My Hometown in 500 Words: San Jose

12/19/08  Print This Post Print This Post    No Comments      Written by Teresa Ponikvar
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Feature photo by neighborhoods.org / Photo above by Mark McLaughlin

“. . . I realize that for the first time, I don’t hate San Jose.”

Santana Row is the new attraction in San Jose, and my friend Bernardo and I are walking down its smooth, pink sidewalk. Tiny white lights twinkle charmingly in tiny trees, shop windows gleam, and the beautiful people of San Jose mill about, cell phones at the ready.

Even if it were daytime, we couldn’t see the mountains, because the tall, smooth buildings block the view.

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

San Jose’s real downtown, three miles away, has been in steady decline since a wildly misguided “redevelopment” effort in the 1950s. Now, Santana Row has simply replaced it. Bernardo and I find this upsetting, and predict that the lingering downtown businesses will be gone within five years.

Bernardo can comment on the dying downtown once, and leave it alone, but I can’t stop opining: look at this place, I tell him, it’s so false, pretending to be a “Main Street.”

Main Street my butt, Main Street of Gucci and Starbucks. It’s nice to have public space, but only people who can afford this crap will come here, so, what, public space is an upper-middle-class privilege now?

Bernardo nods and mm-hmms at my ranting, and leads me into a shoe store. We check out price tags: shocking! A clothing store: if we added up the value of every article of clothing we’re wearing between us, we could afford a tank top.

As we head for the door, I see Bernardo slip something into his pocket, and look at him in surprise. He giggles. “Your face, chica!” he cries, and steers me outside by the elbow.

In the light of a streetlamp, he opens his fingers to reveal a pinched-off inch of succulent from the planter in the store window. I feel a grin spread across my face, and then burst into laughter.

Bernardo laughs, too, and we stand there bursting with joy over this filched scrap of life.

We agree to dedicate the rest of the evening to liberating genetic material from the Row. By the time we leave, Bernardo’s pockets are filled with specimens of half a dozen species.

Photo by Marcin Wichary

A few weeks later, in Bernardo’s miracle of a backyard garden, I see our cuttings, green and shiny, rooted in tiny pots along the porch railing. In the side yard, Bernardo’s botanical tribute to the country of his birth: nopales, maguey, corn, beans, squash. A huge avocado tree and all the plants he’s begged, borrowed, or stolen somewhere in this Valley.

As Bernardo leads me around his yard, I realize that for the first time, I don’t hate San Jose. For the first time, I believe that this was once a valley of fruit trees, and before that, a plain of oaks, groomed by fire.

I feel myself claim this place as my hometown: the freeways and shopping malls and suburbs, and in that sea of development, the archipelago of gardens, planters, trees, fields. The mountains that define the valley, just as they always have.


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About the Author

Teresa Ponikvar

Teresa Ponikvar lives with her husband in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico, where she teaches English. Her writing has appeared in Camas: The Nature of the West, and on the KUFM-Montana radio program “Field Notes.” She is happy to report that, seven years after her first trip to Mexico, she has finally acquired a taste for fruit with chile.

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  • tom replied on December 19, 2008

    Great piece! "Main Street my butt" hahahah.

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  • Hal replied on December 19, 2008

    Loved this. Very well told!

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  • pam replied on December 20, 2008

    when we were little kids we lived in san jose and i remembered fruit trees and corn fields. later, i went to college there, and once i rode my bike out past our old 'hood looking for the orchards and old farm houses. they were all gone replaced by housing developments behind sound walls along the freeways. but i was always fond of san jose and i loved walking from the train station to campus after i moved up the peninsula to mountain view, and i loved the excellent mexican food and the firecrackers on chinese new years.

    thanks for the memories…

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  • Tim Patterson replied on December 20, 2008

    Gorgeous

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  • Ruben Jr. replied on December 23, 2008

    The bay area's fleeting state of transition into suburbia, through modernity could not be better presented in prose.

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  • Sarah replied on December 30, 2008

    "so, what, public space is an upper-middle-class privilege now?"

    Thank you for publishing something containing these words, in this order. Whole thing is wonderful, though, of course and as usual. I am glad you are writing, I am glad you are from California, and I hope you are well.

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