The Wayward Bus (38 page)

2
a Camel advertisement:
Cigarette brand first marketed by R. J. Reynolds Company in 1913.

3
“Oakes murder trial”:
The British aristocrat Sir Harry Oakes (b. 1874) was murdered under mysterious circumstances in Nassau on July 8, 1943. His son-in-law Freddie de Marigny was charged with the crime but found not guilty at trial the following November. The murder has never been solved.

4
The Two Fifty-Three Thousand Clubs:
A fictional fraternal organization. As Steinbeck wrote in
America and Americans
(p. 360), “Americans have developed scores of orders, lodges and encampments, courts. . . . All were and perhaps still are aristocratic and most secret and therefore exclusive. They seemed to fulfill a need for grandeur against a background of commonness, for aristocracy in the midst of democracy.”

1
“Wee Kirk i' the Heather”:
The chapel at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, burial sites of such writers as Theodore Dreiser and L. Frank Baum and such movie stars as W. C. Fields and Jean Harlow. Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were married there in 1940.

2
“radar”:
An acronym for “radio detection and ranging,” patented in England in 1935.

3
“Nances”:
Nancies, or sissies.

4
“Hart, Schaffner and Marx”:
A men's clothing company founded in 1887.

5
“Beverly Wilshire”:
A fashionable “hotel to the stars” in Beverly Hills opened in 1928.

6
“a missionary like Spencer Tracy”:
As usual, Pimples is confused. He apparently refers to
Keys of the Kingdom
(1944), starring Gregory Peck (1916-2003), not Spencer Tracy (1900-1967); the movie was set during the Chinese Civil War, not the Japanese occupation. Tracy had earlier starred in the movie adaptation of Steinbeck's novel
Tortilla Flat
(1942).

1
Red Arrow Line:
The Arrow Transfer Company, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, had been in operation since 1918.

1
“Pepsi-Cola”:
A competitor in the “cola wars” trademarked in 1903 and, in 1940, the first product to be advertised on the radio with a jingle.

2
“Torreón”:
A modern, industrial city in the state of Chihuahua founded in 1893; it was attacked by Pancho Villa in 1914 in the bloodiest battle of the Mexican Revolution. See next note.

3
“Pancho Villa”:
(1878-1923) Mexican revolutionary leader.

4
hotel . . . built over a hot spring of Epsom salts:
Steinbeck almost certainly alludes to the Paso Robles Hot Springs Hotel in San Luis Obispo County near Salinas, originally built in 1864, rebuilt and reopened in February 1942, on Highway 101, famous in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s for attracting such movie stars as Bob Hope, Boris Karloff, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and Red Skelton.

1
“Manila line”:
The standard line or rope of issue because of its flexibility and strength.

2
“Super Chief ”:
A showcase train of the Santa Fe railroad, famous for transporting movie stars, that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles from 1936 to 1971.

3
OPA price-ceiling chart:
The federal Office of Price Administration enforced domestic price controls between 1942 and 1947.

1
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”:
The words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:2.

2
“Wherefore shall it profit a man . . .”:
“. . . if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul.” Christ's words in Matthew 16:26 and Mark 8:36.

3
zaguán door:
A vestibule or hallway.

4
Tijuana:
Mexican border town across from San Diego.

5
Santo Tomás . . . San Quintin, past Ballenas Bay . . . La Paz . . . Guaymas or Mazatlán maybe even to Acapulco:
Common tourist destinations on Baja California and along the west coast of Mexico.

6
rebozos:
Mufflers, wraps, shawls.

7
“Bank of America”:
The foreclosure policy of this bank, headquartered in San Francisco, during the Great Depression prompted a successful proxy fight by its founder, A. P. Giannini (1870-1949), to resume control. This comment is reminiscent of Steinbeck's fusillade against banks in chapter 5 of
The Grapes of Wrath
(1939).

8
Lake at Chapala:
The largest lake in Mexico, in Jalisco, a resort near Guadalajara.

9
“Foxy Grandpa,” and “Little Nemo,” and “Happy Hooligan,” and “Buster Brown”:
Syndicated newspaper comic strips popular in the 1920s; all were defunct by 1932.

1
“the City of San Francisco”:
An upscale train that inaugurated service between Chicago and San Francisco in 1936.

2
Harper's Bazaar: A women's fashion magazine established in 1867.

1
He would call the FBI:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) had earned a reputation for crime fighting in the 1920s and 1930s and shifted its attention to addressing supposed threats of domestic subversion in the late 1940s.

2
bearded communists:
President Truman was often accused by his political enemies of being “soft on Communism.” Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), assassinated in Mexico on Stalin's orders, was perhaps the best known “bearded communist” in the world when the novel appeared.

1
“maybe at Romanoff 's”:
A famous restaurant on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills established in 1940 and frequented by movie stars.

2
“could you cut it up and cook it?”:
As Steinbeck later asserted in
America and Americans
(p. 331),“There isn't a man among us in ten thousand who knows how to butcher a cow or a pig and cut it up for eating.”

3
“Teapot Dome”:
A major scandal during the administration of Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), twenty-ninth president of the United States (1921-1923). The Department of the Interior had secretly leased naval oil fields in Wyoming to private companies beginning in 1921.

4
“Nineteen-thirty”:
The start of the Great Depression after the stock market crash in October 1929.

5
“Secretary of State”:
George C. Marshall (1880-1959) was charged with mediating a settlement between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists immediately after World War II. He was confirmed as Secretary of State in January 1947, only five weeks before Steinbeck's novel was released. In June 1947, speaking at Harvard commencement, he would announce the principles of the Marshall Plan.

6
like Coolidge or like Hoover:
Republican presidents of the United States Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) and Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), the thirtieth and thirty-first presidents (1923-1933).

7
strikes would stop:
Five million Americans went on strike in 1946, including many steel, mine, auto, and rail workers.

8
Bob Taft:
Robert Taft (1889-1953), son of former president and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft (1857-1930), U.S. senator from Ohio (1939-1953), and an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1944, 1948, and 1952.

9
“like Cary Grant done in that movie”:
Probably
Notorious
(1946), starring Grant (1904-1986) and Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) and directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), in which Grant's character enlists Bergman's character as a spy and persuades her to marry a German agent as a subterfuge.

10
“Octagon International or The Birds of the World or The Two Fifty-Three Thousand Club”:
See note 4 to Chapter 8 above.

1
Blue Lodge . . ., Chairs . . ., Worshipful Master . . ., Royal Arch . . ., Scottish Rite . . ., third degree:
Ranks and rituals in the Masonic Lodge.

2
those people in Europe:
Nazi leaders Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) and Hermann Göring (1893-1946) both committed suicide by ingesting cyanide.

1
“Hollywood Plaza”:
A fashionable hotel built in 1924 on North Vine Street near Sunset Boulevard.

2
“Musso-Franck's”:
The Musso & Frank Grill, a celebrity hangout at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue, was established in 1919 by John Musso and Frank Toulet.

1
the evening star:
The planet Venus, named for the Latin goddess of spring and gardens, later the Roman goddess of love identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite.