Travelers Tales: Ghosts on the Streets of Home

I returned to my home town earlier this week, stopping by to get a feel for the place where I spent my first 18 years. I’m working on a novel that takes place there 20 years ago, and I wanted to revisit some of the sites in my story, to see if I’ve forgotten anything.

I had.

My heroine lives in my late mother’s late best friend’s house–a place I housesat during my college years so I know the layout. But I had forgotten the cute little family-run store around the corner. I thought the apartments were farther away. I had no idea there was a deep ravine two blocks to the east. And was Paseo del Mar always such a steep drop off at the end of the road?

Fortunately on the day I visited, fog sat on the neighborhood and I remembered how sound carries so differently through the soft gray marine layer. The surprise of joggers disappearing into the misty blanket and dog walkers appearing from the same, added  twists to the plot curing in my brain. A good trip.

But one in which I was shanghaied continually by memories fanning in and out like cards in a bridge hand. One minute I was six-years-old, my nose pressed against the car window as we jounced down steep Ninth Street. A turn of the corner and I felt bicycle pedals pumped by my fifteen-year-old legs. When I passed the high school, I paused at the corner–wasn’t there always a red VW bug parked in front of that house?

Maybe in 1973.

Here’s the spot where Fred had his fatal heart attack; where we left the car to hike down to Cabrillo Beach to avoid parking fees. My children played at the Point Fermin Park playground and I was 29 again; my parents living in the condo at the top of the hill.

Except they’re all gone now–tucked into cement crypts at Green Hills.

And through it all I was my current age, but not of one mind. I examined the clutter of Gaffey Street as a woman who has traveled the world and wondered why this street was so messy. I knew the short cut to Weymouth Corners without thought but wondered what had happened to the buildings that once loomed so large. And how could Polly Ann Bakery still be in business, but not Peterson’s Market across the street?

I didn’t travel with just my memories. I quizzed a reporter friend, describing a red witch hat house on the bend in the road where I used to babysit. The owners had talked of rum running to the house on the cliff during Prohibition and late at night watching the fog roll in and the muffled sound of crashing waves, I had waited with nerves alive.

Donna didn’t know the house, though she smiled politely. When I drove past, I saw it had been replaced by a mega-mansion, history and funkiness squashed by granite. Like several of my memories.

My fourth-grade friend’s mother invited me to tea in a sun drenched kitchen–I hadn’t seen her since the 1984 Olympics. We laughed about the years and the people we knew; told each other stories and I felt so loved.

But I had forgotten the reason I craved visiting her, beyond the fun of seeing someone I always liked. The same size, age and heritage as my mother, she asked the same loving questions and delighted in my answers. I felt like I had visited with my mom again–and I left with tears in my eyes. I haven’t seen my mother in sixteen years, since the day she dropped dead while playing golf.

Where to go for lunch? Who’s the pastor of our church? How could anyone have chintzed up our old home in such a silly fashion? Look how terrific Averill Park has been kept up.

It was a relief to end at another well-loved housesitting spot where the trees and plants still overgrew the yard and laughter ruled the air. Dogs barked up a storm and houseplants threatened the windows. Photos stuck out of crannies, fresh vegetables on the counter.

And my mother’s other dear friend as alive and full of blarney as ever.  Her sister, too.

Ghost were on the street, yes, but so were happy memories. My home town is more varied and special than I remembered.

And I can’t wait to go home again.

How about you?