A relief sculpture depicts a pot of beans cooking and reads:
TORTILLA FLAT
ECV '38"
It is signed "Huff 1935"
Below is a plaque which adds:
"GRAND PROCRASTINATION
THIS SIMPLE BRONZE PLAQUE
HONORING THE WORK OF JOHN
STEINBECK WAS SCULPTURED
IN 1938 BY WILLIAM GORDON
HUFF. IT WAS DEDICATED THAT
SAME YEAR BY NOTED WESTERN
HISTORIAN DR. CHARLES L.
CAMP WITH ALL THE UNWAVER-
ING ORATORICAL PROFUNDITY
WHICH TRADITIONALLY DIS-
TINGUISHES THIS ANCIENT AND
HONORABLE ORDER.
IT TOOK 47 YEARS HOWEVER,
TO GET AROUND TO MOUNTING
IT. CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM.
REDEDICATED AND MOUNTED
AT LAST ON THIS 13TH DAY
OF JULY, 1985.
YERBA BUENA
CHAPTER NO.1
MONTEREY VIEJO
CHAPTER NO. 1846
E CLAMPUS VITUS
'HE SOWS HURRY AND
REARS INDIGESTION'
(ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON)"
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years since it was published, it sold 14 million copies.
The winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called "a giant of American letters". His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists."