Wagon Wheels and Horse Droppings

When you are 7 your neighborhood is your world. You know what your neighborhood looks like and any other place is just weird. You know the route to your school and to church and to the grocery store. Sometimes your mom would take a different route home and it would blow your mind because how did she know that you could go that way?! Until the age of 9 we lived in Pomona, just down the hill from the Wonderbread factory. (This just means that I frequently walked out the door to the smell of freshly baked bread. It was a bit of a let down when we moved to Chino and walked out the door to the smell of freshly baked manure.) Downtown Pomona had brick buildings and wide streets and felt kind of urban (Did you know I learned how to swim at that old YMCA on Garey? I use to imagine I was on Sesame Street because the steps leading up to the building looked exactly like the steps next to Oscar's trashcan.)(Suddenly this is turning into a very nostalgic post. This would be a good time to actually get to my point.)

So, Pomona - urban. San Dimas - not so urban. We had some family friends who lived in San Dimas. They had a pool, which instantly made them People to Worship and Esteem. In the summer time my mom would drive us into San Dimas, which, as a 7 year old, was super far away. In reality, it was like 10 minutes away but we had to take a freeway to get there and freeways=super far away. We would get off the freeway and it would feel like we had been transported back to the Old West. Because San Dimas holds fast to the Old West theme. It is a city of horses. There are equestrian centers and large animal veterinary clinics everywhere. And all the store fronts look like they should be saloons or general stores, not yogurt shops. If a new route home blew my mind as a kid, imagine what a city straight out of Bonanza did to me.

Little did I know that many years later I would be working in San Dimas. And the more I drive around here the more I realize just how true to that Old West Theme the city is. Even new buildings going up have wood slat fronts. They seem to go to great lengths to make you want to put on your bonnet and hop in the buggy. So I wasn't exactly surprised yesterday as I was pulling out of the parking lot to find the LARGEST PILE OF HORSE POO EVER right in the middle of the drive way. I mean, it was a Mountain of Poo. I actually had to back up and go through another exit just to avoid it. When I came in to work this morning I could see that other cars had not been so fortunate in spotting it.

So I have to hand it to the city of San Dimas. You folks really not how to keep it real.