I prefer St. Paul to San Diego

In San Diego I got off the highway at College Avenue and found the last house I lived in before moving in with Jenifer and Naomi in 1986. The neighborhood, and the whole city for that matter, seemed strangely naked—it’s the lack of big trees; there is much more sky here. Nearby was another former home, a one bedroom apartment I’d shared with friend James: he took the front room, I took the back, he got the mattress, I got the boxspring.

I drove the length of El Cajon Blvd, feeling strangely giddy and discomfited. The city that exists in my memory is limited to selected streets and buildings....but driving along I saw places that had long disappeared from my head, places where forgotten things had happened—maybe just buying motorcycle parts or going grocery shopping, but sometimes something more fraught. Twenty-five years ago at a strip mall on 54th and El Cajon I had sat outside a theater on the curb feeling dizzy and nearly undone, after fleeing the gory denouement of The Hunger, a vampire film with David Bowie.

I stopped at another former apartment on 49th, then at our last pre-Minnesota place, on Campus Avenue. On that wide street I was suddenly back with seven-year-old Naomi, walking her to the bus stop on a cool, foggy morning.

In Balboa Park I ambled through the Botanical Building, admired the big eucalyptus trees, bought an ice cream at the stand where I used to buy Naomi ice cream, by the giant tree she used to climb on but now there’s a fence around it.

I hadn’t been in San Diego in fifteen years, and had had no particular desire to visit; once here I discovered I hadn’t changed my mind. It was a little interesting to see the old homes and neighborhoods but also pointless. I’d pull up to an apartment and think, yep, there it is. The places, the city, they’re not significant anymore; this was home so long ago that I can hardly imagine what that must’ve felt like, to be at home here. A visit offers some nostalgia, maybe a few correctives to memory (a questionable benefit), but mostly I just felt homesick for Minnesota, my real place where my real people live.

Luckily, though, I do have a couple real people left here in San Diego. After Balboa Park I drove to a residential neighborhood perched on a long ridge and found one more house, a one-story rambler with lemon trees in the yard, occupied by friends Clinton and Annie and their two sons Trevor (15) and Andy (13). Clinton and I had worked on boats together through most of the 1980s, but I hadn’t seen him in over fifteen years. A little risky to visit people from whom you have so long been separated, but it turned out quite well.

Annie is a graphic designer, a freelancer who works out of a lovely sunroom built onto one side of the house. She’s smart and arty and a good cook and has impeccable taste and appeared to be a calm and effective mother. Her two boys are almost SoCal cliches, tall and thin with shaggy, water- and sun-damaged blonde hair; they skateboard and surf and play soccer. Trevor is a bit quiet/surly, but then he’s fifteen; he’s apparently an excellent surfer, and they just learned that one of his drawings had won a first place at the Del Mar Fair. Andy is a little more personable, but then give him a couple years. Aided by his mother, he explained to me how he had recently broken his pinky finger in a horseplay incident. After dinner, when we were still talking at the table, he draped himself across his mother’s lap, far too big for her but she didn’t complain.

Clinton is seemingly unchanged, despite a few wrinkles—his Lancashire accent is undiminished by time, and his proclivity for “takin’ the piss out of” people (that is, teasing, or “winding ‘em up”) is intact. I was long a main target, and it seems that sons were ready made for this type of affection. He no longer works on boats but applies his woodworking skills to houses, mostly new ones. In his own house there is much evidence of his talent—the dining room table, the front door, a television cabinet, and more. The garage is full of his tools and equipment, and he drives an Astro minivan with the backseats pulled out to accommodate his work gear.

His true passion, though, is for soccer, or for football, as he persists in calling it. He has been a Manchester United devotee since childhood, and was still reveling in their recent winning of the Champions League final. He’s currently following the Euro 2008 tournament, despite the fact that England does not have a team in the competition. There are televisions all over the house, as much for soccer-viewing as anything else.

I’ve been here at their house two days now, sleeping in the van in the driveway, and coming in for the morning to sit with Annie in her sunroom, each on our own computer. The boys are at lifeguarding camp, and Clinton is off at work, doing the wood trim in a massive house being built for some “rich focker.” Yesterday he helped put in the front door, a huge eight by ten foot slab that rotates in the middle; it took eight guys to lift.

As in Boise with Grandpa, as in Las Vegas with Rob, as in Borrego Springs with Larry and Sinda, I have been welcomed and well-treated here, and as each time before I am reluctant to go. I settle in easily and I enjoy hanging about the house....

But of course I don’t want to abuse such hospitality. This afternoon I head north for Redondo Beach and the next visit.