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this here. Suppose there’s chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. That’s all right, as far as it goes, but I’d like to have a couple of words at the top so it tells me what the chapter’s going to be about. Sometimes maybe I want to go back, and chapter five don’t mean nothing to me. If there was just a couple of words I’d know that was the chapter I wanted to go back to.”
    â€œGo on,” said Whitey No. 1.
    â€œWell, I like a lot of talk in a book, and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. And another thing—I kind of like to figure out what the guy’s thinking by what he says. I like some description too,” he went on. “I like to know what color a thing is, how it smells and maybe how it looks, and maybe how a guy feels about it—but not too much of that.”
    â€œYou sure are a critic,” said Whitey No. 2. “Mack, I never give you credit before. Is that all?”
    â€œNo,” said Mack. “Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. The guy’s writing it, give him a chance to do a little hooptedoodle. Spin up some pretty words maybe, or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up in the story. So if the guy that’s writing it wants hooptedoodle, he ought to put it right at first. Then I can skip it if I want to, or maybe go back to it after I know how the story come out.”
    Eddie said, “Mack, if the guy that wrote Cannery Row comes in, you going to tell him all that?”
    Whitey No. 2 said, “Hell, Mack can tell anybody anything. Why, Mack could tell a ghost how to haunt a house.”
    â€œYou’re damn right I could,” said Mack, “and there wouldn’t be no table-rapping or chains. There hasn’t been no improvement in house-haunting in years. You’re damn right I could, Whitey!” And he lay back and stared up at the canopy over his bed.
    â€œI can see it now,” said Mack.
    â€œGhosts?” Eddie asked.
    â€œHell, no,” said Mack, “chapters….”

1
What Happened In Between
    When the war came to Monterey and to Cannery Row everybody fought it more or less, in one way or another. When hostilities ceased everyone had his wounds.
    The canneries themselves fought the war by getting the limit taken off fish and catching them all. It was done for patriotic reasons, but that didn’t bring the fish back. As with the oysters in Alice , “They’d eaten every one.” It was the same noble impulse that stripped the forests of the West and right now is pumping water out of California’s earth faster than it can rain back in. When the desert comes, people will be sad; just as Cannery Row was sad when all the pilchards were caught and canned and eaten. The pearl-gray canneries of corrugated iron were silent and a pacing watchman was their only life. The street that once roared with trucks was quiet and empty.
    Yes, the war got into everybody. Doc was drafted. He put a friend known as Old Jingleballicks in charge of Western Biological Laboratories and served out his time as a tech sergeant in a V.D. section.
    Doc was philosophical about it. He whiled away his free hours with an unlimited supply of government alcohol, made many friends, and resisted promotion. When the war was over, Doc was kept on by a grateful government to straighten out certain inventory problems, a job he was fitted for since he had contributed largely to the muck-up. Doc was honorably discharged two years after our victory.
    He went back to Western Biological and forced open the water-logged door. Old Jingleballicks hadn’t been there for years. Dust and mildew covered everything. There were dirty pots and pans in the sink. Instruments