Ray Bradbury Lived Next Door

It's funny what you remember sometimes.   When I was a kid, I lived on in Los Angeles.  At the time it was a fairly typical suburban neighborhood, if suburban was in the middle of a bigger city.  My memories of the street and the house I lived in are very fond, I suppose all childhood ones should be.  We had any number of interesting characters who lived on my street most interesting case was a blue house just up the street from me.   

At the time, the house was no more a curiosity than any other house.  It had a picket fence in the front, a few bushes, and almost ll the windows were usually draped or shuttered whenever mom and I walked past.  I really didn't pay it any mind back then, even when my mother told me someone famous lived there.   When I asked who it was, she told me his name was Ray Bradbury and that he was a famous writer.   I didn't know who Ray Bradbury was of course.  I was only four or five years old.    I don't remember if my mom ever asked me if I wanted to meet him, if she did I likely shied away because I was very bashful.   I have a feeling she left the man be.

Thinking of it now though, I wish I had met Ray Bradbury back then.   Since I am a writer now, and I've read many of his books, I can appreciate the chance in a 20/20 aspect.   It was the first of two times I had a chance to be face to face.  Bradbury was always elusive I suppose.  The second time was at a writer's conference in Santa Barbara.  He was in ill health but came all the same to sign and do a speech.  I got in line and was about to get a signed book when he was pulled away for his speech.   I don't remember much about the speech now, sadly.   

What I do remember is his writing.   Of all his varied writings, only two make my top list, even as one of my favorite writers:   Fahrenheit 451, and Dandelion Wine.  Fahrenheit has a very Orwellian 1984 vibe, and the idea of turning the concept of firefighters on their head still resonates today.   In an age where books are no longer as valuable with the internet, it is easy to forget the value of the written word as it is and was.    

Dandelion Wine I wrote about in high school for a creative writing project.  I was to copy Bradbury's style exactly, so I chose his description of the white sneakers and made my own style.   It was apparently so good that the teacher and several others weren't sure if I had just copy pasted his exact words.  (I hadn't.)   

Later in life, once I was established in writing, I pondered writing to Bradbury and telling him how he inspired me.  I just kept putting it off I suppose, something I regret now.   The man died just a year or two ago, and left a legacy of science fiction that still resonates today.    As for his house on it was sold and repainted to an ugly yellow.   The white fence was ripped out, as was the flower garden.  You wouldn't know the history to drive by it, unless you looked up the house on the internet.   Still, it is rather cool as a writer to say I lived next door to Ray Bradbury.

Cannery Row - A retrospective

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia a dream.  Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.  Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps,,, gambler and   sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody.  Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men” and he would have meant the same thing.” 

So begins John Steinbeck in Cannery Row.  Steinbeck always has a way with words and description in his opening pages which fascinated me.   He was one of my earliest inspirations in writing, sitting in my High School English History Class with my teacher, Mister Simon, I can recall reading The Grapes of Wrath.

I see myself there, almost on the edge of my seat, hanging off of each word of a man who transformed life into ink.   In Steinbeck, there is always that quality that does not parse or color things more rosey than the reality.   He is frank, and he captures a reality of places and people who very truely existed.   

Not many people know the truth of Cannery Row in Monterey in California.  Back then it was called Oceanview Avenue and it was the waterfront industrial wherein the Sardine factories that fed a nation were located.    Steinbeck captures that place and time in that semiannually Steinbeckian (yes that is a word now) manner.    Reading through the pages you find both charming and conniving characters, mysteries and fantasies, a reality of a place and time over fifty years ago that is long gone today.

John Steinbeck would not recognize the Cannery Row of today, though he bears part of the credit that inspired its transformation and popularization.  The other resident local that bears that distinction is the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which stands within the block radius of what Steinbeck WOULD recognize.

John is one of my heroes when it comes to descriptive writing, along with Ray Bradbury and Herman Melville.    When I was in high school I tried to practice both their ways of writing, and with Bradbury I had some success.   Steinbeck remained elusive, but he continued to inspire so much so that when it was time to go to college, I chose to attend university at Cal State Monterey Bay.  There were other reasons going there of course, but being in proximity to Steinbeck country was one of the biggest ones.

I  got to see a transformation of Cannery Row in my years there.  I have fond memories of the way it used to be, though even that way is not familiar to the Steinbeck description.  The largest transformation happened when I was long gone, graduated and moved back home.  I didn't see the change coming.

Recently I came back once more, on a busy summer Monday, to retrace my steps and the steps of Steinbeck on Cannery Row.   I hope to share these experiences, along with pictures in a few future blog posts.   My hope is to enlighten others and share a passion for a place and time long gone.  My own retrospective on Cannery Row, that poem and stink, the grating noise and quality of light, the habit and tone, the nostalgia ... and the dream.