Back in Time

The highway heading north was long and barren and straight as a board. Up ahead water mirages formed and dissipated in the summer heat. Sealed inside the air conditioned chamber of glass and steel, I wondered what I was about to see and how it would feel when I got there. 

After two hours on the endless monotonous road, my accelerator foot edging into numbness, I took an exit that led to the outskirts of my destination. Eyes toggling between the Mapquest directions in my hand and the traffic around me clipping along about 30 MPH, I drove for a few miles before coming across the locks that divided the small town I was visiting from the smaller town adjoining.

Instantly I knew where I was and where I was going, my point A-to-point B focus giving way to curiosity and an inner light on high glow. In one of those synchronicities that almost makes me think there's an order to the universe, Cream's "I'm so Glad" came on the radio as I looked left and right at stores and shops and restaurants I hadn't seen in 33 years, since I'd moved away in the 7th grade. 

Soon I came across a familiar car dealership. As a kid of 10-11-12 I was fascinated by cars and roamed this lot with a notebook, documenting features and prices; to this day I can identify American models from the late '70s and early '80s on sight. The continued existence of this lot was a sign of how little things had changed since I'd left, a balm to my life review.

I turned off the main road into the neighborhoods, 

my old stomping grounds. Helped along by sunny 

and warm May weather and the verdant plant life all 

around, I was transported back to the idyllic Midwestern

summers of my youth, a sharp contrast to my current life in the

Bay Area which was filled with big lots, open spaces, abundant tree 

cover and scant traffic that allowed me to drive slowly and take it all in at my 

own pace, as if I were moving freely through a still life painting. Able to pull over

 just about anywhere and park, I stopped outside of the school I had attended in 1979. 

  

The fence on the right, above, encloses the elementary school and accompanying lot where I learned to figure skate and played baseball with friends on weekends. In a vivid dream a few years ago I walked along the sidewalk on the left, at night, observing the school and the space and remembering many of the incidents that had happened there, my subconscious trying to make real the space I'd traveled many times in my daydreams. 

One of my favorite spots growing up was the park pictured next. Driving on the perimeter 

of the park, it occurred to me that there had been a way down from the 

back. This time, my memory was right. Here we a have a 

view of the sneak route from the top looking down, 

here a view from the bottom looking up,

along the way big fallen logs that slept soundly in the still forest.

This park has the remains of the board I learned to dive off of and

the mound from which I pitched one scoreless inning 

against the best team in the league, the Realtors, before 

gravity asserted itself in the second inning. With one out

 and two on base I fell behind in the count against a long 

ball hitter and gambled on throwing a strike. He took my 

fastball down the middle over the fence and effectively 

ended my Little League pitching career, though I didn't 

know it at the time. Nearby were better associations of 

the pond that winds through the park, 

perfectly framed by the luxuriant surroundings of

a summer in full bloom,

some of the tableaux so exquisite that the photos took themselves...

I closed this leg of my journey by way of the hill road I always used to race 

down on my ten speed, being back then oblivious to injury or mortality

or just how slight this seemingly steep gradient was next to 

the colossal  San Francisco hills I would climb later in life.

Sports was my main interest as a kid. Around the age of 12, 

I gave up baseball for tennis. Here is the court where 

I first learned the game, not far from 

the field where my dad taught me how to play Frisbee, 

a perfect spot due to its flatness and lush, well-maintained grass 

where we had the space to throw big distances, which was ideal for long,

slowly descending tosses you had to chase down and try to nab on the run like a fly ball. 

Off to the side was this solitary bench and

at the end of the line of sight was a road that includes the house below. Often the settings of my dreams are rooms I was in once or twice many decades back, the brain-locked images hazy, undisturbed by concrete visuospatial definition. This house appeared in a dream though I was never in it and never knew who lived there. In the dream the house was smaller, perhaps half the actual size, and closer to the road, at a drop-off of a few feet. No one else lived in the house and it belonged to me, like the selective memories I had of it.

More familiar houses figured prominently in my journey around town. Here is my 

home from 1979 to 1981, where I remember lying in bed looking up at the ceiling 

 imagining what it would be like to walk on the ceiling, the world upside down. 

Directly across from my parents' house was a side yard 

my friends and I used to cut through often, without a 

second thought. As I drove around I sought out 

these old shortcuts and wondered if 

kids were still using them.

