Life lessons from Cannery Row
Back in the day, in the late sixties, my year of college, there was a war going on in Southeast Asia. My Uncle Sam was adamant I should go to work for him in his Navy.
Prior to that, I had read some of John Steinbeck’s work and actually written, if one could call it that, a thing or two. It was surely part of a college class as I cannot imagine at that time of my life writing anything voluntarily.
Recently, a post from a new connection on ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter) piqued my interest in Steinbeck’s work. Having been born and raised in Dust Bowl Country, Steinbeck and I were already kindred spirits.
So, I thought to myself, with my normal reading being wartime British history, why don’t I read something by Steinbeck.
I chose Cannery Row. I was certain I had read it back in the day, but today, it seemed new.
What follows I’ve written voluntarily. I do more of that now.
……
It was the rain. The guys living in the Palace Flophouse thought they were satisfied… until it rained…for more than a month!
The author said it was an “unprecedented rainfall.” Not being able to get out or go anywhere for all that time, those housebound guys eventually tired of looking at one another.
Such a situation calls for leadership. An opportunity for someone to step up and be a difference maker. In the Palace Flophouse, that someone was Mack.
“The Palace Flophouse was no sudden development. Indeed when Mack and Hazel and Eddie and Hughie and Jones moved into it, they looked upon it as little more than shelter from the wind and the rain, as a place to go when everything else had closed or when their welcome was thin and sere with overuse. Then the Palace was only a long bare room, lit dimly by two small windows, walled with unpainted wood smelling strongly of fish meal. They had not loved it then.”
But they had thought they were satisfied. “Because it sheltered them, the house grew dear to them.”
After more than a month of rain, “Mack knew that some kind of organization was necessary particularly among such a group of ravening individualists.
So, “Mack, with a piece of chalk, drew five oblongs on the floor, each seven feet long and four feet wide, and in each square he wrote a name. These were the simulated beds. Each man had property rights inviolable in his space. He could legally fight a man who encroached on his square. The rest of the room was property common to all. That was in the first days when Mack and the boys sat on the floor, played cards hunkered down, and slept on the hard boards.”
It seemed to me to be a bit communistic. But when Mack, with his chalk assigned ownership of those squares on the bare floor, he unknowingly, I think, created property rights. Each of the men now owned a space, a personal space.
And then some beautiful things began to happen. The author continues:
“Then one afternoon, Hughie came in with an army cot which had a torn canvas. He spent two hours sewing up the rip with fishing line. And that night, the others lying on the floor in their squares watched Hughie ooze gracefully into his cot—they heard him sigh with abysmal comfort, and he was asleep and snoring before anyone else.”
A classic example of free enterprise, pun intended.
“The next day, Mack puffed up the hill carrying a rusty set of springs he had found on a scrap-iron dump. The apathy was broken then. The boys outdid one another in beautifying the Palace.”
Then appeared “old carpets on the floor, chairs with and without seats. Mack had a wicker chaise lounge painted bright red. There were tables, a grandfather clock without dial face or works. The walls were whitewashed which made it almost light and airy. Pictures began to appear—mostly calendars showing improbable luscious blondes holding bottles of Coca-Cola.”
Then they found an old iron Franklin stove. It weighed three hundred pounds. The stove was in Seaside, five miles distant. With the stove comes one of the many lessons. I will let Mr. Steinbeck relate it.
“Mack and Hughie exhausted every possibility of haulage for ten days, and only when they realized that no one was going to take this stove home for them did they begin to carry it.”
The lesson: Sometimes you just have to step up and do things yourself.
The stove warmed the Palace, and they found they could actually fry an egg on its cooking surface. These events stirred some long dead emotions.
“With the great stove came pride, and with pride the Palace became home.”
Soon, there was a vine growing over the front door and various bushes outside in the front yard.
See how that works? Civilized almost.
It all started with Mack and his chalk on the floor.
Lessons:
If you don’t like your situation, get some chalk.
It takes very little effort to bring about a major change.
Be prepared to learn from well-meaning but unconventional friends, if you have any.
Bad happenings can produce positive results.
Understand that bad happenings may have started out as good intentions
Please feel free to add your lesson/s in the comments section. You might be the chalk for someone’s day.
This reminded me of a personal experience. In the US Navy, working for my uncle, you remember, I was in Iceland at a remote communications station called simply H2. You had to fly in on an ancient C47 that had flown in WW2. We landed on a gravel strip not far from the Norwegian Sea. But I digress.
Remote Site H2 closed down, and we and our mission were to be transferred down nearer the main base at Keflavik. Us old timers called it “Kef.”
For some reason, unknown to me, we were assigned “living” quarters out on the airbase consisting of Quonset Huts left over from WW2.
The huts were still divided into rooms for “Flight Commander,” Navigator,” Crew Chief,” and other aeronautical titles.
I was reminded of our “quarters” recently as we watched Apple TV’s new mini-series ‘Masters of The Air.’
If I recall correctly, we drew straws to see who was the “Flight Commander.” Pretty heady stuff for a bunch of enlisted Radiomen and ET’s (Electronic Technicians).
The Quonset Huts provided few of the things it took to make what one might call a modern life bearable.
With a bit of time on our hands, we did what Mack and the guys did at the Flophouse. We spruced things up a bit.
It was a time when ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ was a popular song. We found several nice and similarly sized rocks. It’s not hard to find rocks in Iceland. We used them to line the sidewalk up to our front door.
Then someone, I don’t recall who, said, “Why don’t we paint the rocks white?” So, we did. I don’t remember where we got the paint. We probably knew someone who knew someone. You could get a lot of stuff that way in the Navy.
We found an old toilet seat which nicely decorated the front door and used some of the white paint to add the name of our little establishment; Alice’s Restaurant!
It looked pretty nice with the white stones marking the path, the sign on the door and all. I seemed to recall we had some fake flowers as well.
Right inside the front door was a common room where we sat around playing cards, having a few cool ones and other things sailors did with time on their hands.
One evening, a knock came to the door. That was unusual because none of us ever knocked. We looked at one another, and then someone got up and opened the door.
There stood two German sailors. They were from a ship down in the harbor. They had asked a taxi driver to take them to a restaurant and the driver had brought them to–‘Alice’s Restaurant.’
We did the best we could for international relations, and we shared what niceties we had with our new friends. A great time was had by all. Our new friends invited us to tour their ship. I think a few of the guys did that the next day.
There, now I’m done. You got some pithy comments on John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and a true personal Navy story thrown in at no additional cost to you,
You’re welcome.
Now go find your chalk.