The small community of San Carlos, some 23 miles south of San Francisco, reminded me of towns in the Midwest, where I grew up. San Carlos was a 1950s kind of place, when my wife and I, with our, then, infant child, first settled in Northern California. It still has remnants of that quaint, old style, but, over several decades, with new buildings sprouting up and all, the old town is changing.
Our house is getting fairly old, it was built in the 1970s. It held up well in the big earthquake of 1989 and the gale force winds that sometimes pound our area.
There’s something about the place. Previous owners thought it was haunted, and we’ve heard creaking sounds along an upstairs hallway, late at night, and voices, sometimes, but no one’s there. The previous owners were sanguine about a possible, spiritual presence. We are, too.
So now, our place is getting a paint job, on the outside of the house. And we’re wondering, considering the possible presence, and all, if our house, in some way, can sense what’s happening. If it’s wondering… ‘Do I need this? Do I need sprucing up? So what, if I’ve faded, some?’
Well…I’m whispering, in case our place can hear…It can stand some sprucing up. Fresh paint won’t change things, nearly as much as the changes taking place in the almost formerly, 1950s-looking community near our house.
I like old places. We lived in a really old place, when I was working in London. Just about everything, there, was old, back then.
But even London is changing, with glass skyscrapers sprouting up.
The financial firm I was with, over several decades of my career, had an archives I’d visit, at times, where memorabilia, from the company’s early days, was stored. The firm was founded in 1904. There were old ledgers, with everything handwritten on fragile pages. The penmanship looked like something you might see in a document like the U.S. Constitution. I sometimes wondered, but forgot to ask the company’s archivist, if quill pens might have been used when entries were written down in the leather and cloth bound books.
There were notations about paint jobs and new roofs for bank buildings. New roofs cost, maybe, a hundred dollars, if that, as I recall. Paint jobs were much cheaper, around then, as well.
Times surely do change. But at least, penmanship, like in those old ledgers, can be somewhat duplicated on computers, with the choice of typefaces, fonts, and such.
But then again, when you look real closely…
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.