My history teacher and music teacher were just 

up the street.  Mrs. McCormick painted Jimi Hendrix 

as some kinda freaky man from Mars as she told the class of how

he had stuck tabs of acid under his headband before he went onstage.

I can see her face as she told this story, her eyes wide with 

amazement, and ultimately what I remember most of my 

time in this small town is the people I was close to. 

My good friend Jay lived just a few blocks away. His 
distinguishing feature was a ribald sense of humor; I 
remember him slyly placing my Star Wars figures in 
compromising positions before he went home—leaving 
me to take the blame when my mom discovered Han 
and Boba Fett in flagrante delicto on the kitchen  table. 
Jay's parents still live in the house he grew up in, below.

Around the corner was a junction where three of my friends lived

 in close proximity. John's dad was a baseball coach. The family 

members were kind, civilized people with a well-appointed kitchen 

that has popped into my dreamscapes a handful of times. I can't 

remember anything else about the house other than that 

there was a glass table with a canopy in the backyard, I think.

Joel was across the street from John. This is where my group of friends 

spent the most time, perhaps because Joel's parents were gone a lot. 

Joel had handheld electronic football games that everyone wanted 

to play: Football I, at first, which had only running plays, 

then Football II, which added passing plays. 

One time Joel and I were hanging with his older sister and 

her boyfriend, who were "babysitting" us. As we sat in the 

living room, the boyfriend pulled out a pot pipe and told me a 

story about being a kid and promising a man who was getting high 

in his presence that he wouldn't tell anyone what he was witnessing, how he had 

maintained his silence and wished me to do the same, a promise I kept until this moment.

Phil lived next door to John. I was only in his house a few times 

but have many memories. His older brother spreading tools and car parts 

all over the floor in the basement and charging me three dollars to tape record 

"Dream Police." His dad, an august Italian man in a wheelchair who reminded 

me of Marlon Brando in "The Godfather." And Phil himself, a character with 

a distinct inner fire that went out, I was shocked to discover, when 

he'd had a heart attack a few years back around the age of 40.

Phil's father managed a facility where my friend Chris's dad worked. Like 

the boys we were, Chris and I played Pong in his basement, which had pine 

wall paneling and red carpet. More importantly, he introduced me, at the ripe 

age of 12, to interests that have become cemented in my sensibility: Frank Zappa and progressive politics (ever-precocious, Chris was lambasting Reaganomics before 

I had  the faintest idea what it was). The second floor of his house (pictured below), added

 after Chris moved to the Twin Cities, was one of the  few changes I saw on my trip.

The street in front of Chris's house was the scene of one of my deepest 

memories: a bike accident in which I got a deep cut on my hand that formed 

an upside down v-shaped scar (not unlike the Starship 

Enterprise uniform insignia) which I still have today. 

The last house I visited was home to my friend Tom, a 

scholar-athlete who was the youngest member of a big family. 

I remember being in his kitchen and his mother gently 

mocking my last name, singing 

Bimbo, bimbo

What you gonna do-y-o?

and Tom smiling, telling her she was being 

rude, asking her to stop, though I didn't mind—

it was harmless fun that clearly gave her enjoyment.

As I fueled up for my ride home a few blocks from Tom's, 

this grand 1954 Buick Century came into the gas station. 

The driver was generous when I asked if I could snap a few photos, and

when he came out of the convenience store after 

paying for his gas, he had a bouquet of flowers 

and a big smile on his face, a bright 

light that perfectly capped 

my nostalgia trip.

***

                                                     Other Truth and Beauty photo essays:

"It Starts with your Heart and Radiates Out" includes street art, 

eye-catching architecture, and miscellaneous city scenes 

in a stroll from the Mission to South of Market to downtown

"Crystal Blue Persuasion" is a walking photo tour of San Francisco from the Bay to the Ocean (and a golden sunset) on a pristine sunny day just before Xmas

"Gone but not Forgotten" is a tribute to a friend who left this world all too soon 

"A Sunny* Monday in San Francisco" is a day tour of the city, 

from Mission Street to the Pacific Ocean

"On a clear day you can see forever" explores Noe Valley, Ashbury Heights, 

the Inner Sunset district, microclimates, and street art on a pristine September day 

"Random San Francisco" has 46 photos which range from 

ornate architecture to vistas to murals to sidewalk messaging

"California in November" captures deep fall natural splendor

"The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the Marin Headlands" 

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