This past weekend I made the trek to Sacramento and got to see the house I grew up in. I hadn't been there in 20 years and, as might be expected, it had changed significantly. I was lucky enough to talk to the man who lives there now and was gratified to learn that he'd been living there for 18 years, although everyone I knew in the neighbourhood while growing up had long since moved away or died. Seeing the house was nice, though I was much more interested to see the ditch that ran along the periphery of the sports field that was located immediately behind the house. While the pictures look grim, and make the setting appear more rural than it actually is (on the border of Sacramento and Carmichael), little about the ditch had actually changed. The polywogs were still there; in a month or so the ditch will be teeming with frogs who will meet die under car wheels, transformed to paper-thin dry carcasses easily chucked like frisbees, ready for a varnish and a new life as a coaster. It looks like some ducks are living back there now which is weird. The back fence of one neighbour, who I didn't know, has always been a ramshackle mess. What's he building in there? Despite the ever-present moss and the stray coke can, this was the setting the most idyllic moments of my childhood.

Labels: photos, sacramento