As you probably know, the three westernmost roads in California are Highway 1--the scenic coastal highway, including Big Sur; 101, cutting through acres of farmland; and Highway 5, the fastest route, but all desert.
I was so glad that I decided to return to 101--as I'd taken Route 1 on my way north. Fruit stands advertising Merry Cherries and pomegranates, strawberries and oranges were happy discoveries all along the road between where I was last night and 101, including a large farm stand called Casa De Frutes.
When I got back to 101, I spent a couple of hours in the Steinbeck National Center in Salinas. I watched a biography of Steinbeck and scenes from movies based on his books. A docent offered to take my photo in a Model T that represented the cars in East of Eden.
Steinbeck attended Stanford sporadically for six years, then left without earning a degree. He worked in the farms of Salinas alongside hoboes. During that time, he anguished over the fate of the Dust Bowl migrants, which led to the writing of Grapes of Wrath--a book that he believed would "never be an important book." It was, however. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and his worries about money were over.
My favorite part was seeing the actual truck and camper in which Steinbeck traveled with his gray standard poodle, Charley. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1962, Steinbeck (already wealthy from his novels) was devastated by the negative criticism in the press, and he never wrote another novel again. J. Edgar Hoover had called him a "dangerous subversive", and his books were banned in some quarters. Travels With Charley was written after his novels: Tortilla Flat, The Red Pony, Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden....and several others. With his third wife, he traveled to England and called that the "happiest year of my life."
Steinbeck shied away from fame, always preferring the process of writing to the books themselves. "It's the writing, the journey, that matters," he said.
Steinbeck was born in 1902. His mother Olive was said to have 'infused a sense of enchantment" in her own two children and her students.
All morning I'd been wondering about the crops grown in the Salinas valley. At the Steinbeck center, I saw a film that focused on "the most fertile valley in the world"--a place that has attracted farmers from countries all over the world. There's cauliflower, beans, lettuce, garlic, artichokes, broccoli, as well as many others I've never even heard of. It would be wonderful (and probably encourage healthier eating) if all children could see the fields where these beautiful fruits and vegetables come from.
As I drove away, I saw a field covered with little golden balls. I had to pull off, to see them up close. In a town called, appropriately, Greenfield, I wended my way through the farmland and discovered that those little balls were yellow onions. I had never before seen onions growing! I drove through fields of rich green Romaine lettuce and more onions, and wound up in a street party--the annual Harvest Festival of Greenville. An ear of corn (you slather them with mayonnaise here) served as supper.
A pomegranate, a peach, and a bag of purple tomatillos are now parked beside my pumpkin on the floor of the Mini. I don't believe I'll ever again take the variety of fruits and vegetables for granted again! Mother Nature is endlessly fertile.
What was on the radio were traditional hymns, the ones I grew up hearing, and the ones I grew up playing on the piano. I'm not a great fan of more contemporary hymns, but those old songs I sing along with and find my fingers moving on the wheel--my keyboard without keys. I remembered "riding around" when I was a child, my parents singing these wonderful old songs together. I remembered that while they were singing, I was looking out the windows at rows and rows of peach trees, fields of cotton, kudzu growing along the road banks.
One of the things I love about riding around in the larger neighborhood of this continent is re-living moments that infused in me a sense of road enchantment!
No comments:
Post a Comment