Steinbeck had cast Ricketts as the fictional "Doc" in his best-selling novel. At his death, Ed Ricketts was something of a celebrity. Fifty-five years ago, the best friend of novelist John Steinbeck was hit by a train after his Buick stalled on the tracks near Monterey, California's Cannery Row.
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