Not, for once, about the dog. Well, sort of about the dog. When I first adopted Truckstop I made a big fussy deal in my head about how the inevitable cute-ification of her name should be spelled. Truckstop’s original name, now her middle name, is Arizona Courage, for the truck stop at Fort Courage where Amy and Rosanna (much blessed, much envied) picked her up.  I have never been to Fort Courage, but I picture a baking Martian tundra with terrifying extras from Road Warrior wandering around in metal studs and leather boots.

We have a long history in my family of naming our pets after the places we find them: Canterbury, Balboa, the kittens Nineteenth and Holloway, plucked from the traffic island at the intersection of two busy roads. But I didn’t find Truckstop, and she struck me right away as a creature who carries her past in her teeth, something to drop or pick up as she sees fit. She needed a name both specific and general, fixed and placeless, rough and dear. But I also wanted a name that would tie us together, so I decided her nickname would honor a place from my own past: Truckee, CA.

Of course it didn’t work. Anyone who takes the trouble to inquire after my dog’s welfare can spell her name however they damn well please: Trucki, Trucky, Truckie, Truckstopie, Truckstoppy, Truckstanky, Trucknugget . . . I love them all. But this weekend, we took Truckee to Truckee for the first time. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid.

My mom used to take me and my sister to Truckee once or twice each winter to ski. I remembered a scruffy little town with train tracks running through it. We always stayed at the same moth-smelling hotel, the kind of place with mismatched cotton bedspreads where you shared a bathroom (this was where I first encountered the mystery of the initials “W.C.”) and kept your milk and cereal in a communal kitchen. Most mornings my mom hustled us up and out, but at least once each trip we got to have breakfast at the Squeeze In, across the tracks on the main street of town.

The Squeeze In was so small it felt like a secret. You sat in your ski bib and long underwear top, too hot but not minding, the windows all steamed up, everything smelling of syrup. The waitress brought orange juice in a tiny glass and a big plate of pancakes. Mom had coffee and eggs.

The restaurant is still open 25 years later. We had breakfast there on Monday morning, after a long weekend of hammock-swinging and mystery-reading and dog-rambling and swimming in Donner Lake. Needless to say, Truckee was not as I remembered it. It looked like the set designer for The Gates had been put in charge of property development, that queer combination of bloat and uniformity that makes a place look unlike itself without quite managing the transition into something else. It’s as though Truckee asked Park City over for dinner and Park City set up a squat in the living room and never left. The main street is now the downtown historic district, and there is a dog treats bakery and a skin spa and an antiques shop.

The Squeeze In has not turned twee, but its funkiness is self-conscious now. There are lines out the door on the weekend. The omelettes have names. Instead of being smaller than I remembered, like an old house or classroom, it seemed bigger. It made me think of the fuschia I over-fertilized, all blossoms and no leaves.

Of course I have no idea if the Squeeze In has actually changed. I’m the one who is bigger than she was, more self-conscious, more artificial. I asked my mom what she remembered about it and she didn’t remember it at all. She did remember the hotel, and a wedding that took place while we were staying there, and how excited we were as little girls. I don’t know. The past seems so fragile. If you poke it, if you so much as open the door and admit the light, it breaks apart. A memory is really just a thing, an object:  it has certain dimensions and a certain weight. It’s subject to tarnish and decay. Is this a trailer full of things I’m towing behind me? Will they all break? What will happen if they do?

And then there is Truckee the dog. Since arriving from Arizona this was her first trip out of the city. Everything is new to her. She anticipates nothing, expects everything. She has no idea if she will go home again, or if this is the new place, the new home. She had the time of her life.