The last time you visited your childhood home/neighborhood?

[hunter]

46. It's crazy. My parent's first house was like that, a couple of blocks from the beach.

It was totally working class then -- shipyard workers, cannery workers, oil field workers, fishermen, etc..

My grandparents and great grandparents told my parents it probably wasn't a good neighborhood to raise kids in and helped them buy a house closer to Hollywood, which was where my parents were working when they met.

Now these little homes near the beach, those that haven't been torn down and replaced or significantly upgraded, sell for three or four million dollars.

This reflects the growing disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots."

It's interesting reading the stories of people who have had the opposite experience. One of the towns where my wife's mom grew up is just a shadow of it's former self. The house her grandparents lived in was abandoned, later burned down, and now all that remains of it is the driveway and front walk. The population of the town has been declining for decades now.