| 1955 Arch is one of Larkspur's stairway-streets, along with Post, Eden and a few others that are literally "paper" streets, such as Alta and Beta. They all have four-letter names, and they all show up on early maps of the town. Arch, along with Eden St., were the only two that were fully developed with concrete steps and iron railings. Arch Street undoubtedly had the most traffic (foot traffic, naturally), because of its convenient location between Magnolia and all the homes on the Walnut /Palm loop. Each morning and early evening I'd see commuters making their way to and from the Greyhound bus stop down at the bottom of the hill. That's the front of our front yard off to the left. We had what was possibly the most exclusive address in Larkspur, as 9 Arch St. was the only house on Arch St. The post office refused to send a carrier up the stairs, so we always had a post office box. The fact that Arch St. was shown on maps as just another street but didn't actually look anything like a street caused us no end of problems with delivery people trying to find us. Living on a hill had its benefits, though. After years of humiliation during PE period at LCM, I was pleasantly surprised when we eventually got around to track and field and I found I could jump high and run fast. When my family moved in in 1941, Arch Street was pretty much surrounded by the then-ubiquitous acacia trees. A 1948 storm toppled all the ones in our yard, but until recently they ran all along the north side and the stairs went through a small forest at the top.The big leaning one here came down a couple years after this photo was taken; I forget if it fell or was cut. It had a burl-like knob at its base, and I used to pretend it was a gas pedal and that I was "driving" the tree. Ektachrome slide by Will Penna |
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