The Wonder Years

One of my favorite memories from childhood happened in a place I didn’t fully understand at the time — Atherton, California. Back then, it was just a quiet, sun-lit neighborhood I visited because my aunt worked at Merck, right across the street from the Schwab family. I had no concept of what Atherton actually was — one of the densest concentrations of wealth, innovation, and American power on the planet. I was just a kid absorbing the moment.

On that particular day, Barbara Bush was visiting the Schwab family. Secret Service cars, quiet commotion, that sense of something significant moving through the neighborhood — I still remember standing there, watching it unfold. It was the first time I felt, without having the language for it, that I was witnessing a world that operated at a completely different level.

Later my aunt told me something that stuck in my mind forever: the home across the street was the garage where Steve Jobs started Apple.

At that age, I didn’t have the context to grasp it.

Atherton was just a place with nice houses and important visitors.

But looking back, it was the epicenter of an era.

Larry Ellison had a home there.

The Google founders lived there.

The families who shaped the modern world lived within blocks of each other.

It was a neighborhood where companies weren’t just created —

entire industries were born.

It’s funny how certain memories return later in life and suddenly take on a larger meaning. I didn’t realize it then, but being in Atherton at that moment gave me an early imprint of what possibility looks like up close.