After bringing our art work to the History Museum, we drove around some of my old haunts in Los Altos.   Los Altos started as a bedroom community for airline pilots and other upward-mobile families. Although most houses we saw were 50+ year old ranch-style, they were well-kept.  Our house in the apricot orchards on Avalon Drive was wonderful to see, spinning out warm memories with each glance. The home looked remarkably wide, like the old Cinerama movies, situated on flat lawn-fronted land. I pointed out the bathroom window where I created my first darkroom. Also the wide 2-car garage where I built and wired the workbench and electronics.   There was the kitchen window where Mom staged a welcome-home dinner when we came back from backpacking to a newly-moved-in house.  Our second house, on Giralda, looked different than I remember, largely due to the giant redwood trees that had grown up in front.

My cynical high school friends always tried to distance themselves from the bourgeois wealth of the town, but we still enjoyed the minor luxuries that living there provided.   The history museum had nicely portrayed the agricultural roots here, with apricots the most valued crop.   I felt good about the summer crop jobs my sisters and I had. Some of the old equipment in the museum reminded me of grandfather’s gentleman walnut farm and his tall slender ladders. When they moved to Los Altos Hills, dad was probably the only electronics worker there who hosted bee hives in the orchards. I moved away from such scenes, but I wish I had brought with me a love of gardening

Avalon Drive House

Giralda Drive House on fathers day 1961, taken by JC Gordon