John Steinbeck

📍132 Central Avenue, Salinas, CA 93901, USA

“I was born in this tall white Queen Anne house on Central Avenue, which my parents bought in 1900 — my father was Salinas's county treasurer and my mother a former teacher who filled the house with books. My bedroom upstairs looked out over the street, and as a teenager I climbed to the attic to write stories I sent off under false names. In East of Eden I described the house just as it was: immaculate and friendly, inside its white fence, with roses against its walls. Beyond it lay the valley that became my whole subject — the lettuce fields, the ranches where I worked in the holidays beside migrant labourers, the Gabilan Mountains to the east and the Santa Lucias to the west. Those ranch hands were the men of Of Mice and Men; the valley's families became the Trasks and the Hamiltons. Salinas did not always love me back for writing so honestly about it. Parts of The Red Pony and Tortilla Flat were written in this house, which is now run as a restaurant and museum in my memory.”

Sources: Wikipedia: John Steinbeck House (Salinas,_California) sjsu.edu steinbeckhouse.com