Sketching an Idea

An idea for a longer project has been brewing in the back of my mind, gradually taking shape.  I alluded to it yesterday:  The Life and Times of David Jacks.  I've done a fair amount of research on him, prompted originally by a simple question.  How did Jack cheese get its name?  Prompted, by the way, by eating a sinfully juicy chicken-and-jack-cheese sandwich at Archie's Diner near the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  I was tucking into this big beast of a sandwich, juice running down my chin and fingers, savory aroma wafting all around me....

Naturally, beginning a research project tends to lead you into all sorts of directions, and you can become swamped in it, but some intriguingly vivid images captured me and held me fast: 

1.  He arrived in Monterey on a dark and stormy night, literally. 
2.  He owned the entire Montery Peninsula and some of the Salinas Valley at the height of his career
3.  He was cursed - literally damned with bitter vitriol -  and the curse proved to come true. 
4.  He began to amass his fortune by selling guns.

The fact that he did eventually own Monterey and lands surrounding links him to Pacific Grove.  He was a devout and pious man (really!) who taught Sunday school to local whippersnappers (I've always loved that word) at the Pacific House (pictured at left) in Monterey near his home.  He saw an opportunity to make inroads into the unruly lives of local riff raff by establishing a religious enclave where equally studious and devoted churchgoers could congregate peacefully.  He arranged to bequeath a large number of acres (my notes are not at hand right now or I'd tell you exactly how many) to the Methodists and thereby firmly establish them as a bastion of goodness and christian fellowship.  With a stroke of a pen, it was done and Pacific Grove began to be formed and then grow into a righteous and peaceful city. 

The dark and stormy night part comes much earlier as does the curse and why it was aimed at him.  Other colorful characters came and went during the several-hundred-year history of the area generally known as Monterey.  Our boy John Steinbeck mostly focused on the down and dirty drunks along what came to be known as Cannery Row.  The Oakies, Arkies and other brands of itinerant workers and poor who accumulated along the banks of our few rivers and shores were also subjects of his works, as you know.  There was a stretch time before that era that was actually a kind of perfect storm of historical events, and that's what I'm interested in.  So, that's a teaser, but I'll keep you posted.