May 13, 2018:
Our neighborhood smelled of honeysuckle, oleander, and newly-cut grass.
Rarely, in the rain, of asphalt.
The buildings were so close together. Long, narrow blocks, interleaved with narrow sidewalks bound by trees and thickets of stickerbushes. Some of the kids would eat the red berries; I chose not to. At certain times of the week the sidewalks smelled of garbage, from overfull cans kept in U-shaped concrete enclosures large enough for one can each. Strange feature of an otherwise well-kept parklike urban space.
It was all one neighborhood but management separated it into informal zones. One end, the northern side from Dakota Drive to Knapp and Waco, was reserved for families with kids. It was noisy there with childhood voices. Street games, hide-and-seek, occasionally a ball ooops! breaking a window. That side was considerably itinerant, with navy families being transfered or new young families saving for their first house. The southern side from Calle Neil to Iroquois was elderly, and predominantly female. Widows. It was quiet there, kids were mostly discouraged. We'd ride bikes through the streets but mostly we left the inner sidewalks alone.
There were small playgrounds down our end. Slide, sandbox, merry-go-round we'd spin insanely fast. Laundry rooms every so often, where we never left our laundry unguarded. I don't think there was much crime there; rather my mum was insane with fear of the world and everyone in it.
The three best features of the neighborhood were on its borders. Tecolote Canyon to the east. Paradise for boys, as good as Tom Sawyer's caverns. We knew every inch of every trail. Exactly where to find polliwogs in the stagnant pools. How to get the fuck out of there quick when it was on fire. Later, where to go with the girls for a certain minimal privacy.
South Clairemont Rec Center to the north. Big open fields for football. Nice tall thickets for hide-and-seek, and later for rolling around with the girls. I suspect that latter is why they were eventually removed. Spoilsports.
My favorite, Clairemont Bowl to the south. I loved the noise there, the constant background buzz drowning out extraneous distractions. In college I brought Althusser and Perry Anderson and Braudel and Freud there to study. I loved the coffee shop, where my friend's mom worked. When she was there we'd get free fries and shakes. Heaven.
There was an outdoor Olympic-sized unheated pool, with some vending machines and a pool table to one side. I think the machines pretty much served cokes and Jolly Ranchers. There's some other candy taste in my memory from there but I can't pin it down. I learned to swim there, in an afternoon. Later I swam a million laps and played Marco Polo, until one day for some reason I got chucked out. Some tiff with the lifeguard, Dwight. I never went back. Stubborn that way.
The entire neighborhood was green. Blocks of identical green two-story apartment buildings with identical trees and bushes and sidewalks and laundry rooms and smelly trash receptacles.
I can walk most of it in detailed memory.
I wish I were there right now. That's my home. Every other place has been exile.