First stop: The Steinbeck Center
by Rhina Guidos, Outpost staff
We had no idea where we were going. We had an old Atlas, no addresses, no names of museums or places. We didn't decide on a route until we were on the road. But I was bent on going through Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas.
We drove through the beautiful lush green hills of California's central valley, through small agricultural towns like Los Banos and by the beautiful San Luis Reservoir.
March was the perfect season: light traffic, few tourists.
It is hard to find places more beautiful than that section
of California in spring.
The National Steinbeck Center is located in Oldtown
Salinas, two blocks from Steinbeck's childhood
home. Photo courtesy of the National Steinbeck
Center.
Asparagus was coming into season and signs all over Highway 101 called buyers to the vegetable stands. Many billboards advertised Cannery Row, and it becomes a tempting first stop. But we kept going. Then we saw a sign that we did not expect: National Steinbeck Center, next exit. I was excited to arrive in Salinas. Naturally, the town has grown since Steinbeck's childhood, but it maintains the understated atmosphere of an agricultural town.
The center is located in what is now old town Salinas, on the corner of Central and Main streets. It is two blocks away from Steinbeck's childhood home. On a wall of a building facing the center is a colorful mural featuring symbols of who and what Steinbeck wrote about: the California fields, the workers, his travel adventures, the sea, and Charley, the french poodle who accompanied him on a road trip across the country.
Admission to the center is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors
and students and $4 for children 11 to 17. I could have
easily spent the entire day in the center. It is an
interactive museum, not just about Steinbeck, but about
Salinas and the issues Steinbeck wrote and cared about.
Outside the Steinbeck Center in Oldtown Salinas, a
mural pays tribute to Steinbeck and his
characters.
Photo by Rhina Guidos.
One of the first exhibits is the family tree of the Steinbecks. Their faces are on pieces of cardboard that can be turned. The back tells a tidbit about that family member or anecdote. Practically all the exhibits are interactive. We did not climb on the lettuce boxcar where the lettuce melted in "East of Eden," but we listened to Steinbeck's speech when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. We also sat in the six-sided cabin where he wrote some of his stories.
Most of the exhibits are interactive. Juliette
plays with a can of beans in the Of Mice and Men
section. Photo by Rhina Guidos.
The center has permanent exhibits with seven themed galleries such as the Mexican Plaza or Ed Ricketts' laboratory and living quarters. The Plaza teaches people about the Mexican Revolution and folk culture. At Ed Ricketts' laboratory, we touched sea stars and other bottled creatures of the sea. We also listened to Ricketts' favorite music and saw some of his favorite books.
For me, the center put into perspective the importance of the events in Steinbeck's literature. Events such as workers' struggle were not mere elements to of a great novel. They were, and still are, powerful and real even events to those who live in places such as Salinas.
The center is relatively new. It opened in the summer of 1998, almost 30 years after Steinbeck's death. One of the newspaper articles about the center's opening hinted that the long-overdue tribute was no oversight. Ranch and field owners did not make an effort to establish a tribute to the native son, the article said, because he had never painted them in a positive light. Steinbeck always sided with the struggling, underpaid workers of the California fields. The Establishment and the owners were always the villains. Ironically, most of the money for the center came from the landowners.
Prior the center's opening, the only tribute to Steinbeck was The Steinbeck House, a restaurant and mini-museum of the author's childhood. That's where we headed next.
Posted May 10, 1999
Copyright 1999 Nevada Outpost
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