Ruins

Not far from my home are some ruins. Well, OK, it's just a wall that's fallen apart on a lot that is overgrown with vines. Yes, it's just neglected, but it has this Old-World charm about its dereliction.

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1950s in a prototypical postwar suburban neighborhood that sprouted overnight in what had been for years citrus orchards.

Spotted here and there among the identical tract homes were the original farm houses. Each day I walked past one of those old houses on my way to and from school. The property was bordered by a chain link fence completely covered in vines. And the house, set back far from the street, could only be glimpsed between the forest of every kind of tree one could imagine -- big and small, deciduous and evergreen, fruit and ornamental. The owner of the property each year had planted a tree in the front yard. Now, more than 50 years later, the yard had become an enchanted forest inhabited by a really old witch who peeked out from behind her curtains watching for a hapless Hansel and Gretel to venture into her yard, as the story was told by the children as they hurried past.

That's what I think about when I walk past these ruins.

Day 58 of 365