FEATURE A Time in Between Diana takes us on a road of discovery back to the time after the canneries were closed, but not yet replaced by the new social climate that was moving into the area. November 2007

Diana Dennis

The first time I read the story of Alice in Wonderland I understood why Alice followed the rabbit down the hole. My early life wasn't particularly happy and the appeal of finding a portal that could lead to a magical place held strong appeal for me.

Three decades ago my friend, Davis, played the role of the rabbit leading me into magical places lurking within the giant abandoned canneries that in those days were spread around my Pacific Grove/Cannery Row home.

For many decades those canneries, centerpieces of the world’s largest sardine industry, had throbbed with the energy of people working round the clock while handling the endless loads of sardines that the big fishing boats, called seiners, would bring in for processing.

The canneries were built like fortresses, and were intended to last for generations. But less than 60 years after the first cannery was built, the fish vanished seemingly overnight. The sardine fleets returned in the evenings with empty cargo holds and the canneries nodded off into what many must have hoped would be a brief nap. But the fish didn’t return and the canneries were never again awakened.

For a number of years the slumbering cannery buildings were caught in a time between the thriving industrial environment that they had been before and the theme park atmosphere that they had not yet acquired.

And during that time in between determined young people could crawl through some broken window or enter through an unlocked door and find fascinating worlds of adventure in the echoing spaces and ringing emptiness of those deserted places. And so, for a few short months back in the mid-1960s, the young man named Davis and I romped and romanced through those ruins.

Before the Magic
I’m a Nez Pierce Indian born on the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian reservation and adopted by a Central California couple. After graduating from high school I moved to Pacific Grove and lived on the hill across from the present location of Trader Joe’s. I worked for the phone company.

One day I ran into a friendly guy named Davis who was studying at the Defense Language Institute. He was also a sometime musician playing a gig at the old Sancho Panza Coffee House off Pacific Avenue.

Davis didn’t know anybody and I didn’t know anybody so we just began hanging out together.

He was the cook in our partnership. I once tried to make a large artichoke for our meal but burned it completely. Rather than waste it I converted the artichoke into “found art” by painting it silver and hanging it by a thread as a decoration. It looked good! From a distance it seemed to float in the air.

Davis would often cook red stew in a pot and while it was simmering we would sing duets together such as “Four Strong Winds,” “Captain Woodstock’s Courtship,” and “Black Girl, Where’d You Sleep Last Night?”

Davis was supposed to be learning Chinese, but I can’t remember him ever doing much studying and yet he ended up graduating. I guess he had a good memory.

The thing I remember most from those long-ago days is our shared laughter and the fun we had going places together. Davis was under a lot of pressure as a student at the language school; I was under a lot of pressure myself as supervisor at the phone company. Ours were tense lives so when we were able to escape into each other’s company we were ready to have fun.

The two of us would travel all around on a motorcycle that he had bought. I had been raised to believe that nice people didn't ride motorcycles, and now I found myself riding behind Davis all the time.

One day we ran up to San Francisco. The weather turned freezing cold so we stopped in a second-hand store, bought multiple layers of clothes, and ended up riding into the City looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and his Dough Wife.

We would especially hang out around Pacific Grove, and we spent much of the time wandering through the vacant Cannery Row buildings.

I had first seen Cannery Row when I was nine years old. I remember that the whole area seemed grey and stinking of chemicals and dead fish. I couldn't wait to leave. But now we found the empty buildings sweet smelling and inviting in the sunshine.

Finding Places Outside the World
Spaces inside the deserted cannery buildings seemed possessed of a magic that could lead us out of the world. The rooms took on auras of romance and mystery as Davis and I played and explored among the abandoned properties.

We investigated rooms of staggering proportions now empty of people but still filled with silent machines. We ventured into rooms so huge that crawling into them gave the effect of going outdoors.

We often seemed like people treading on sacred ground or exploring a tomb. Each step we took would be matched by a distant echo and every word we spoke rang through empty halls. Even our whispers seemed to bounce off the ceilings. Some of the largest areas were so quiet that the silence seemed to reverberate in our ears with a palpable quality.

The canneries, though empty, seemed to be bustling with the spirits of ancient workers always visible just past the corner of our eye and booming with the noise of their labor just below the threshold of our hearing. The places felt hollow but at the same time bursting with unseen life.

We subconsciously listened for the rattling of machinery, the hum of the assembly lines, and the clattering of carts hauling canned sardines to the giant pressure cookers that awaited them.

At one point I imagined that I actually heard the sound of one of the ghost-workers whistling in an empty room, but was jarred back to reality when I realized that Davis was the whistler! We would sometimes shout just to hear the echo of our voices, but mostly spoke in whispers so as not to disturb the throngs of restless spirits that seemed to float and flutter in the air about us. We half expected to see cannery workers suddenly returning from whatever break they were on and resuming their work.

We were venturing into a world apart; a secret region that lay beyond the real and mundane places where we worked and studied.

Davis and I had great fun together; our laughter often disturbing the sleeping silence in those giant open spaces.

We were moving in a photographer’s paradise. In some places, the sun would shine through a hole or window into otherwise dark chambers, overlaying with rich sepia hues the normal blacks and whites of the otherwise-shadowy areas.

The abandoned canneries encompassed a remarkably diverse set of environments. One never knew what lay beyond the next door. Areas of disorder would mysteriously be found adjoining places that were neat and undisturbed.

Some rooms were in total shambles. Sardine labels and pieces of trash were strewn everywhere giving the impression that some terrible cataclysm had occurred. We would gingerly pick our way through the mess fervently hoping that a rat wouldn’t suddenly run across the toe of our shoe and try to climb our leg.

