Thanks to Google Maps, "googling yourself" takes on a whole new meaning, especially because most addresses in the U.S. have a "street view." It does feel a little creepy at first, but only because you recognize the view. After all, for most people, more relevant "personal" information is available in an online telephone book, not to mention a credit report.

Looking at the house I grew up in reveals that the cul-de-sac has pretty much remained the same a quarter-century later. More interesting is what happened to the lot behind the house where the Mormon church used to be. As I document in a fictionalized account here, it burned down over a decade ago. Because the drainage had always been marginal for a structure that large, it wasn't rebuilt.

Two McMansions sit on the lot now. The woods are still there (again, thick shale and a high water table and upstate New York's long-depressed housing market discourage development). I spent a good portion of my childhood playing in those swamp-infested woods (this was before the present era of permanent parental paranoia), but never before had a good sense of their size (about a half-mile deep and a half-mile wide) or their relationship to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Back then, those woods seemed to go on forever. Google Maps casts those memories in a whole new light.

Labels: autobiography, google maps, lds, social studies