Part of Santa Susanna Park in the Knolls
Today’s word: Knolls
Definition: A small rounded hill or mound; a hillock.
In 1963, my family lived in a rental house in what was called the Santa Susana Knolls on the east end of Simi Valley, CA. We were waiting for our house to be constructed.
I don’t know how in the world my parents found the house where we lived. It was tucked away in “the Knolls” as it was called. We lived on a dirt road with scrub oak] and wildlife. A dramatic difference from the neat terraced home we left in Monrovia, CA.
I adored the house for its quirky ways. Definitely not built to code. The best part was a closet lined in cedar. This was the adventure house for me because we were surrounded by scrub oaks and dirt.
One neighbor was a wizened old lady with tattoos and a beer can in her hand. When it rained, there was mud everywhere.
Parents found more suitable living arrangements in the form of a new apartment on the west end of the valley.
Today ‘the Knolls’ neighborhood pride themselves as an enclave of unincorporated Ventura County. Their website states, “moonless nights the mountains around us block out the city lights of Simi City and the San Fernando Valley so that one can see the Milky Way or meteorites shooting across the sky. ”
The Knolls
A dirt road driveway
amid scrub oaks
Clothes hung
in the closet
smelled of cedar.
Adventure
house.
Mother despaired
over the neighborhood.
Lasted
two months.
© 2015 Jone Rush MacCulloch all rights reserved
Jone Rush MacCulloch 
Oh, there is a whole story in this poem. We, too, live in an “adventure house” and sometimes I despair too…but the love for quirkiness wins me over. You say so much with so few words in this.