STREET WISE: / New Directions : Not Longer a Path, It’s Still the Road Home

On Feb. 9, 1974, John Slivkoff, 84, a Russian immigrant and one of Vista’s early settlers walked into this scene: near the end of an unpaved lane passing by his avocado grove, almost home. It’s a quaint setting that embraces his Old World character.

I returned there the other day in search of the view where, 18 years before, I had taken a photograph as a light-footed cat with a bent tail darted back and forth in front of John Slivkoff’s heavy old work shoes.

For a San Diego County boom town, change has been slow in this neighborhood over nearly two decades. Although it remains semirural and peaceful, a subdivision promises to bring it into “modern” times.

It’s not as wooded as before, much of the avocado grove is gone. It feels peculiar, daydreaming out in the open, and it is tough to see the now 50-foot-wide street as quaint.

Although this was a nostalgic visit, I wasn’t visualizing the ghost of John Slivkoff slowly plodding along an imaginary dirt road. The scene has changed just enough to make such a visage impossible to put in place.

Nearly ready to leave and accepting that San Clemente Avenue would never again be the John Slivkoff image that I had photographed and held in my mind’s eye, Brad and Nancy Peterson walked into the scene with their kids and pet dog. I scrambled for the camera.

On April 9, 1992, San Clemente Avenue became pavement beneath athletic shoes, curbs, gutters, acre-lot signs and a big dog with a bent tail.

But they fit; New World settlers on a boom-town street. They, too, almost home.