Nostalgia Tour

I finished a court appearance in San Jose today with enough time to dawdle in the South Bay before heading home for the evening, so I took the opportunity to pass through some of my old haunts. I've been by the old homes a time or two over the past number of years, but I had not been able to take the time to just soak up some of the more prosaic aspects of my old hometown. It was the kind of trip that would bore my wife and kids to tears, but just driving down roads that I took countless times in my youth is as meaningful to me as going to an old home.

I was pleasantly surprised at how bucolic Sunnyvale still is. I feared that I had romanticized it over the years as some Utopian Everytown, USA -- if not the perfect town to grow up in (which even I would not suggest), at least better than anyplace else I've been. The city center, including the library, really is a great expression of civic pride. Meandering through town today, tracing some of my many formerly habitual routes, I was amazed in particular at how wide the streets were. Even in the middle of neighborhoods, the streets allowed plenty of room for traffic, parked cars andbikes. Of course, in those days, my primary mode of transportation was bicycle. Buried deep in my psyche is a recollection of which streets were extended gradual uphill grinds; the slightest grade, as I learned back then, made all the difference in my enjoyment of the ride. Or, to put it into teen angst mode, my resentment at not being able to borrow the car. I must say, I got a bit of a kick out of toodling around the old neighborhood in my current ride. I never came out of the Sunnyvale Library to get into that.

For all of the deep resonance that just being in the same old neighboods brings, nothing stays the same forever. My first Sunnyvale home has been painted baby blue (a highly questionable choice), and both the apricot and pine (fir?) trees have been removed, the latter very recently, to judge by the wood chips and fresh, huge stump. Victoria Station and the Velvet Turtle, the only fancy restaurants I knew of as a kid, are both gone. The Victoria Station still has the railroad cars that comprised the restaurant, but now it is a Vietnamese restaurant. In fact, just about every business in that immediate area, including our old church, caters to either Mandarin or Vietnamese population that must be very prominent in that neighborhood now. I did deposit a check at the Bank of America that was my first bank, though. I even went inside just to see the old counter where I used to deposit my meager minimum wage checks.

In the course of being back in the Bay Area, I have learned how little I actually knew about my home when I grew up here. People at work now ask me questions about the South Bay, and I find that I have very few answers. I was out and about a lot back then, but, as it turns out, only within a very narrowly drawn area. I did very little more than about five miles from home. My travels encompass a much longer radius now. I'm thankful, though, for all the living I packed into those few miles. It is not likely that I will live there again, as much as I would love to do it. Still, it's nice to be able to visit now and then.