In those summer days, one of my favorite walks was to stroll down Cannery Row, which was once the site of several sardine canning factories, now defunct: the last one had closed in 1973. The main street was officially named in January 1958 in honor of local writer John Steinbeck and his 1945 novel "Cannery Row." In the opening sentence he described the street with these words: "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."
