By modern standards, the public schools that I attended in the early 1970s would be considered to be bleak and primitive. The building were utilitarian and simple, from about twenty years earlier. The landscaping was comparably simple, with a big lawn and proportionately big shade trees. A screen of alternating Monterey pine and Monterey cypress was hedged on the southern half of the eastern boundary of the schoolyard. The only deviants to the simplicity were a few significantly older trees on the northern half of the eastern boundary of the school yard. There were two coastal redwoods, a Canary Island date palm, a cedar, and a spruce of some sort. They were all quite mature, and were likely remnants from an old farmhouse that was there before. Perhaps they wanted us to be aware that everything changes.
On the way to kindergarten, back when children were allowed to walk to…