Prelude

It was drizzling when I drove down the highway, heading South on US-99 to a place I had not been to in decades. And as I looked at the town as I drove past, I realized I could barely recognize it.

The fairgrounds where the annual timber carnival was held every year was now housing. The Arctic Circle where we used to walk to sometimes was gone, replaced by a large national burger chain. Even the large vacant lot in front of that with woods in the back was gone. But when I got to 36th Avenue, I found myself turning automatically.

I had a slight smile on my face as I drove down the dead end road. Houses on both sides, old ones built just after WWII, both brick and wood. But the road was now actual asphalt, not oil and gravel as it had been in my youth. And half way down the block, I stopped the car.

There it was, I would remember that house for as long as I lived. It was where my grandparents lived, and where I spent many summers growing up. The lower half was painted brick, the upper wood siding. With brick planters attached to the house. Where my grandfather would sump his worms after returning from fishing. So the next time he would run some water into the box and they would surface so he could grab them and use them the next trip.

So many summers, I spent in that house. Starting in 1972, and until I was in High School a decade later. Typically we would start our vacation with a trip. Reno, San Francisco, the California Gold Country, something like that. Then at the end, my parents would drive here.

Where I would be dropped off, and spend the rest of the summer with my grandparents. Until a week or so before school started, when they would drive me home.

I drove to the end of the street, and sighed. Where as once it had ended against the woods, now it ended in a driveway. And the end was entirely boxed in with houses and fences. No way to get down there now.

I was so close. But like my youth, Oak Creek was now out of reach.