“Suburbia: Where they tear down the trees and name the streets after ‘em.”
That saying from an old bumper sticker certainly does not apply to the stretch of street I just adopted. It’s a gorgeous part of Manzanita Avenue on the outskirts of Chico which is filled with trees and features Hooker Oak Park on one side. The addresses along this 2-lane road stretch from 1875, which borders the Lindo Channel, to 2090, which is at the intersection of Manzanita and Vallembrosa Avenue. A roundabout intersection is near each end. My visit took place at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009. The air smelled very fresh as Chico was recovering from its first rain of the season, which was a major storm just two days prior, following a long, scorching hot summer.
All the houses looked luxurious and completely different from each other on this partly cloudy, yet warm fall afternoon. They stood on fairly large lots, many buried behind trees and foliage 50 yards or more from the street. There were only 10 of them and they lined the west side of the street. The east side is mostly Hooker Oak Park, with its manicured lawns, baseball field and parking lots. I imagine the homes are all owned by fairly wealthy, highly educated professionals, or lucky lottery winners
The trees are the most attractive part of the street. They are everywhere. Large, 30 to 40-foot-tall oaks lined the Hooker Oak side. Thus the name. The Oaks do a good job of camouflaging the telephone poles through which they weave. The residential side of the street featured a splendid variety of large and small trees. Manzanitas, oaks, white birches, pines, walnuts and 50-foot-tall redwoods gave the homes a majestic setting.
To give you an idea of how expensive these houses were, one had flyers in a front yard box advertising its sale price at a cool $690,000. This during the worst recession of our lifetimes.
Sidewalks were inconsistent throughout the street. Some would suddenly start and end randomly. One 40-foot stretch was obviously freshly poured cement. Many homes had no sidewalks at all in front of them. Cheap bastards.
A bird’s eye view of my adopted street, Manzanita Avenue in Chico, Calif.:
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