Childhood Home on Streetview

Note: this post was originally published on 12/10/2008 to a different site.

The other day (actually back in June or July, it’s taken me a while to type this up) I was reading an article online in the Juneau Empire, the newspaper of my original hometown: Juneau, Alaska.  I often read the paper online out of nostalgic curiosity.  The article was about proposed public transit plans in Juneau.  One of the plan descriptions mentioned the street Riverside Drive and that name struck a chord.  Riverside Drive sounded very familiar but I couldn’t place it because I kept mixing it up with Riverside County and the city of Riverside in Socal.  There’s also a street called Riverside Drive in Burbank.

I went to Google Maps and entered “Riverside Drive, Juneau, AK”.  The map when to a street in the first neighborhood I lived in Juneau with my family.  It was in the Mendenhall Valley area of Juneau that’s actually the first of three valleys I’ve lived in.  The other two are the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel Valley where I currently live.  I lived in the Mendenhall Valley (locally referred to as “the Valley”) from ages 6 to 9 roughly.  We didn’t live on Riverside Drive but it intersected our street and was a main thoroughfare that went alongside the Mendenhall River (hence the name).  The Valley wasn’t created by this river but by the famous Mendenhall Glacier.  There’s a park on Riverside drive that we used to frequent even after we left the Valley.  We played many of our soccer games there.

While scrolling through the map I noticed that Google had Streetview for Juneau.  The Streetview feature shows photos of what’s along the streets on the map.  They also have it for the L.A. area and the photo of our home shows my wife’s car parked outside.  They didn’t have Streetview for Seattle so I was surprised they had it for Juneau.  I went to the street where we lived in the Valley and found a Streetview photo of my former home.  It’s still there but it looks very different from when I lived there.  It used to be brown and is now blue.  I don’t remember the deck that’s now in the front though my mom said we had a patio.  But the driveway looks the same and I remember the ditch out front and the dirt road we lived on.  The house had a Century 21 sign on it implying that it might be for sale.  I looked I up on zillow.com and it was valued at less that our current home in Azusa.

The house across from my former home looks nearly identical how it did when we lived there.  Seeing that photo really gave me the feeling of déjà vu.  It’s nearly, if not exactly, the same color and most of the yard looks the same.  We knew the family that lived there well and I’ve been to that house several times.  They probably moved out a long time ago.

We didn’t live in the Valley very long but I have many memories from that time.  We knew many other kids in the neighborhood.  With its parks, wooded areas and all our friends’ houses the neighborhood was like one big playground.  But just before I turned 10 we moved out to a larger house on North Douglas Highway.  The pollution from the firewood smoke in the Valley was affecting my dad’s health and my parents felt the house was too small.  Our house in the North Douglas area was more isolated.  It didn’t have the neighborhood feel and we didn’t play with any neighborhood kids, though I babysat some of them.  But we adapted.  I lived there until I went to college and my parents still live there.

I’ve lived in about fifteen different places in four states and one foreign country.  Other than the first two when I was very young, I remember all of them.  They’ve all taught me something and shaped who I am today.