In 1968, I was 6 years old. My family was holed up in a derelict shack on Stierlin Road in Mountain View, California, out by the city dump. The place was so small that my younger sister and I bunked on the back porch.Our neighborhood was made up of sprawling family farms interspersed with clusters of World War I-era homes. There was a bar with six stools, a corner store and a handful of weathered Victorian mansions. It's all gone now.