ED RICKETTS Just about dusk one day in April 1948 Ed Ricketts stopped work in the laboratory in cannery row. He covered his instruments and put away his papers and filing cards. He rolled down the sleeves of his wool shirt and put on the brown coat, which was slightly small for him frayed at the elbows.
He wanted a steak for dinner and he knew just the market in New Monterey where he could get a fine one, well hung and tender.He went out into the street that is officially named ocean View Avenue and is known s cannery row. His old car stood at the gutter, a beat up sedan. The car was tricky and hard to start. He needed a new one but could not afford it at the expense of other things. Ed tinkered away at the primer until the ancient rusty motor coughed and broke into bronchial chatter, which indicated it was running. Ed meshed the jagged gears and moved away up the street.
He turned up the hill where the road crosses the Southern Pacific Railways track. It was almost dark, or rather that kind of mixed light and dark which makes it very difficult to see. Just before the crossing the road takes a sharp climb. Ed shifted to second gear, the noisiest gear to get up the hill. The sound of his motor and gears blotted out every other sound. A corrugated iron warehouse was on his left, obscuring any sight of the right of way. The Del Monte express, the evening train from San Francisco, slipped around from behind the warehouse and crashed into the old car. The Cowcatcher buckled in the side of the automobile and pushed and ground and mangled it a hundred yards up the track before the train stopped. Ed was conscious when they got him out of the car and laid him on the grass. A crowd gathered of course – people from the train and more from the houses that hug the track. In almost no time a doctor was there. Ed’s skull had a crooked look and his eyes were crossed. There was blood around his mouth, and his body was twisted – wrong, as though seen under an untrue lens.
The doctor got down on one knee and leaned over. The ring of people was silent.
Ed asked, “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know” the doctor said. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel much of anything, “ Ed said.
Because the doctor knew him and knew what kind of a man he was, he said, “That’s shock of course”
“Of course!” Ed said, and his eyes began to glaze.
They edged him into a stretcher and took him to a hospital. Section hands pried his old car off the cowcatcher and pushed it aside, and the Del Monte Express moved slowly into the station at Pacific Grove, which is the end of the line.
Several doctors had come in and more were phoning in wanting to help because they all loved him. The doctors knew it was very serious, so they gave him ether and opened him up to see how bad it was. When they had finished, they knew it was hopeless. Ed was all messed up – spleen broken, ribs shattered, lungs punctured, concussion of the skull. It might have been better to let him go out under the ether, but the doctors could not give up, any more than could the people gathered in the waiting room of the hospital. Men who knew better began to talk about miracles and how anything could happen. They reminded each other of cases of people who had got well when there was no reason to suppose they could. The surgeons cleaned Ed’s insides as well as possible and closed him up. Every now and then one of the doctors would go out to the waiting room, and it was like facing a jury.
There were lots of people out there, sitting waiting, and their eyes all held a stone question. The Doctors said things like, “Doing as well as can be expected” and “We wont be able to tell for some time but he is making progress” They talked more than was necessary, and the people sitting there did not talk at all. They just stared, trying to get adjusted.
The switchboard was loaded with people who wanted to give blood. The next morning Ed was conscious but very tired and groggy from ether and morphine. His eyes were washed out and he spoke with great difficulty. But he did repeat his first question “How bad is it?”
The doctor who was in the room caught himself just as he was going to say some soothing nonsense remembering that Ed was his friend and that Ed loved true things and knew a lot of true things too. So the doctor said, “Very bad.”
Ed didn’t ask again. He hung on or a couple of days because his vitality was very great. In fact he hung on so long that some of the doctors began to believe the things they had said about miracles when they knew such a chance to be nonsense. They noted a strong heartbeat. They saw improved color in his cheeks below the bandages. Ed hung on so long some people in the waiting room dared to go home and get some sleep.
