Being overcome with a fit of nostalgia I decided to take a drive through my old neighborhood. I was born in La Mesa at the newly opened Grossmont Hospital in1961. We lived off Avocado on Nabal St., named after a rare variety of avocado, at the foothills of Mt. Helix. When not in school, the neighborhood was always a busy hive of little baby-boomers either riding their bikes, playing flag football in the street or pretending to be intrepid explorers in search of some yet undiscovered treasure.
Being overcome with a fit of nostalgia I decided to take a drive through my old neighborhood. I was born in La Mesa at the newly opened Grossmont Hospital in1961. We lived off Avocado on Nabal St., named after a rare variety of avocado, at the foothills of Mt. Helix. When not in school, the neighborhood was always a busy hive of little baby-boomers either riding their bikes, playing flag football in the street or pretending to be intrepid explorers in search of some yet undiscovered treasure. We would get up early to fish from one of several sizable ponds stocked with bluegill and bass or wander down creeks looking for crawdads to pester. It was an odd time growing up there in the late 1960's and early 70's. I never will forget my 1st grade teacher, a willowy 20 something lady with long dishwater blond hair teaching us a new word…psychedelic. Each of us was told to practice this quixotic color scheme after being given a card with our names in bubble script and a box of crayons. She knew I had a fascination with rocks and would allow me to skip class time and wander the perimeter of the school armed with a little rock pick looking for treasures to add to my ever-growing collection. Come summer, we were never home. From the time the sun came up till dinner we were either riding our bikes to Casa De Oro or building a fort in some fallow field.
As I drove up and down the streets, wave after wave of nostalgia flowed over me. I knew every nook and cranny of this neighborhood, every street and cul-de-sac had a story, the hill where I crashed my bike, knocking out my front teeth, the bus stop where I kissed a girl for the first time and the field where we used to shoot off model rockets. But something was wrong. There were no children. I rolled down the window expecting to hear the squeals and shouts of kids at play, but all I heard was the sound of a soft breeze rustling the leaves on the jacarandas. This was mid-summer, mid-week on a beautiful 70-degree day but my old neighborhood was as lifeless as a ghost town. Like in one of those dystopian novels so common during the cold war, it resembled the after-effects of a bomb that killed all human life while leaving the building standing. The homes were more beautiful and the yards were far more lush and manicured than when I was growing up; but there were no cars with hoods up encircled by teenage boys, no elderly ladies puttering away in their gardens or the smell of barbecue in the air. Where was everyone? My guess is if there were children living there at all, they were sitting in front of computer screens, exploring a virtual world with only two of their five senses. They however were safe. They weren't risking stinging nettle or broken bones. No chance they would encounter the pedophile who tirelessly tried to groom neighborhood kids. They weren't getting bit by spiders or god forbid, that mean dog that escaped his pen, they weren't going to be hit by a car racing down the winding streets or fall out of a tree. Yes, they must be safe, securely locked inside a beautiful home, in a beautiful neighborhood, one they will only know from peering out the tinted windows of their parents car.
Daniel Williams
La Mesa
