My Time - Our Town

The Walnut Creek Barnes & Noble bookstore is like a library without the usual library rules.  Table banter and cell phone chatter is expected, and it does not seem to bother anyone.

 Eating and drinking at the tables is not only permissible, it is encouraged.  There are thousands of books and magazines to choose from, and you’re welcome look them over before buying as long as you don’t “borrow” a book on the way out, as you would in real library,

The room has big windows and plenty of natural light.  Sometimes I look out the second story picture windows and recall what it was like out there when I was a kid. 

If I squint my eyes and use my memory, I can see the school where I attended kindergarten through eighth grade.  The glitzy restaurants, retail shops and multi-level parking garages become the huge, old, tile roofed, plaster school building, and the shoppers and gawkers in the lively upscale shopping mall, become my old friends on the school playground.

In place of the fancy cars on Olympic Boulevard, I see yellow school busses coming and going.  Walnut Creek Grammar School was on a hill.  Ruth’s Chris Steak House, on the second floor above a dress shop, sits at the elevation of the school playground where I spent untold hours laughing with friends and playing on the slides, swings and monkey bars, until the bell called us back to class.  More than sixty years later, I still remember all my teachers, and all their names, and I still see a few of these old friends from time to time.

If I look down what is now South Main Street, I see what was then, the Danville Highway.  I walked along the highway to get to school from our family home, which was in a walnut orchard a little more than one-half mile away.  I still live out that way, and I still walk the same stretch to get to Barnes and Noble that I used to walk to get to school.  Of course, it’s a lot different now. 

For one thing, there was no freeway then, and Las Lomas High School and Kaiser Hospital have replaced the open fields and walnut orchards.    

The unpaved shoulders of the Danville Highway were either too dusty or too muddy back then, and I usually got to school with very messy shoes.  Now, I get to Barnes & Noble on concrete sidewalks arriving with spiffy shoes, no matter what time of year it is.

The coffee shop was crowded today, but I managed to spot a table where two people were leaving.

I claimed the table by setting down my book and coffee cup and sitting on one of the vacated chairs.  As I did, I noticed a woman who was also looking over the room for a place to sit.  I caught her eye by raising my hand, and pointing toward the empty chair across from me.  She smiled with appreciation, walked up and set her notebook, handbag and coffee cup, on what was now “our” table.  

In a lyrical Asian accent, she said, “Thank you very much for your kindness.”

I said, “No problem.”

Having satisfied the obligations of coffee shop cordiality, I did not expect to speak with her again, but she asked:

-Do you know?  Is it possible to purchase a pen? 

“Take this one.  I’m just reading.

-Are you sure you will not need it?

- Positive.  I have another one.

As I pushed the pen to her side of the table, she smiled and heartily thanked me once again, displaying more gratitude than the small favor called for, I thought.

After some time, I glanced at mystifying Chinese characters she was jotting in her notebook.  I also stole a glance at her composed and serene, but focused expression and imagined her to be a writer, maybe a poet.   

Time passed with each of us absorbed in our own private universe, and then glancing at her watch, she closed her notebook, and while returning the pen to my side of the table she again said,

-Thank you very much for your kindness.

Her words were appropriate and sincere, but foreign sounding, as though learned from an English language phrasebook.

“Keep it,” I said.    

 - Are you sure it is OK?

- Yeah.  I have another one.  May I ask, did you come to this country recently?

 “Ha.  You can tell so easily.  Yes, I come from China.  For two years.  I live in Berkeley.”

 - Are you a student, of do you teach at the university?  I asked.

 - “Oh, no.  I have never had the joy of attending school,” she said.

She explained that she was only five years old when Chairman Mao closed the schools, and they did not re-open again for eleven years. 

Noticing my curiosity, she continued, telling me about a haunting childhood memory.  In her village, political dissenters were hurled from the roof of a building and their bodies were left on the street long enough to discourage people from reading the wrong books, or any books at all.  She said a favorite uncle lay dead in the street for one whole day before family members were allowed to claim his crushed body.

We talked a short time more, and then it was time to go.

Before walking away, she thanked me for listening to her life story, “I hope I did not bore you to death,” she said.

 “Not at all,” I answered, “I’m glad you sat with me.”

 I sat at the table for several more minutes, looking out the large picture windows . . . thinking more about my time . . . and our town.