was a mess.
The original benefactor, Mr. Deems, was a nice old fellow. He used to smoke a little opium, when it was legal, and this kept him healthy and rested so that he didnât get high blood pressure or tuberculosis. He was a benevolent man, but he was also a philosopher. When he saw what he had created by giving the roque courts to the Pacific Grove retreat he was saddened and later horrified. He said he knew how God felt.
The tournament came July 30, and feeling was so bad that people were carrying pistols. Blue kids and Green kids had gang wars. Mr. Deems, after a period of years, finally figured that as long as he felt like God he might as well act like God. There was too much violence in town.
On the night of July 29 Mr. Deems sent out a bulldozer. In the morning, where the roque courts had been, there was only a deep, ragged hole in the ground. If heâd had time he would have continued Godâs solution. Heâd have filled the hole with water.
They ran Mr. Deems out of Pacific Grove. They would have tarred and feathered him if they could have caught him, but he was safe in Monterey, cooking his yen shi over a peanut-oil lamp.
Every July 30, to this day, the whole town of Pacific Grove gets together and burns Mr. Deems in effigy. They make a celebration of it, dress up a life-size figure, and hang it from a pine tree. Later they burn it. People march underneath with torches, and the poor helpless figure of Mr. Deems goes up in smoke every year.
There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isnât necessarily a lie even if it didnât necessarily happen.
9
Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts
To a casual observer Cannery Row might have seemed a series of self-contained and selfish units, each functioning alone with no reference to the others. There was little visible connection between La Idaâs, the Bear Flag, the grocery (still known as Lee Chongâs Heavenly Flower Grocery), the Palace Flop house, and Western Biological Laboratories. The fact is that each was bound by gossamer threads of steel to all the othersâhurt one, and you aroused vengeance in all. Let sadness come to one, and all wept.
Doc was more than first citizen of Cannery Row. He was healer of the wounded soul and the cut finger. Strongly entrenched in legality though he was, he found himself constantly edged into infringements by the needs of his friends, and anyone could hustle him for a buck without half trying. When trouble came to Doc it was everybodyâs trouble.
What was Docâs trouble? Even he didnât know. He was deeply, grievingly unhappy. For hours on end he sat at his desk with a yellow pad before him and his needle-sharp pencils lined up. Sometimes his wastebasket was full of crushed, scribbled pages, and at others not even a doodle went down. Then he would move to the aquarium and stare into it. And his voices howled and cried and moaned. âWrite!â said his top voice, and âSearch!â sang his middle voice, and his lowest voice sighed, âLonesome! Lonesome!â He did not go down without a struggle. He resurrected old love affairs, he swam deep in music, he read the Sorrows of Werther , but the voices would not leave him. The beckoning yellow pages became his enemies. One by one the octopi died in the aquarium. He had worn thin the excuse of his lack of a proper microscope. When the last octopus died he leaped on this as his excuse. When his friends visited him he would explain, âYou see, I canât go on without specimens, and I canât get any more until the spring tides. As soon as I have specimens and a new microscope I can whip the paper right off.â
His friends sensed his pain and caught it and carried it away with them. They knew the time was coming when they would have to do something.
In the Palace Flop house a little meeting occurredâoccurred, because no one called it, no one planned it, and yet everyone
The original benefactor, Mr. Deems, was a nice old fellow. He used to smoke a little opium, when it was legal, and this kept him healthy and rested so that he didnât get high blood pressure or tuberculosis. He was a benevolent man, but he was also a philosopher. When he saw what he had created by giving the roque courts to the Pacific Grove retreat he was saddened and later horrified. He said he knew how God felt.
The tournament came July 30, and feeling was so bad that people were carrying pistols. Blue kids and Green kids had gang wars. Mr. Deems, after a period of years, finally figured that as long as he felt like God he might as well act like God. There was too much violence in town.
On the night of July 29 Mr. Deems sent out a bulldozer. In the morning, where the roque courts had been, there was only a deep, ragged hole in the ground. If heâd had time he would have continued Godâs solution. Heâd have filled the hole with water.
They ran Mr. Deems out of Pacific Grove. They would have tarred and feathered him if they could have caught him, but he was safe in Monterey, cooking his yen shi over a peanut-oil lamp.
Every July 30, to this day, the whole town of Pacific Grove gets together and burns Mr. Deems in effigy. They make a celebration of it, dress up a life-size figure, and hang it from a pine tree. Later they burn it. People march underneath with torches, and the poor helpless figure of Mr. Deems goes up in smoke every year.
There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isnât necessarily a lie even if it didnât necessarily happen.
9
Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts
To a casual observer Cannery Row might have seemed a series of self-contained and selfish units, each functioning alone with no reference to the others. There was little visible connection between La Idaâs, the Bear Flag, the grocery (still known as Lee Chongâs Heavenly Flower Grocery), the Palace Flop house, and Western Biological Laboratories. The fact is that each was bound by gossamer threads of steel to all the othersâhurt one, and you aroused vengeance in all. Let sadness come to one, and all wept.
Doc was more than first citizen of Cannery Row. He was healer of the wounded soul and the cut finger. Strongly entrenched in legality though he was, he found himself constantly edged into infringements by the needs of his friends, and anyone could hustle him for a buck without half trying. When trouble came to Doc it was everybodyâs trouble.
What was Docâs trouble? Even he didnât know. He was deeply, grievingly unhappy. For hours on end he sat at his desk with a yellow pad before him and his needle-sharp pencils lined up. Sometimes his wastebasket was full of crushed, scribbled pages, and at others not even a doodle went down. Then he would move to the aquarium and stare into it. And his voices howled and cried and moaned. âWrite!â said his top voice, and âSearch!â sang his middle voice, and his lowest voice sighed, âLonesome! Lonesome!â He did not go down without a struggle. He resurrected old love affairs, he swam deep in music, he read the Sorrows of Werther , but the voices would not leave him. The beckoning yellow pages became his enemies. One by one the octopi died in the aquarium. He had worn thin the excuse of his lack of a proper microscope. When the last octopus died he leaped on this as his excuse. When his friends visited him he would explain, âYou see, I canât go on without specimens, and I canât get any more until the spring tides. As soon as I have specimens and a new microscope I can whip the paper right off.â
His friends sensed his pain and caught it and carried it away with them. They knew the time was coming when they would have to do something.
In the Palace Flop house a little meeting occurredâoccurred, because no one called it, no one planned it, and yet everyone
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