The Panorama Passes

In the months since I took a hiatus from writing now and then, a few changes have taken place.

First and foremost, we moved out of the duplex we had rented for the last 17 years and into storage. Hopefully a temporary condition, but low-income senior housing is in short supply. Most places are full, at this time, and if interested, I am suggested to join the waiting list, if one is open. Most, as you might expect, are not. Welcome to the housing market in the state of California. Thanks to family, we have somewhere to stay, but it is not what we signed up for.

Yet, hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… I have left behind the wannabe cowboy town that was Livermore some decades ago. It morphed over the time we were there into just another bedroom community feeding the metropolis of San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and beyond. I did a stint of some 16 months of excessive commuting before common sense took hold and I went off “to explore other opportunities”; which I still am, post-COVID.

I have returned to the East Bay environs of unincorporated central Contra Costa County, outside the Walnut Creek city limits. When we first relocated here in the summer of 1970, we were leaving behind the tract home in the booming aerospace industry of Santa Clara County, in Mountain View. No more street lights or even sidewalks. No homes were built right to the setback of the lot line to get every last inch of square footage. Just up the street, open space called hikers and daisy (okay, mostly California golden poppies) pickers alike. In fact, my father got involved soon after our move with a group to save that open space from development or even a cross-country high-speed freeway.

My parents had built a custom home on three-quarters of an acre out at the end of paved streets in this odd little area. Just up the hill, asphalt gave way to gravel, and the more hearty folks had homes on good-sized parcels. No little boxes made of ticky tacky all jammed in side by side here. It wasn’t country living by a long shot, but it wasn’t suburban sprawl either. Comfortable was the word.

Fast forward fifty-odd years and the neighborhood ain’t what it used to be.

The house my parents built still sits as it did when first built. On the city side of the street, you guessed it. Urban sprawl. Complete with sidewalks and street lights. That gravel road at the top of the hill is paved now and leads to another area of urban sprawl, with neat garages and front lawns side by side where once were rolling hills. Yet, open space survives, just beyond the sprawl, despite attempts to intrude.

Downtown Walnut Creek isn’t much better. Again, what used to be a nice small business district where you knew everyone by name, wants today to be Rodeo Drive North. Where once was open fields and a small bar at the crossroads from the west, north, and south, is home to a corner with TIffany’s holding forth. If you know where to look, some structures from those days are still in place but are more likely to be pushing fancy coffee or trendy baked goods along with clothing boutiques that no one ever actually buys anything from. Give me the days of the Army-Navy Surplus Store and Flaky Cream Donuts any time.

You can’t fault progress, but you can fault the folks in the city government who gave approval to all of the changes. Real residents, who grew up here? Mostly gone now. Off elsewhere for affordable homes or jobs that offered more than just the same. In a way, you truly can’t go home. As I have said before, no moment is preserved in amber, waiting to be rediscovered. No place, either. But we can have an appreciation for those times, people, and places, as we fondly remember them.

It’s called “nostalgia”, and I will have a nice big slice. Yes, thank you…