By Beauty Damned

Sweet Salinas

Kathleen and I went to Salinas, California once. We are both big John Steinbeck fans and we had this heavily romanticized idea about what Salinas would be like. I imagined the rolling green hills and vineyards of East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. Sadly, it was just another dusty northern California town without a lot going on. We were looking for Steinbeck's house and grave and we were having a really tough time finding it, so we stopped at a grocery store and asked a couple of people if they knew anything about it. Nobody did.

In fact, one man who worked in the grocery store said, with an unnerving air of imbecilic pride, "I've lived in this town for 30 years and I don't even know who John Steinbeck is!" Then he said a little sheepishly "I guess I ought to be ashamed of myself." I remember thinking Kathleen was so cool when she looked at him so frankly and said, "Yes. You should be ashamed of yourself." He shrugged it off. With that we left the store and continued on our search. All we got out of it was a shouting argument between the two of us about which direction we were supposed to be going in. We left Salinas without ever seeing Steinbeck's home or his grave. The disappointment we felt was so palpable that I remember flipping the bird as we passed the sign that said "Thanks for visiting Salinas, California. Come back again soon." Haven't been back since. Kathleen pointed out that if we'd had the internet back then, we wouldn't have had any trouble finding it at all. Mapquest has made incidents like this one obsolete.

What disturbed me about the following article is that 39% of Salinas residents voted against the measure increasing sales tax by a half a cent in order to keep their city libraries open. Thirty. Nine. Percent. Apparently 39 percent of Salinas residents are either illiterate or just severely stupid. Nice priorities fuckjobs. John Steinbeck would turn over in his grave. Thank god for the 61% whose heads aren't lodged in their asses. And furthermore, thank god for Bill Murray. That was so nice of him to step in and do what the citizens of that town (and every town) should be doing for themselves: valuing literacy enough to fund their city libraries.

Steinbeck's hometown votes tax boost for libraries

Nov 10, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Libraries in Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas, California, will remain open after voters approved an increase in the local sales tax, according to election results posted on Wednesday.

The measure will increase Salinas' sales tax by a half cent, raising an estimated $11 million a year in revenue for the farming town. The measure was approved by 61 percent of voters on Tuesday and opposed by 39 percent.

The money will help the birthplace of Steinbeck, who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men," keep its libraries open. Facing tight budgets, Salinas officials last year had considered shuttering them. Private funds, including a contribution by actor Bill Murray, helped keep the libraries open part-time.