So this afternoon I decided to take a little drive around the county, just to hit some areas I hadn’t seen before, or in a while.  I like to be able to visualize the locations I send deputies to, and it helps to be able to see what they actually look like.  I ended up in Porterville after making a loop through Tulare and the west and south sides of the county, and decided to stop by the house my grandparents lived in for about a decade, and I lived in for a little less than a year when I was 11 or 12.  It’s seen better days.

My grandfather put up that mailbox, because the prior one was too small.  I’m not sure what they were getting in the mail that required a bigger box, but I suppose he got tired of having to go into Porterville to pick up mail.  There used to be a small house-like shed standing right behind the mailbox.  We played there a lot as kids.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but it’s clear the front room, the ‘master’ bedroom, and another room out of this picture were added at some point to a much smaller existing house.

Looking in through the front window, into what was the west half of the main living room, into the dining room.  I’m fairly certain the dining room was the main front room of the original house, which now seems to me to have been a one bedroom, one bath house.  There may have been a second smaller bedroom that was enlarged later, but I’m not sure of the layout.

There used to be a large in-ground swimming pool in this area.  It’s the one my dad scared me senseless in, trying to teach me to swim.  I don’t know if it was dug up, or simply filled in and covered.  From the looks of the ground, I suspect it was broken up first, but the cement was probably left in the hole.

This was the bedroom we kids slept in.  It was enlarged at some point, with huge windows from floor to ceiling on the east wall, just behind me in this shot.  The beds were permanent fixtures, on that left wall, with a wooden frame that came up from the floor to hold the mattress, and bookshelves in the wall as headboards.  I was always a bit creeped out by this room, as it had no curtains.  It looked into a small orchard of pomegranate and walnut trees, and it always seemed something was out there.  I tried not to look toward the windows.  The structure of the addition is failing, now.

Only one of the pomegranate trees remain.

Only the bees live here now.

Stopped off at their last home, in Strathmore.  Apparently the latest owners lost it in the mortgage meltdown and resulting recession.  It’s empty, but there are no realtor signs posted, either.

A quick visit at the cemetery in Lindsay.

Grandpa and Grandma Bergman, 2002.

I take these little nostalgia tours now and again.  Sometimes they’re enjoyable, sometimes it’s a reminder of how entropy really works, and how time marches on, and waits for no man.  Or his grandparents.