The Jungles of San Bruno

Confabulation

For those of us who are old enough, the places we remember from childhood are historic. I’m thinking of a place I first saw over 60 years ago, a little park nestled in the San Bruno hills. We lived on Willow Way, a few blocks from the park. My older brother used to march us there. He was the general, and we were the privates. Getting there was a great adventure.

Actually, I have few memories of the park itself. I suspect there were the standard swings, maybe a slide or a merry-go-round. What I do remember is the forbidden jungle behind the park. For a child, it was easy to slip through a gap in the chain link fence and enter the forbidden territory teeming with mysterious wildlife.  There were king snakes, blue belly lizards, baby birds in need of rescue, and alligators (or crocodiles- I’ve never been sure which is which). Though I was too little to accomplish the feat myself, I clearly remember my brother swinging on a thick vine across the alligator-infested river below. 

We moved away from San Bruno when I was about 7 years old, but the memories of this exotic park remained. Jungle vines and wild trees fueled my imaginary treks through the Amazon for years afterwards. 

In fact, I never questioned my vivid memory of this San Bruno jungle until well into adulthood. One day, while sharing childhood stories with my own children, it occured to me that there are no jungles in San Bruno, California. As a part of Central California, less than an hour’s drive from San Francisco, San Bruno has a moderate climate rather than a tropical one. It’s cool and foggy, without a lot of rain. Eucalyptus trees grow there, but no lush tropical vines. As for the animals, I’m sure there really were king snakes, blue belly lizards, and baby birds, since my brother caught all of these critters and brought them home. However, outside of a zoo. neither alligators nor crocodiles have ever lived anywhere near San Bruno. My children, who had a better sense of geography than I’d had, laughed at another example of my overactive imagination.

There’s a word for this kind of false memory: confabulation. Confabulation is often associated with mental diseases, but it also occurs fairly often in the general population. And clearly, it’s easy for a writer to confuse reality with the stories one tells.

Last fall I had a chance to go back to San Bruno for the first time in decades. My sister and I found the house we’d lived in on Willow Way. From there I found the park. It’s not quite the park of my memory. No alligators, crocodiles, vines, or rivers. But there is a way around the chain link fence and there is a wooded area tangled with brush behind it. It’s not really a jungle, but close enough to understand why I thought so. I find it comforting to know that even though I made up many of the details, the place is real. Maybe not historic in a traditional sense, but part of my history. And real or false, I still cherish the memory of my jungle.