And then as happens so often with men of large vitality, the energy and the color and the pulse and the breathing went away silently and quickly and he died..By that time the shock at Monterey had turned to dullness. He was dead and had to be got rid of. People wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible and with dignity so they could think about him and restore him again…
It is going to be difficult to write down things about Ed Ricketts…
Everyone near him was influenced by him, deeply and permanently. Some he taught how to think, others how to see or hear. Children on the beach he taught how to look for and find beautiful animals in worlds they had not suspected were there at all. He taught everyone without seeming to.
Nearly everyone who knew him has tried to define him. Such things were said of him as, “He was half-Christ and half-goat” He was a great teacher and a great lecher – an immortal who loved women. Surely he was an original and his own character was unique, but in such a way that everyone was related to him, one in this way and the other in a different way. He was gentle but capable if great ferocity, small and slight but strong as an Ox, loyal and yet untrustworthy, generous but gave little and received much. His thinking was as paradoxical as his life. He thought in mystical terms and yet hated and distrusted mysticism. He was an individualist who studied colonial animals with satisfaction…
We have all tried to define Ed Ricketts with little success. Perhaps it would be better to put down the mass of material from our memoirs, anecdotes, quotations, events. Of course some of the things will cancel others, but that is the way he was. The essence lies somewhere. There must be some way of finding it.
Finally another reason to put Ed Ricketts down on paper. He will not die. He haunts the people who knew him. He is always present even in moments when we feel his loss the most. One night soon after his death a number of us were drinking beer in the laboratory, we laughed and told stories about Ed and suddenly one of us said in pain “We’ll have to let him go! We’ll have to release him” And that was true not for Ed but for ourselves. We can’t keep him, and still he wont go away….The statistics on Ed Ricketts would read: Born in Chicago, played on the streets, went to public school, studied biology at the university of Chicago. Opened a small commercial laboratory in Pacific Grove, California. Moved to cannery row in Monterey. Degrees – Bachelor of Science only Clubs, none; honors none. Army service – both world wars. Killed by a train at 52.
Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar. I was sitting in a dentist’s waiting room in New Monterey, hoping the dentist had died. I had a badly aching tooth and not enough money to have a good job done on it. My main hope was that the dentist could stop the ache without charging too much and without finding too many other things wrong.
The door to the slaughterhouse opened and a slight man with a beard came out. I did not look at him closely because of what he held in his hand, a bloody molar with a surprisingly large piece of jawbone sticking to it. He was cursing gently, as he came through the door. He held the reeking relic out to me and said
“Look at that god-damned thing”
I was already looking at it. “That came out of me” he said.
“Seems to be more jaw than tooth” I said.
“He got impatient I guess. I’m Ed Ricketts”
“I’m John Steinbeck. Does it hurt?”
“Not much. I’ve heard of you”
“I’ve heard of you too. Let’s have a drink”
That was the first time I ever saw him. I had heard that there was an interesting man who ran a commercial laboratory, and had a good library of music, and interests wider than invertebratology. I had wanted to come across him for some time.
We did not think of ourselves as poor then. We simply had no money. Our food was plentiful, what with fishing and planning and a minimum of theft. Entertainment had to be improvised without benefit of currency. Out pleasures consisted in conversation, walks, games and parties with people of our own financial non-existence.
A real party was dressed with a gallon of 39-cent wine, and we could have a hell of a time on that. We did not know any rich people and for that reason, we did not like them and were proud and glad we didn’t live that way.
We had been timid about meeting Ed Ricketts because he was rich people by our standards. This meant he could depend on a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a month and he had an automobile. To us this was fancy, and we didn’t see how anyone could go through that kind of money, but we learned.
Knowing Ed was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen I knew him better than I knew anyone and perhaps I did not know him at all. Maybe it was that way with all his friends. He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn’t Ed who had died, but a large and important part of oneself……..
Ed had a strange and courteous relationship with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Passing a dog in the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And damned if they didn’t smile back.
