Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. He was of German, English and Irish descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1828–1913), Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is still called “Großsteinbeck”. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck (1862-1935), was treasurer of Monterey County. John's mother, Olive Hamilton (1867-1934), a former schoolteacher, shared Steinbeck's passion for reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became an agnostic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Steinbeck lived in a small rural town, nothing more than a frontier settlement, located in some of the most fertile land in the world. He spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels' sugar beet farms. There he discovered the harsher aspects of migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which provided him with material expressed in works such as Of Mice and Men. He explored his surroundings, passing through local forests, fields and farms. While working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and a penchant for repairing the objects he owned. The Steinbeck House at 132 Central Avenue, Salinas, California, the Victorian home where Steinbeck spent his childhood. Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and later studied English literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, which he left without a degree in 1925. He went to New York where he accepted odd jobs while trying to write. Having failed to publish his work, he returned to California and in 1928 worked as a tour guide and caretaker in Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, he tried to earn money making plaster mannequins. When their money ran out six months later due to a slow market, Steinbeck and Carol returned to Pacific Grove, Calif., to a cottage owned by her father on the Monterey Peninsula, a few blocks from the state line. from the city of Monterey. The elder Steinbecks gave John free accommodation, paper for his manuscripts and, from 1928, loans which enabled him to write without looking for work. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck purchased a small boat and later claimed he was able to live off the fish and crab he harvested from the sea and fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When these sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare and, on rare occasions, stole bacon from the local produce market. Whatever food they ate, they shared with their friends. Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row. In 1930, Steinbeck met marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck over the next decade, teaching him many things about philosophy and biology. ] Ricketts, usually very quiet, but friendly, with an inner self-sufficiency and encyclopedic knowledge of various subjects, became the center of Steinbeck's attention. Ricketts had taken a university course with Warder..