Ghost house

Rico says that he can remember people and events in every room in his childhood home in Palo Alto, California, even though it's long been bulldozed and replaced by the immense Google-stock-funded complex in the photo above.
Starting at the back of the house, Rico remembers a tender moment in the guest bedroom with Susan Nelson, a fellow camper at Plantation Farm Camp, who ended up for a day at his house, en route to her home in Arizona. (Tall, blonde, and beautiful, she considered herself 'too mature' for Rico, who was only fourteen or so at the time, so nothing, alas, happened, though Rico would've been happy to oblige.)
Next door, in his bedroom, Rico remembers his father throwing the door open during a sleepover with school friends, and ordering Rico to 'look at that wall', the kid in the middle to 'look up at the ceiling', and the other one to 'look at the other wall', and all of us to shut up...
In the master bedroom, Rico remembers his mother calling him in to check out a mysterious lurker at the fence line, who turned out to be Patricia, a schoolmate who had run away from home and (amazingly) walked miles to find Rico's house. (She was the young woman with whom Rico had given up, gladly, his virginity the previous year; it turned out she was being molested by her father.)
In the dining room, Rico remembers his mother dropping into her dinner plate when he innocently asked where his father had gone on an apparent business trip (Rico's clue was being unable to find his father's hairbrush, which Rico was prone to use to smash down his then-unruly curly hair after school), only to discover that his father had left the house and wasn't coming back. (Fifty years later, he still hasn't, though they both later remarried.)
In the living room, Rico remembers his mother's famous basket-with-green-ribbon-and-gold-ornaments Xmas tree, which always flanked the fireplace.
In the library, next to the front door, Rico remembers apologizing to his father (then a cigar smoker) for 'breathing the same air' when he went in to get a book.
In the back yard, then only dry grass to the fence line, overlooking the not-yet-Silicon Valley buildings of Stanford Industrial Park, Rico remembers his childhood dog, Dinkie, bounding over the grass in great leaps, the better to see where he was going. (All these years later, Rico still apologizes to his mother for taking the dog, her favorite, down off the Hill, as it was known, on a bicycle expedition; the dog later went on his own and got run over on El Camino Real, leading his mother to speculate that he was in pursuit of 'some bitch'; probably a reference to his father's departure, rather than a real incrimination of the dog...)
The spare bedroom was usually rented to Stanford students. In the adjacent laundry area, Rico nearly died in an unused floor freezer, thanks to Kim Kitterman...
On the other side of the carport (past an immense acacia tree shading the patio) was the workroom, where Rico once took out his frustration over his then-bad relationship with his father by severely beating the poor workbench with a hammer (leaving many dents), for which, all these years later, he apologizes to his father.
All in all, a lot of momentous things, growing up. Rico says he misses the old place (built originally by Carl Mydans when he came home from World War Two), though the new house is probably even nicer...