Other areas, however, gave the impression that people had only recently left and were expected to return soon. We ran across a spic-and-span medical dispensary. We found one cafeteria with napkins and plates still sitting on the tables, and a bottle of mustard on a shelf.

We often would get spooky apocalyptic-type sensations that we were the last people remaining on a deserted planet, as we passed through places that looked as though people had walked out the doors one day without suspecting that they would never be back.

I could picture a cannery worker putting that jar of mustard on the shelf never realizing that until a wrecking crew destroyed the building at some distant time nobody would ever take down the jar again.

Other cannery rooms had large machinery, some of it still in place but others looking as though the hand of some giant child, now bored with his playthings, had swept through the room scattering it about in an aimless fashion.

Our favorite place was the California Packing Corporation, the largest cannery on the Row. The entire building became our private mystery house, or perhaps our enchanted castle by the sea where Davis and I ruled over as a royal couple.

We ran all over the building and discovered stairs and ladders leading nowhere. Dead end hallways were everywhere and ramps led to doors that for no apparent reason opened directly onto the waters of the Bay.

Adventures with Life and Death
Other people have told me that they also used to crawl around in the canneries during those days, but we never encountered any of them.

We had only one adventure with a living person. One day we ran across a young boy with a badly injured foot. He wouldn’t let us take him to the hospital, so we left him off on the sidewalk in front of what he said was his home.

We never learned what had happened to him or whether he ever completely recovered from his injury.

We always believed that he might have died if we hadn’t come along. He certainly couldn’t have walked on his own and it might have been months before the next explorer came by to discover his now-lifeless body.

Davis and I kept doing crazy things and finding new ways to scare ourselves! One day, for example, I figured out how to climb into an empty pressure cooker. The machine hadn’t been designed for young girls wearing smooth-soled tennis shoes to crawl around in, and I had to hang on for dear life.

Before we left that day Davis pried off one of the pressure gauges, which we took as a souvenir to decorate a wall in my apartment. It is on my wall to this day.

Just like Alice in Wonderland we encountered things that seemed sinister and frightening. One day we went downstairs beneath a cannery and unexpectedly found ourselves in an area opening onto Monterey Bay.

We walked out over the water on pilings and I took pictures of Davis as the sea waves crashed about him. At first the adventure seemed exciting. However, the tide began rising. Waves continued increasing in height and soon covered the cement supports on the lower ends of the pilings upon which we were standing.

Our playful laughter turned to fearful shouts as the water rose to our knees. Neither of us could hear what the other was shouting. In attempting to retreat to safety, we continued moving farther and farther apart from each other.

We clung to the pilings during each of the waves that were now crashing about us, and pressing our feet on the edges of the cement to avoid being dragged out with the receding surges.

We would wait for the troughs following each wave and then would run for the next piling and cling to it as the subsequent wave came crashing about us. We would look desperately around to see if the other was safe or had been swept away by the fierce swells.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, we managed to reach the ladder to the weighing room and were able to climb to safety. We were cold, soaked, and exhausted, but still alive and safe in each other’s dripping arms.

End of Eras
The old canneries didn’t march into oblivion in an orderly fashion. Some of them disappeared in giant conflagrations that would blaze periodically through Cannery Row — sometimes lighting up the entire night sky with their passing.

I remember standing in the darkness on more than one occasion watching as the old buildings subsided in brilliant infernos. My own heart seemed to burn in the flames.

Six months later the site would be a leveled field with weeds growing in it. Some of those fields are growing weeds even now.

A few of the lucky canneries, of course, have been reborn as pleasure palaces offering fun, food, and fish to the tourists that come flocking into the area.

I’ve gone on with my life. I've kept in occasional contact with Davis over the years but the old romance is no more than a lingering sweetness in my memory.

My life, however, remains full of people and passions. This spring I did the 21-mile Big Sur International Marathon for the third time, finishing more than a half hour inside the mandatory six-hour limit.

I write memorable poetry and take a lot of professional-quality photographs.

I especially make a difference in children’s lives because three decades ago I founded one of the Monterey County’s first accredited childcare facilities and sometimes feel that I’ve had a part in raising half the children in Pacific Grove. Some of the kids I've taken care of were children of kids I used to take care of.

My own children are grown and on their own. Two husbands are gone and on their own, as well.

But some things never change. Decades ago Davis and I listened to the crashing of waves and the cries of gulls when we went down to the Row. It comforts me to reflect on the fact that the seagulls were here long before the canneries were built and will be here long after the restaurants and knickknack shops have followed them into oblivion.

People, industries, and even cultures come and go. But life goes on. The Bay remains as it was before the first Native American stood on its shores — and as it will be when the last American citizen watches and listens for a final time.

Even now, if you go down to the Row early, before all the restaurants begin cooking and too many cars line the road, you can smell the brine, see the waves crash on the rocks, and hear the gulls cry.

The surf and the gulls maintain the fabric of the place as they have for eons past and for untold centuries to come.

I sometimes think of Davis at 4 p.m., which was the time he would get out of school. I remember smelling the briny scent of the sea and seeing the fog coming up from the Bay as I would wait for the sound of his motorcycle.

The tides of time long ago swept away my youthful dreams. However, memories of that “time in between” can still bring a smile to my lips when life becomes annoying or tough.

A rabbit hole is still there in my mind leading to a place deep in my memory where old canneries still doze with rooms full of ringing emptiness awaiting the workers to come flooding back to their tasks.

It’s still fun to go there.

And you can follow along with me. Let me be the rabbit. I'll take the lead; let’s go back together in our imaginations.

You can purchase Diana’s book, Cannery Row 1965 — A Time in Between, with pictures, poems, and memories of the canneries after the workers had left. For more information contact Diana at dnagne@sbcglobal.net.