His father and uncle were part of a long line of Sicilians who fished sardines, and Russo has vivid memories of Cannery Row before the sardines disappeared. Today, Anthony Russo's green and white boat is practically the only one left. 'īack in the 1930s and '40s, more than 100 sardine boats plied the waters off Monterey. I'd make him stand on the porch instead of coming in. She remembers that when a young cannery worker named Joe Bragdon stopped by to ask her for a date, 'he'd come to the house and his clothes would be all smelly and. 'The view was a veritable ocean of sardines, pouring into the canneries that gave the street the name by which it is universally known,' Montagne says.ĭoris Bragdon was a teenager then, living a few blocks away from Cannery Row. Fourteen canneries lined Ocean View Avenue in the 1930s, when the novel takes place. John Steinbeck began his story this way: 'Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light. In a two-part report for Morning Edition, NPR's Renee Montagne tells the tale of Cannery Row, the place, and Ed Ricketts, the real-life Doc of Steinbeck's Cannery Row, a loveable intellectual who ran a lab amid the foul-smelling strip of sardine canneries and honky tonks. Steinbeck had cast Ricketts as the fictional 'Doc' in his best-selling novel.

At his death, Ed Ricketts was something of a celebrity. Fifty-five years ago, the best friend of novelist John Steinbeck was hit by a train after his Buick stalled on the tracks near Monterey, California's Cannery Row.

Cannery row 1945