I was born in St. Helena (pop. ~5000) in the heart of California’s Napa Wine Country. The town consists of a single main street and two suburban neighborhoods on either side. There are no chain restaurants or businesses except for one Safeway and an A&W due to a citywide regulation. If you want to go to Target or McDonald's, you have to drive 30 minutes south on Highway 29 to Napa. There’s one bar, one deli, one bakery, two grocery stores, two gas stations, and hundreds of wine tasting rooms. We also have a train. It’s aptly named Napa Valley Wine Train. It operates as a mobile tasting room, maxing out at 20 mph. It’s a picturesque place that has become, like a lot of California, unaffordable.

The Napa Valley region has been home to people stomping grapes since the late 19th century. In 1976, Napa wine was put on the map when a blind tasting was held by some hoity-toity critics who found out that they liked the Napa stuff better than the fancy French stuff. The town of St. Helena and surrounding municipalities changed rapidly due to an influx of money from the growing interest in California wine. As I grew up, new money mansions and wineries popped up all over the place, and the shops on Main Street transformed to accommodate the rise in tourism. The ice cream parlor became a boutique chocolate shop, the feed store became a real estate office, the bookstore became a clothing store that only sells mumus and khakis.

The local paper, now defunct, used to have a police report that was a timestamped list of all the “crimes” that littered our small town. My parents and I would routinely read the report to each other to see who could find the most absurd offense. There were unruly leafblowers, cats stuck in trees, lost dogs, and lost cops. One of my favorites was when a suspected drunk driver was pulled over. The officers asked the driver to explain his erratic driving. It turns out that a taco had fallen onto his lap. My old Subaru Forester made the police log a couple of times due to stupid shenanigans, but they always got the color wrong. I guess at night under sodium street lights, the gray looked more gold.

Like any place in America, our Leave it to Beaver cookie-cutter exterior hid some real dark shit. I remember showing up to middle school one day, and my teacher was gone. Turns out he was arrested for molesting some of the students in my class. Our high school volleyball coach was also locked up for being a major creep. If you’re looking to do a little lakeside chilling, you can always go a couple of miles up the road to Lake Berryessa, where the Zodiac Killer stabbed Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard. I prefer to swim at the Bell Canyon reservoir or picnic at Lake Hennessy.

Small-town living doesn’t expose you to a lot of culture or diversity. The live music available in St. Helena was mostly easy listening or anything soft and inoffensive that you can pair with a nice Pinot Noir. There would be the occasional classical show, or if you were lucky, Andrea Bocelli or Michael Bublé might show up. My folks played Bob Dylan and Neil Young around the house, and I learned about bands like Tool and Primus from my sister’s ex-boyfriend. My good friend Max turned me on to De La Soul and Outkast, and we would travel almost two hours each way to San Francisco to see shows at the Fillmore West. I craved any kind of music as long as it was different.

Robin Williams lived 15 minutes down the road from St. Helena and could be seen on foggy spring mornings, covered in Lycra, biking down the Oakville Grade. He and another local legend, Francis Ford Coppola, teamed up once and filmed the movie Jack at our local middle school. It was the first time I ever saw a film set. All the lights and camera gear were mystifying to six-year-old me. It was like a three-ring circus had come to town. Instead of elephants and monkeys, there were arclights and camera cranes. By the time I was nine, I had stolen my dad’s video camera and started making little films with friends. Nowadays, I still edit and direct in Los Angeles, where I live with my wife and dog.

If you visit St. Helena today, it doesn’t resemble the place where I grew up. The tourism that keeps the town alive is also hollowing it out from the inside. What was once a small community of farmers trying to make a name for themselves has become a mini mall and a facade of California opulence. On top of that, in 2020, the Glass Fire decimated the surrounding hillsides and community, burning over 67,484 acres and destroying 1,555 structures. The green hillsides I remember so well are now naked and bare. In time, the trees will grow back, and I’ll grow old. The town I grew up in will change into something else I won’t recognize, but I’ve still got the memories.