Ed regarded his father with affection
“He has one quality of genius,” Ed would say. “He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgements at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father – he is wrong all the time about everything. That is not a matter of luck but of selection. That requires genius.Excerpts from “The log from the sea at Cortez
By John Steinbeck
Heinemann
1958"ED RICKETTS"
Just about dusk one day in April 1948 Ed Ricketts stopped work in the laboratory in cannery row. He covered his instruments and put away his papers and filing cards. He rolled down the sleeves of his wool shirt and put on the brown coat, which was slightly small for him frayed at the elbows.
He wanted a steak for dinner and he knew just the market in New Monterey where he could get a fine one, well hung and tender.He went out into the street that is officially named ocean View Avenue and is known s cannery row. His old car stood at the gutter, a beat up sedan. The car was tricky and hard to start. He needed a new one but could not afford it at the expense of other things. Ed tinkered away at the primer until the ancient rusty motor coughed and broke into bronchial chatter, which indicated it was running. Ed meshed the jagged gears and moved away up the street.
He turned up the hill where the road crosses the Southern Pacific Railways track. It was almost dark, or rather that kind of mixed light and dark which makes it very difficult to see. Just before the crossing the road takes a sharp climb. Ed shifted to second gear, the noisiest gear to get up the hill. The sound of his motor and gears blotted out every other sound. A corrugated iron warehouse was on his left, obscuring any sight of the right of way. The Del Monte express, the evening train from San Francisco, slipped around from behind the warehouse and crashed into the old car. The Cowcatcher buckled in the side of the automobile and pushed and ground and mangled it a hundred yards up the track before the train stopped. Ed was conscious when they got him out of the car and laid him on the grass. A crowd gathered of course – people from the train and more from the houses that hug the track. In almost no time a doctor was there. Ed’s skull had a crooked look and his eyes were crossed. There was blood around his mouth, and his body was twisted – wrong, as though seen under an untrue lens.
The doctor got down on one knee and leaned over. The ring of people was silent.
Ed asked, “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know” the doctor said. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel much of anything, “ Ed said.
Because the doctor knew him and knew what kind of a man he was, he said, “That’s shock of course”
“Of course!” Ed said, and his eyes began to glaze.
They edged him into a stretcher and took him to a hospital. Section hands pried his old car off the cowcatcher and pushed it aside, and the Del Monte Express moved slowly into the station at Pacific Grove, which is the end of the line.
Several doctors had come in and more were phoning in wanting to help because they all loved him. The doctors knew it was very serious, so they gave him ether and opened him up to see how bad it was. When they had finished, they knew it was hopeless. Ed was all messed up – spleen broken, ribs shattered, lungs punctured, concussion of the skull. It might have been better to let him go out under the ether, but the doctors could not give up, any more than could the people gathered in the waiting room of the hospital. Men who knew better began to talk about miracles and how anything could happen. They reminded each other of cases of people who had got well when there was no reason to suppose they could. The surgeons cleaned Ed’s insides as well as possible and closed him up. Every now and then one of the doctors would go out to the waiting room, and it was like facing a jury.
There were lots of people out there, sitting waiting, and their eyes all held a stone question. The Doctors said things like, “Doing as well as can be expected” and “We wont be able to tell for some time but he is making progress” They talked more than was necessary, and the people sitting there did not talk at all. They just stared, trying to get adjusted.
The switchboard was loaded with people who wanted to give blood. The next morning Ed was conscious but very tired and groggy from ether and morphine. His eyes were washed out and he spoke with great difficulty. But he did repeat his first question “How bad is it?”
The doctor who was in the room caught himself just as he was going to say some soothing nonsense remembering that Ed was his friend and that Ed loved true things and knew a lot of true things too. So the doctor said, “Very bad.”
Ed didn’t ask again. He hung on or a couple of days because his vitality was very great. In fact he hung on so long that some of the doctors began to believe the things they had said about miracles when they knew such a chance to be nonsense. They noted a strong heartbeat. They saw improved color in his cheeks below the bandages. Ed hung on so long some people in the waiting room dared to go home and get some sleep.
