The old house. The house that I grew up in - from age 5 to 14 - grade school to Jr. High. Everyone said that when I visited Canyon Country I would be astonished by how much it has been developed, but to me it didn't really seem like it had changed much. Sure there were some new houses, but the place was under development when I was living there and what I saw just seemed like a logical continuation of that process. There is a limit to the development possibilities in our old neighborhood because eventually you run into steep canyon walls that are essentially unbuildable. And over the hill in Crystal Springs, the roads had expanded to reach these natural limits. But in my immediate neighborhood, on my street, there were the same number of houses that were there when I lived there. Most had changed little. Our house, so I heard, had undergone a million dollar renovation. I was expecting to see an unrecognizable monstrosity, but really they had only added a small addition over the concrete patio where we used to hang the laundry. Other than that, the footprint was essentially the same. She had however undergone a major facelift. The pergola had been removed, it was painted white, and there was an apron of brick up to about waist height that ran around the perimeter of the house. Even with all of these changes, I stood for a moment nearly dumbstruck by the sight of the place. It seemed to vibrate with an intense energy of compressed memory. It was a sort of feeling of vertigo, a tingling in the chest. The owner was in the driveway, tending to his trailered speedboat, so we approached and introduced ourselves. He was kind enough to let us into the back yard and we reminisced about the history of the place. I looked up at the back hill and I remembered that I once buried a cat up there, where there was now a white vinyl fence. Apparently he had dug up a box while setting posts, but he assured me that he reburied it once he realized what it was. Seeing the backyard, my heart sank. The wonderland of trees and cacti that I knew as a child had been nearly stripped bare. What motivated them to cut down such glorious trees I can only guess, but he mentioned something about maintenance. I remember having to sweep the pool of pine needles, but this hassle never would have led me to the conclusion to cut them down. And probably the plum tree, and the pear tree, and the apricot tree were removed because of their "litter" as well.
Several years ago, when I first drove by my grandparents' house in Iola, Wisconsin after it was sold, and saw that they had painted it beige, I felt violated, like they had tampered with something sacred and gotten it all wrong. I wanted to go inside and tell the new owners that the house was supposed to be red, that they should put it back the way it was. It was enough that my grandfather had removed the light-up Haroldson Electric sign from out front when I was in grade school. It made no sense to me that it was no longer needed because he had retired. It was simply supposed to be there. I wanted it back. And now some stranger thinks that he can go and paint the house any color he wants, just because he bought the place. This was the house that my grandparents had bought with another relative and then split in half because they could not afford the whole thing. They literally cut it in half and had their side moved to the site. They lived in a renovated chicken coop on the property before they could afford to have the house brought in. And this was the place that I had gone every summer of my childhood from the time I was a toddler and built up a treasure trove of sweet memories. All of those memories are housed. They belong to that place. I can crawl up the carpeted stairs in my mind and I can tell you what is in each drawer of the dresser at the landing between the two upstairs bedrooms. I can see in intimate detail the star patterned holes in the acoustic tile ceiling, the light up painting hanging on the wall, and the plastic flower arrangements in the corner. I can see my grandpa fiddling with the receiver on his satellite TV and I can feel the texture of the rainbow striped carpet in the three season room. And when we bought the bungalow and I stepped into my very own garage, I smelled the odor of the gas lawnmower and grass clippings and instantly I was transported to Grandpa Leo's shop in his garage where we would search through innumerable tiny drawers of parts for things we did not understand and there would always be a Jolly Good Cola in the fridge. For a hundred some thousand dollars, my family relinquished all rights to this place and our memories are buried, one by one, under layers of paint and new carpet. Of course there would have been no sense in keeping it. There would have been no one to live there. But it is painful nonetheless.
I came to Canyon Country bracing myself for this sense of loss. But when I first set eyes on the place and felt that rush of energy, I knew that somehow its essence remained. And I drove through Canyon Country on instinct, searching out places that gave me that sense of warm nostalgia. I found it in the hill in front of my house that I used to skateboard down, and I found it in the old green utility box on the side of the road that served as our bus stop. It has often been noted that nothing can trigger memory like a smell or a taste, and I knew that the nostalgia jackpot was waiting for me in the crispy pepperoni on top of a Round Table pizza, a taste that I have been craving for twenty years. We pulled into the strip mall and there it was, where it had always been. I walked in and instinctively ordered a root beer. I took one bite of pizza and I knew, and was comforted that some things never change. Looking around the room, I saw that they had remodeled a bit, but the arcade was still there, and the same coat of arms, although it had been moved, was still hanging on the wall. It struck me that the world is a palimpsest, alternately being covered and revealed in layers, reconfigured, rearranged, but never really fundamentally changed. Space remains where it is, and seems to contain all that was ever there.
Before we returned to LA, we stopped at Vazquez Rocks, where my parents had taken us on a yearly excursion for Easter sunrise service. It is also the place where many films have been shot, usually portrayed as an alien landscape. Climbing on the rocks Shana turned to me and remarked, "Being here, I think I understand you a little better," because it is after all, a part of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment