Chino

will add more later

It was only two years, but I feel like my entire childhood took place in this house and the accompanying yard. 15014 Kalen Court. 559-5547. My brain absorbed every detail of these two years in a way that it never has since. The map above of course has a lot more houses on it than there were when I was there.

I spent lifetimes sitting in the side and back yard, and knew where every rock was, which bushes had which kinds of butterflies, I knew where the lizards lived and I knew which ones were which as I caught and re-caught them over the period of a couple years (yanking off their tails as a way to “mark” them). There was a cement lid over a meter of some sort under which the banana slugs would grow to fantastic proportions once a year. In the garage a nest of black widows lived and I would check it every couple days for those soft Q-tip like eggs. Then I would jar them up and watch the tiny brown babies emerge. There were the egg-like bushes on either side of the driveway that every year burst forth in caterpillars. There was the muddy area near the hill that was rich in worms. The ball they made when I put them in a jar and left it outside overnight (they were cold, I think). The ever-illusive and much coveted white moth-like butterfly flew over that hill, last year, and I’ve been waiting for it ever since. My father threw a snake over that fence, and let me keep the rattle. My turtle dug under the fence right here. I pulled the hermit crab out of its shell next to the kitchen window. I rode my bike in ever-closing circles at the cul-de-sac until I crashed from a circle that was too tight. I hit my sister with a baseball bat next to the caterpillar bush. In the garage, near the black widows, I bet the neighbor kids that there was no Hell and when they required proof I went inside and got my planets book and explained that we already knew what was underground and it was not Hell. It was lava. I loved to use the hose to get the dirt out of the crack in the driveway. The burglar knocked my mom down in the hall and ran out of the house, heaving our broken black and white television over the fence. I organized my box of baseball cards over and over in that same hall. I pretended to take a nap by resting my head for a split second on my bed and insisting that I really had fallen asleep (I didn’t realize that time actually did pass while I was sleeping). I sang a song I made up in order to remember the word “because” which was the most difficult word on my spelling test. I released a jar of bees into my living room. I stepped on a bee barefoot on the front lawn. I got knocked over by the wind in a particularly windy storm. I missed a ball as it got dark. I hid in the neighbor’s bushes and practiced bad words with the other kids. I broke the antenna off of my neighbor’s car. When I knew I was moving, all of the neighbor kids walked around and looked for the last time together at a few things, but I knew I wouldn’t miss them for long.

It’s a nice town. There used to be a lot of dairies in the vicinity, but they’re all getting monetary incentives (from other cities) to move away. It’s very suburban, so not very distinct. It’s not a “destination location,” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a good place to live, though.