This is the town that stays the same, even when it changes.
Strip mall stores come and go, shopping centers get repainted every now and again and yet the sign welcoming you in is the one that stood there since 1970-something.
The Lucky's grocery super market may have become Alphabeta (or was it the other way around?) which became Albertson's but locals still reference the old store names and remember the strawberry field that used to fill half its parking lot.
Even our infamous landmark – the state mental institution – eventually closed but wasn't torn down. Instead it was later re-opened and recycled into a mental institution of another kind: a state university. Of course.
Even when the streets have been repaved on hot days when the smell of tar is sure to hang heavy in the air, the potholes return in the same spots just weeks later – proof no one (or nothing) leaves this place for long.
Chances are the streets you grew up on, the cul-de-sacs you rode scooters around and the houses you passed by on your way to elementary school became the neighborhood you now live in as an adult, sending your kids to school to that very same elementary school, walking those same streets with sidewalks you have memorized, to learn from some of the same teachers who taught you.
Even on the rare occasion something does change in this small town, my childhood refuses to let it go.
The palm tree at the end of the driveway that resulted in an emergency room visit and stitches has been gone for years but when I close my eyes and picture the house I grew up in, it's still there. Yama Sushi may have replaced Cord's which replaced Happy Steak but when I walk in the restaurant, it's still Happy Steak to me. And the 99 Cent Store may have taken over the old Thrifty's but I can't go near the place without thinking about two-scoop ice cream cones. The corner liquor store will always be The Grocery Connection to me – a place I spent all my nickels and dimes buying Big League Chew Bubble Gum and Garbage Pail Kids during the summertimes as a kid.
Even on the coldest day, I can recall how the sidewalk feels on my cheek on a warm day as my best friend and I would lie singing, poorly, Mariah Carey songs. I can tell you where it dips and where it rises from the city's largest tree's roots that lives in my mom's front yard; I can map out its dimples and cracks and divots on the back of my eyelids.
The rusted train tracks that chase the street I grew up on and the never ending freight trains accosted by graffiti that rumble along them raucously go unnoticed. Their loud symphonies are as natural as the owls in the ash tree at night.
Strawberries are never bought from the store; only from the corner fruit stand where they were just picked in the field behind the dirt parking lot – only when the flag is flying high.
Avocados are purchased 3 for $1 (4 for $1 if you're lucky) from a kid on a corner looking to make a few bucks off his grandmother's orchards. And you'll never find oranges so sweet or lemons so tangy as you will along the 118.
Somis Market is where you run into everyone and anyone you know while grabbing the city's best mexican food for breakfast from a two-toned green building that looks like it's barely standing upright.
It's a town of farm workers and software engineers, suburban housewives and lawyers alike. Retirees roll along the streets – often on the wrong side of the road – proudly displaying their "I Love Camarillo" bumperstickers while soccer moms dodge them in their gigantic SUVs and stylish minivans with the family decal stickers adhered to their back winshield bragging about their husband, 2.5 kids and labordoodle.
The soccer fields are among crops of cilantro and romaine lettuce – pumpkins depending on your timing – and it's understood to factor in the possibility of having to follow a John Deere on your way to Saturday's game into your travel time. Yet this place is chock-full of new, red tiled roofs and track housing, six Starbucks, yoga and pilates studios, community pools and even an enormous outlet shopping center… all surrounded by farm land, of course.
This is the place everyone says they're going to leave some day, but few do. The place where those who actually left eventually come back to. The place many simultaneously blush as they admit they're still here while eagerly house hunting on familiar streets. It's where teenagers drone on about boredom and having nothing to do and parents rave about it being a great place to raise children; where businesses start-up and movies are shot and a population of 62,000 feels eerily small when you stop in at Brendan's on a Friday night.
It is home.
