By: Andrew Zhang

Every once in a while, I’ve heard people ask the question: “If a tree fell in the woods and nobody heard it, did it really fall?” Every time I’ve heard this question, I would yell yes. Back when I was a kid, an event that basically answered that question came into my life.

During the time of the event, I was an 11-year-old. Where I was born, people weren’t very fortunate. Every other house you passed would be occupied by moldy floorboards and putrid dust, and the ones that were occupied were never the generic houses inspired by the “American Dream.” Nobody had fancy video games, so the only thing we had to entertain ourselves with were each other.

On a bright, cloudless day, when the rich kids would be off at some swimming pool having fun and sipping lemonade like the people in commercials, a couple of guys in a battered, city-owned pickup truck came by. We didn’t know what they were doing, and as there was nothing else to do on such a terribly egg-frying-on-the-pavement day, we watched.

These men looked like they had recently come back from a government-sponsored antiterrorism operation in the deepest compartment of the largest steam engine in Hell’s boiler room. They were the kind of people to break out of PTSD by simply exercising, the people that could solve King Sisyphus’ boulder problem with a flick of their pinkie. The tools that they took out seemed to be the most used and least valued in the city’s possession. They looked like the kinds of tools Abraham Lincoln used when he was a kid. But they still seemed like they could be used at least a couple more times, which meant they were still in service. The workers grabbed the shovels, trowels, and other items and got to work.

At first, I was very confused. They seemed to be digging at the front lawn of my neighbors’ house. I was sure I was seeing something wrong, so I carefully opened my bedroom window, trying my best to not break the delicate rusted hinges or the brittle, splinter-covered wood. Still, I could see them digging at my neighbors’ lawn, seemingly trying to claim it as public land. Obviously, the neighbors were infuriated, and I could already hear the angered yelping of the bearded beast that was my former teacher. I could hear something, no, many things breaking as he sprinted downstairs and across the house. He ran outside and started berating the workers in a deep German accent that only the most skilled linguists could understand.

But he suddenly stopped. I could make out his eyes widening in shock, then a flash of glee. He quickly apologized to the two workers, who seemed unfazed by the eldritch-god-summoning beating that they had just gone through. Only when he left, could I see what had given him such a heart attack. It was a single, unevenly shaped square bit of cement. I didn’t know what it was at the moment, but I thought it might’ve been a cute pathway to a nonexistent door to the neighbors’ backyard made by the previous owners. But I was wrong. They kept working, and slowly, I could make out the shape of a cement square that was so common in the wealthy land of Suburbia. A distant spark of a memory of a time long forgotten, right when the neighborhood was first built by the growing metropolis that was the Bay Area.

Day after day, the came back, at 6 AM sharp. They would continue chipping away at the grime and filth built up on top of and between the plain but luxurious slabs of cement. Day after day, the neighborhood seemed a bit more expensive, a bit more flamboyant, a bit more upper-middle-class. It was beautiful, the quiet sound of ancient, rusted steel scraping across a gritty, cement layer, slowly revealing the sidewalk of the past.

After a month or maybe two, the deed was done. We saw the workers drive away the last time, leaving us with beautiful, gleaming slabs of cement right in front of our homes. As far as my lower-class head knew, it was the most luxurious thing in my life. It was what showed me the hidden ashes of memories, buried deep within the catacombs beneath the houses of my sickly neighborhood. It was what showed me that even though everyone may have forgotten about me, the average kid that had only acquaintances, I still existed.