Wonders of the Central Coast: The National Steinbeck Center
It’s hard to think about Salinas without the legacy of John Steinbeck coming to mind.
“He wrote so many books about the Salinas Valley and Monterey County,”
said Marcos Cabrera, a curator with the National Steinbeck Center.
Steinbeck, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author was born in Salinas. He grew up and worked in and around the area.
“He was a farmhand,” explained Cabrera. “He worked on crews and that really gave him an understanding of the everyman.”
That’s an understanding that resonates in the area today.
His life and work are now celebrated at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.
Cabrera showed me around the center recently.
“We try to offer something to both the international Steinbeck community and also to the local community and try and engage them in programming that is fun and also relavent to the works of Steinbeck,” said Cabrera.
A long exhibit hall takes a visitor on a tour of Steinbeck’s life through the themes of his different works.
“‘East of Eden’ is when you enter and obviously that’s all about the Salinas Valley,” said Cabrerea. “When you come around the corner, you’ll see the exhibits dedicated to ‘The Red Pony,’ to ‘Of Mice and Men.'”
And it’s not just some stuffy museum!
“We actually have stuff where the kids can come and pull on levers and open doors and really kind of just get their hands dirty ,” said Cabrera.
The experience ties in the author’s life to the local culture and caters to visitors from around the world.
“Oh, I think it’s a fabulous wonder,” said Tom Debley, visiting from Oakland with friends from the United Kingdom. “I’m a big Steinbeck fan and I’ve been here before and I’ll be here again.”
“You have a cultural center, internationally recognized here in Salinas.
Think about that for a second,” said Cabrera. “We’re going to be relavent to international discourse for generations to come.”
It really is an amazing thing to have such a cultural treasure associated with a major literary icon right in our back yard here in Salinas and it’s certainly one of the Wonders of the Central Coast.