And then as happens so often with men of large vitality, the energy and the color and the pulse and the breathing went away silently and quickly and he died..By that time the shock at Monterey had turned to dullness. He was dead and had to be got rid of. People wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible and with dignity so they could think about him and restore him again…
It is going to be difficult to write down things about Ed Ricketts…
Everyone near him was influenced by him, deeply and permanently. Some he taught how to think, others how to see or hear. Children on the beach he taught how to look for and find beautiful animals in worlds they had not suspected were there at all. He taught everyone without seeming to.
Nearly everyone who knew him has tried to define him. Such things were said of him as, “He was half-Christ and half-goat” He was a great teacher and a great lecher – an immortal who loved women. Surely he was an original and his own character was unique, but in such a way that everyone was related to him, one in this way and the other in a different way. He was gentle but capable if great ferocity, small and slight but strong as an Ox, loyal and yet untrustworthy, generous but gave little and received much. His thinking was as paradoxical as his life. He thought in mystical terms and yet hated and distrusted mysticism. He was an individualist who studied colonial animals with satisfaction…
We have all tried to define Ed Ricketts with little success. Perhaps it would be better to put down the mass of material from our memoirs, anecdotes, quotations, events. Of course some of the things will cancel others, but that is the way he was. The essence lies somewhere. There must be some way of finding it.
Finally another reason to put Ed Ricketts down on paper. He will not die. He haunts the people who knew him. He is always present even in moments when we feel his loss the most. One night soon after his death a number of us were drinking beer in the laboratory, we laughed and told stories about Ed and suddenly one of us said in pain “We’ll have to let him go! We’ll have to release him” And that was true not for Ed but for ourselves. We can’t keep him, and still he wont go away….The statistics on Ed Ricketts would read: Born in Chicago, played on the streets, went to public school, studied biology at the university of Chicago. Opened a small commercial laboratory in Pacific Grove, California. Moved to cannery row in Monterey. Degrees – Bachelor of Science only Clubs, none; honors none. Army service – both world wars. Killed by a train at 52.
Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar. I was sitting in a dentist’s waiting room in New Monterey, hoping the dentist had died. I had a badly aching tooth and not enough money to have a good job done on it. My main hope was that the dentist could stop the ache without charging too much and without finding too many other things wrong.
The door to the slaughterhouse opened and a slight man with a beard came out. I did not look at him closely because of what he held in his hand, a bloody molar with a surprisingly large piece of jawbone sticking to it. He was cursing gently, as he came through the door. He held the reeking relic out to me and said
“Look at that god-damned thing”
I was already looking at it. “That came out of me” he said.
“Seems to be more jaw than tooth” I said.
“He got impatient I guess. I’m Ed Ricketts”
“I’m John Steinbeck. Does it hurt?”
“Not much. I’ve heard of you”
“I’ve heard of you too. Let’s have a drink”
That was the first time I ever saw him. I had heard that there was an interesting man who ran a commercial laboratory, and had a good library of music, and interests wider than invertebratology. I had wanted to come across him for some time.
We did not think of ourselves as poor then. We simply had no money. Our food was plentiful, what with fishing and planning and a minimum of theft. Entertainment had to be improvised without benefit of currency. Out pleasures consisted in conversation, walks, games and parties with people of our own financial non-existence.
A real party was dressed with a gallon of 39-cent wine, and we could have a hell of a time on that. We did not know any rich people and for that reason, we did not like them and were proud and glad we didn’t live that way.
We had been timid about meeting Ed Ricketts because he was rich people by our standards. This meant he could depend on a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a month and he had an automobile. To us this was fancy, and we didn’t see how anyone could go through that kind of money, but we learned.
Knowing Ed was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen I knew him better than I knew anyone and perhaps I did not know him at all. Maybe it was that way with all his friends. He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn’t Ed who had died, but a large and important part of oneself……..
Ed had a strange and courteous relationship with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Passing a dog in the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And damned if they didn’t smile back.
Ed regarded his father with affection
“He has one quality of genius,” Ed would say. “He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgements at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father – he is wrong all the time about everything. That is not a matter of luck but of selection. That requires genius.Excerpts from “The log from the sea at Cortez
By John Steinbeck
Heinemann
1958