John Steinbeck's Grave

Thank goodness a sign was posted at the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas or I wouldn't have found his grave site. The place is huge. With the help of my trusty GPS, Miss Garmin, I found 768 Abbott Street just fine but it took some hunting to find this colorful sign.

John Steinbeck died in New York on December 20, 1968.  At his request, he wanted his ashes to be interred in the Hamilton family plot in Salinas, California.  It seems right and appropriate that he would be returned to the place of his birth and the place that inspired so many of his great books.

The gravestone is simple and unpretentious.  I used to think that if anyone had achieved immortality it was John Steinbeck, but as I looked around the site surrounded with hundreds upon hundreds of gravestones, I began to wonder.    . . .for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

  One of my sons had read Of Mice and Men in high school; my other son had heard of John Steinbeck, but had never read any of his books.  How could this be?  I used to think immortality was achieved through great art, literature and architecture.  I know better now.  Buildings are razed; art is destroyed by fire; and great writers, even Nobel Prize winners, are no longer read.

Steinbeck Country