Dear Matthew Alice:

On my drive home, I pass by a house that's in a weird spot. It's a yellow house that sits between Camino del Rio South and Interstate 8, just east of where they cross 805. How's that house still standing in office-building land?

-- Mark Brocklehurst, cruising home

If your family had owned 50 acres of Mission Valley since the turn of the century; if you'd been born on that patch of land and built the yellow house yourself and lived in it since 1937; if you'd been a part of the valley community of farmers and dairymen, one of the biggest milk producers in the county; and if you'd grazed your cows on the other side of the two-lane dirt road, down by the meandering San Diego River, until 1968 -- maybe not even Caltrans or developers could make you give up that last acre. You too might want to stay right there under the off-ramps and grow your vegetables and remember your big-eyed cows and all those greener, quieter times.