EAST OF EDEN
Genesis 4:16
I have
always been very happy about my life-long propinquity to the physical world
described by Steinbeck. The central coast area of California is one of
planet Earth's premier pieces of real estate. The Salinas Valley is as
well, one of its premiere garden spots. Therein lies a huge contemporary
development conflict, doncha know!
I
myself hugely hold with those who regard contractors as does the mongoose the
cobra. Some think it wrongfully ironic that the most appealing loci in which to exist
are those least deserving over-population, but I sure don't.
At any rate, whereas John was born on the right side of the tracks, I was born in east Salinas in an unincorporated area called Alisal. This is where, in the mid-'30's, he saw his first Hooverville spring up, and became astounded at the plight of the dust bowl Okies. East Salinas is now a barrio of crowded, violent proportion. The joke these days is that Alisal is on the east of Eden, where so many people use drugs they call it, "The Land Of Nod."
Now,
though suspecting he wouldn't be all that impressed, I don't know what John would think of the current congestion and
gang-bangery in his formerly bucolic burg,
but I do know that, exhibiting no small degree of perspicacity, he did say in Travels
With Charley...
"I remember Salinas, the town of my birth, when it proudly announced four thousand citizens. Now it is eighty thousand and leaping pell mell on in a mathematical progression - a hundred thousand in three years and perhaps two hundred thousand in ten, with no end in sight. Even those people who joy in numbers and are impressed with bigness are starting to worry, gradually becoming aware that there must be a saturation point and the progress may be a progression toward strangulation."
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EAST OF EDEN
Larry Hosford
There on the east of Eden, there in the Land of Nod,
Cain was scorned, I was born, and there with the grace of God
And his willing ways, someday I'll die and fly away.
Take me home to the sea, take me home to the shore,
Take me home to the willow and the oak and sycamore,
Take me home to the hills, take me home to the view,
Of that green valley glowin', ever growin', ever growin'.
There on the east of Eden, there in the Land of Nod,
Cain was scorned, I was born, and there with the grace of God,
And his willing ways, someday I'll die and fly away.
Take me home to the south, take me home to the oil,
Take me home to the toilers, and the tillers of the soil,
Take me home to the north, take me home to the peaks,
With the big hawks wailin', ever sailin', ever sailin'.
There on the east of Eden, there in the Land of Nod,
Cain was scorned, I was born, and there with the grace of God,
And his willing ways, some day I'll die and fly away.
Some day I will die and I will fly away.
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