Where I grew up

The center of this photo is my Pasadena neighborhood, before the freeway, 1948-58. The new freeway took out our house but the houses across the street are still there. So is the sycamore tree in our front yard I used to climb, which you can make out in an enlargement of this photo. I visited the scene of the crime several years ago. Very surreal, my tree with the freeway pillars behind me.

From Dress Rehearsals, a memoir:

The adjustment to life in Pasadena was difficult for me. I
soon learned that many kids in Southern California thought I
talked funny and had very peculiar manners. They weren’t shy
about sharing this with me.

The move to the west coast also brought an unexpected
loss. There were no lightning bugs in Pasadena. In Virginia,
New Jersey and Texas, summer evenings began with the
blinking lanterns of these insects, rising from the grass to
announce the end of day. With other kids I used to catch them in
jars. When I had a handful, I would squish them over my face,
their luminescent chemicals turning my skin into a florescent
mask and, looking like glowing monsters, we would chase the
girls and make them squeal.


I missed lightning bugs so much after leaving Dallas that
years later, as a graduate student in Oregon, I tried to bring
them back into my life again. After visiting New Jersey, I flew
home with several jars of lightning bugs in my suitcase. That
evening in Eugene, I turned them loose and for a magical
evening I had lightning bugs in my life again, blinking away as
if they were right at home. But the next evening they didn’t
appear. Whether they flew off somewhere else or died I never
found out, but I never again saw lightning bugs in Oregon, and I
wouldn’t enjoy their magical pleasure until my next trip east of
the Rocky Mountains.

...

Personal adjustments aside, in many ways Pasadena must
have looked like Eden to my family in 1948. Our house at 2862
Estado Street faced north to a spectacular view of the brown
San Gabriel mountains. Our front yard was lined with sycamore
trees. In the back yard were apricot, lemon, peach and avocado
trees. The house had two bedrooms, one for my parents and one
for Bill and me. We had a dining room and a den. The back yard
was large enough that later my dad, with the help of his dad,
would build a considerable patio, shaped like a navigator’s
compass. Through much of his Navy career, my dad had been a
navigator.

Our neighborhood in east Pasadena was middle-class and
lily white, bordered on the west by a large avenue that marked
the end of the route of the famous Rose Parade on New Year’s
Day and on the east by a large gully, called “the wash,” across
which was a poorer neighborhood of Hispanics.

I started school in Pasadena in the third grade, at an
elementary school across from the park where the Rose Parade
floats lined up for viewing. Today Pasadena High School is
located there. I have a strong memory of my first day in school
because the experience was very unpleasant.

The teacher began to call the roll. When she got to my
name, I quickly stood up, stood at attention, and said in my
southern drawl, “Yes, ma’am!” Immediately I was surrounded
by laughter as all my classmates thought this was the most
hilarious thing they had seen in their lives. I burst into tears.

Welcome to Southern California.