Soledad Statistics wanted Please help if you can.

[.highnlite]

Originally Posted by iminei

so how far is Steinbeck country from where you live in....squint..San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties?? I'm awful on distances and obviously think, as you are in California, Hollywood is on your right and up the street is...um... San Francisco....Haahahahhahahaha
working on forest trails sounds interesting, I'm getting lumberjack shirt and sweaty muscles or is it shorts and clipboard, counting the bumblebees?
loooong shot, you wouldn't be into cp's would you??...anyway dinner (the making of) calls...
i will try and google flight, anything to put of this essay!!

How far from Steinbeck Country? The landscape is very similar where I am, the history is very close, the crop types are the same. But Steinbeck did not write about our valleys, but darned close, 100 miles north is the Salinas Valley farming lands.

There has always been a connection between the Salinas Valley, the Arroyo Grande Valley, and the Santa Maria valley, some of the most productive farmland in the world. We all typically get three crops of vegetables per year. The cattle ranching industry similarly is the same all along the coast. The ranch in "Of Mice and Men" is identical to dozens if not hundreds of others throughout this area.

This will be longsleeved lumberjack and sweaty muscles, since we will be in wilderness and cannot use power tools. We will be cutting deadfall trees with what is called a misery whip by the cognescenti.

I do not know what a "cp" is, perhaps a Britishism?

Interesting that in one of these posts is Dorthea Lange's iconic photo of the Migrant Mother,

Nipomo is in my back yard, and Grandfather was growing peas and beans (not sweet peas there, but eating peas) in Nipomo at that time. I have wondered if she was picking peas on our land.

Incidentally, as I recollect, this woman's brother saw her picture in the Bakersfield newspaper and came over to the coast and got her, gave her a place to live.

If you wander the area around here you constantly run into old men and women who worked for my grandfather during the depression as his was a thriving business.

He, like so many Englishmen came over well educated but essentially penniless and worked hard, did the American Dream.

[iminei]

thank you for your replies, it does look like life was tough at that time.
does anyone know where they would have taken a 'simpleton', for want of a better and more pc word, like lennie to if he had committed murder?was there an insane asylum? or would it have been straight to jail, (do not collect £200) and to which jail,(as Soledad was built in 1946, thank you Hawk J) and would it have had an 'Old Sparky'? or would he have been left to rot?

[iminei]

do not know what a "cp" is, perhaps a Britishism?
hahahahahahha, i did wonder after i had written that if you would get terribly offended as there are at least two meanings for that particular anacronyn!
one, and the meaning i most definitely did not mean, and which i realised as i read the post i had submitted...is more suited to another kind of forum, (do those kind of forums exist???)
and the other, which i most definitely did mean...is, of course...Carnivorous Plants...which almost certainly could exist in wild untamed Steinbeck country.
i have seen some growing wild in England but have been told, but can't imagine but would dearly love to see, of them growing rampant in the wild in America...though they are most generally located in the Carolinas, (which i do happen to know is the opposite side of what is a very big country to you!)
Well, off to work again...if i don't get a chance to 'talk' again before you go...Have a nice weekend, enjoy and wish me some inspiration from SC across the Atlantic to deepest darkest Dorset would you?

[.highnlite]

There were "insane asylums" and still are, at least for the criminally insane. If Lennie was found incompetent he would have been institutionalized. But, in America the "retarded" are generally found competent, our history of executions shows a high percentage of men with IQ's under 70 executed.
70 or below being the standard for mentally handicapped.

There may be carnivorous plants wild in California, but, I do not know of any.

We should have a good weekend, but cold. There will be snow on the ground where we will be camping and working even though we will be within twenty miles of the ocean.. Yes, it does snow in California, even in April.

Good luck with your essay. Of Mice and Men is taught in California High Schools, last year my daughter had roughly the same assignment as you.

An aside, once John Steinbeck made money from his books, he bailed out of California and bought a house on Long Island Sound east of New York City.

[iminei]

An aside, once John Steinbeck made money from his books, he bailed out of California and bought a house on Long Island Sound east of New York City
unfortunately that does seem the way of many famous, talented and or privileged people who are rewarded (in many cases disproportionately) for their efforts
take Lewis Hamilton...lil upstart, parents gave him (and now his brother) every advantage going...hits the big time...whoof off to Switzerland he goes aaandd ditches the girlfriend of many years for a pussycat doll!!!!
in fact there's been a big hoo haa about extremely wealthy Englishmen purposefully residing elsewhere to avoid tax....how the other half live eh???

many thanks for the insane asylum (or not as the case turns out) info.....execution would be green mile style or hanging at that time?
have fun in the snow, we, chez Dorset and i believe most of England are basking in a mini heatwave!!!yay!!!
did your daughter pass her english??? am very interested as i (im ashamed to say) only took the course as there was so much in the press about how easy the exams were now, dumbing down and multiple choice etc etc....i have sooo much admiration for anyone who does this subject and gets a good grade..i really can't see me doing that! its reaallly difficult
enjoy the snow and cold and think of me sweltering away in the garden. greenhouse, patio...hahahahaha

[Hawk J]

Where John Steinbeck was born.

The Steinbeck House

[.highnlite]

....

many thanks for the insane asylum (or not as the case turns out) info.....execution would be green mile style or hanging at that time?

By the 1930's chances are it would be the gas chamber at San Quentin...

have fun in the snow, we, chez Dorset and i believe most of England are basking in a mini heatwave!!!yay!!!
did your daughter pass her english??? am very interested as i (im ashamed to say) only took the course as there was so much in the press about how easy the exams were now, dumbing down and multiple choice etc etc....i have sooo much admiration for anyone who does this subject and gets a good grade..i really can't see me doing that! its reaallly difficult


She did very well, she is one of those girls who thinks she flunked if she gets a B... She is now at University in Anthropology and Geography.
enjoy the snow and cold and think of me sweltering away in the garden. greenhouse, patio...hahahaha

Snow is good, no bugs...... Britain is on our list to visit, I am the only one in the family who has not spent time there. We will get there one of these days..

[iminei]

wow, sounds like a brainy girl. im panicking (that looks so wrong, a rogue k? whats that all about? ) about the essay now, i've got to get that and a creative writing in by thursday...probably in the morning, and am finding myself doing anything but writing...do you need some accounts doing? ive nearly finished my friends!
regards a trip to england, dont get schmoozed into the typical american tour, chocolate box villages in the cotswolds (yeah they're pretty but...essentially your looking at a stage set) and Stratford (yawn, though there is a really good restaurant there) and dont forget DORSET!!!! and the newly named Jurassic coast (yes, we have dinosaurs patrolling the seashore...NOT!) but it is, if you like nature and walking....fantastic!
and if you do come over to England, and you do come to Dorset, dont forget the little Georgian market town of Blandford Forum! and me!!!!!

[iminei]

just a quick note to thank you all for your various pearls of wisdom. i have handed in my essay and can now only hope for the best. it was very interesting to write and i could of gone much further into depth with regards to options for lennies fate, but hey, its only a gcse!
thank you everyone and best wishes to you from deepest darkest dorset