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| Image from the Monterey Herald |
An old song goes, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. They pave paradise, and put in a parking lot." Many of us have this sentiment I am sure when it comes to places we loved or grew up in and that change with the passing of time. It can be in a short span, a matter of days, but I think that most change happens over long periods - so slow that we barely notice it until it is too late. So it was for me returning to Monterey California over Spring Break 2022.
It's funny thinking back, because when I came there to go to college at the California State University at Monterey Bay I remember disliking the college. I liked Monterey, I liked the weather and surroundings, especially when it came to literary history like Steinbeck and Robert Lewis Stevenson. The University was an ugly dumpling in those days, just fresh popped in the oven and starting to rise. It had only been open some seven years on the Fort Ord area, and there were still many old barracks and buildings that surrounded us. The structures we were in were old converted variations of these painted in purple and green as they were the favorite hues of the university president's wife. (I thought them ugly colors.)
There were no new buildings, the grounds were run down, and we were surrounded by ruins. We were, in a sense, a desert island.
There was suspicion my first dorm has once been a prison, as it was square shaped with tiny little rooms off central spaces, and it had metal walkways and tall towers. Next to us was a derelict ruin of barracks and the only path to get to the main campus and to food was a small sand path broken through some overgrown dunes. At night and with the fog, it was like walking through a horror movie, surrounded by lichen strewn trees and only a distant light of the street in the fog. I had a very rowdy surrounding, though I myself was quiet, and I remember hating that first and second year.
My salvation was the surroundings as I said, and I would go into Monterey or Santa Cruz for sojourns. Cannery Row was, in itself, built up a bit, with big buildings and hotels and tourist hot spots, but it was still just funky enough it almost felt like Steinbeck country still. There were still the ruins of old canneries, the run down shops, and of course the Aquarium which I was a member as a student. I remember being able to get in before anyone else, enjoy all the sights and then go get an ice cream at the Ghiradelli shop before going back to the rowdy dorm.
In junior and senior years I had a much better time with dorm and college class situations, I met some nice friends who I still talk to today. The last year I had a room with an ocean view, a nice big space to myself. To this day I don't think any college has a better ocean view or location for its students to take in their surroundings on the sea. I don't think many others could boast the view I had as a humanities major.
Once I graduated and moved away, I would make trips up there on occasion but after a time I stopped due to work and life circumstances. I kept abreast of changes as enormous moneys poured into Cannery Row and CSUMB. New Hotels were built, a new library, student complexes, etc. I visited once and saw these and felt impressed at the time. Many of my old haunts were still there in the shadows, and it still felt like home, and nostalgia painted sweeter colors over time of my experiences. I could look back and laugh at those first two years and smile at the latter two. Even now I think back to my last days there wishing they could last a bit longer.
It seems, however, nothing is to last, especially in the age of Covid. Going to downtown Monterey I found that the Aquarium now packs in members with the public at the same time with long queues and online ticket sales. The huge hotel next door where once was an empty lot now blots out all sun upon the street, and tacky shops have replaced all the old ones that I liked. The same goes for the Fisherman's Wharf, where I found naught but tourist traps where once was one of my favorite places for clam chowder.
The University was immensely changed. Repainted, all the old buildings gone. The path from my former dorm is now grown over, gone, replaced by green. Nothing remains of my time there, save memories and fragments. The new structures offset the old ones with their wealth and grandeur, modern, sleek, clean - nice for the people there, but cold and stark. There's no warmth, no living, just function and form.
John Steinbeck said of Cannery Row in Monterey that it is a "... poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." So it is with it now, as it is with CSUMB. It is nothing more than words on a page, a waxing light within my mind of days come - gone, paved over.