Pictured is Mom and a squirmy little tike that would be me. We are in front of my parent’s first house, which still stands in Monterey. Also pictured is the Bixby Bridge, made famous from umpteen million car commercials. I’ve added a photo effect to make the bridge picture seem more contemporary with the rest of this story. The bridge is located on the Cabrillo Highway, more commonly known as California Route 1, about halfway between Monterey and Big Sur. This is a gorgeous stretch of road and the Bixby Bridge makes for a fitting centerpiece. The connection between the two photographs is concrete, as in cement. The Bixby was one of a series of reinforced concrete bridges that were built in the 1930s. Our house was built in the 1950s and shortly after it was built, we had a concrete patio put in. The cement contractor that put in our patio had worked on the Bixby as a younger man. Back then Route 1 was a dirt road and in the rainy season the dirt turned to mud. Just so that you get the full picture here, you have to imagine an inland cliff on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, with a mud sandwich of a road in between. He told us a sad story of getting his cement mixer stuck in the mud once and was then forced to dump his load in order to free his truck.