The thing I remember the most about San Diego was the swap meet.

Every weekend, we were at a swap meet. I can't remember what we sold but I'm pretty sure it was old stuff that my parents wanted to get rid of. You know the saying, "One man's junk is another man's treasure." I'm not sure if any of it could have been another man's treasure but it sure got us through some rough times.

I remember wandering around the swap meet. Back then, kids roamed without their parents. No one worried about a kid being snatched up or being hurt by mean people. No one kept an eye on their kids every second of every day. We were free to roam and play – just as long as we didn't get into trouble.

Five years old and I was roaming around a San Diego swap meet like I owned the place.

If you've never been to a big swap meet, let me explain it to you. We're not talking a few aisles of cars and peoples' wares spread out on tarps. We're talking miles and miles of cars and vans and tables and awnings and tarps (we were of the tarp variety – too poor to afford anything else). There are areas of new goods and areas of the used (we were the latter). There are aisles for food.

Every Saturday and Sunday, we were bundled up and taken to the swap meet. We'd help our parents unload the van (an old Metro – looked like an ice cream or milk truck) and put everything out on the ground. We'd help label everything with a price tag. We'd make sure that everything was out.

And then we were free.

Sometimes we had a dollar but more often, we had very little money at all. We'd go back to the van for lunch (mom would have made sandwiches).

For little kids, it was like a smorgasbord, though. It was a wild world full of many different kinds of people. There were amazing things going on.

What I remember most, though, is rust and old shoes and the smell of books. Rusty car parts and tools. Rusty metals were abundant. Old shoes were always scattered among the tarps. People bought them. I always wondered what they did with them after buying them (and, to this day, I have trouble buying used shoes, even at vintage stores, because of what they remind me of).

The books…oh, the books. That was heaven to me. I loved the smell of opening a book and rippling the pages so that old book smell would come out.

Even then. Even at that age, I couldn't get enough books.

They made everything bareable.