Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on April 26, 2020.

When I was in 8th and 9th grade (50 years ago now!) I read a lot of John Steinbeck. Everything the small Broadwater County Library had.

The library. which was cramped and dark, was in the basement of the county courthouse. Since it was a half-a-block from my house I was a regular. The entrance to the library was on the backside of the courthouse off the alley that ran next to the small, brick jail.

The other thing I remember about the library was that the librarian, who was small and white-haired, did not seem to like kids too much. At least she didn’t like me. I always got the feeling that when I checked out a book by Steinbeck or Hemingway or Faulkner she was suspicious that I was doing something with them other than reading them.

As I think about it now, I realize that I was not popular with either of the librarians in town. My junior and senior year in high school in fact, I was banned from entering the second story library at Broadwater County High School. I could check out all the books I wanted, I just was not allowed into it. 50 years have erased my memory of what great sin I must have been accused of. But certainly it must have been egregious. I do remember that I was the kind of kid that adults generally did not like too much.

Anyway, back to Steinbeck. I suspect that from the beginning it was inevitable that I would love Steinbeck. My innate, adolescent sense that we lived in an unfair world responded immediately to his characters who were most often economic “losers” and “outsiders.” His themes of injustice (especially economic injustice) resonated with me and my family life

A couple years ago, I got a bug to reread a Steinbeck. I ended up rereading:

• Cannery Row
• Tortilla Flat
• The Moon is Down
• The Wayward Bus
• The Pearl
• In Dubious Battle

Cannery Row is is not a traditional plot-driven novel. Instead, it focuses on capturing the atmosphere and the unique characters of a specific place: the Cannery District of Monterey, California. This area is home to a diverse community, including those struggling with poverty and those who have chosen a more unconventional lifestyle.

The narrative frequently shifts away from the main plotline, which follows a group of unemployed but resourceful men called “Mack and the boys,” to introduce a variety of colorful characters who inhabit the Row. These interludes often involve themes of violence, such as suicides, the harshness of nature, and even the discovery of dead bodies.

Despite these darker elements, Steinbeck’s writing aims to portray the vibrant and unique spirit of Cannery Row and its unconventional residents.

There were surprisingly few deja vu moments re-experiencing a book that I knew I had loved so much when I first read it all those years ago. If anything, it was much better than I remember. A 14 year-old boy and a 60 year-old man can love the same book, but it is inevitable that it will be in different ways, or more properly, different levels of depth.

Rereading Steinbeck and Cannery Row now, amid the new economic turmoil caused by the Covid crisis, and in light of the Madness that is Trump, the beauty of the little book about “Mack and the boys” and, especially, the knight-errant Doc shines even more luminously than it could have for me 45 years ago.