Two families in an Alameda apartment building had a brewing feud for years. It started when the downstairs tenants, the Smiths, complained about the late-night footsteps and television noise coming from the occupants of the upstairs apartment, the Johnsons.

Is it too much for a father to want his grown kids to return to the fold, or at least the same town? Yes, yes it is. As a realist and appreciating the richness of living in new and diverse locales, I don’t expect, or even want, my kids to want to live in Alameda any time soon.

As a prelude to this letter about land use in Alameda, I offer honor and respect to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, whose land this is.

I grew up in the Alameda of the 1950s and ’60s. My parents moved here in 1951. I grew up on Taylor Avenue with easy access to Washington Park where neighborhood kids just walked down the steps of the sea wall and enjoyed the bay.

The word “infill” sounds innocuous. Find a hole or dig a hole and fill it in: infill. “Material that fills in something”: infill; the fixer-upper in your neighborhood that a developer buys, tears down, and builds three-to-six story, million-dollar, market-rate condos: infill.

Every time it looks like public education has reached a new nadir, another jackalope comes leaping out of the kelp forest.

On Jan. 29, Vice Mayor John Knox White convened a “Measure A Discussion” meeting that included me, Christopher Buckley, Planning Director Andrew Thomas, Planning Board members Alan Teague and David Burton, and a representative of an urban mixed-use development company.

Driving through Alameda, I see campaign signs alternating with piles of possessions left behind by people who can no longer afford to live in Alameda. The $600 additional unemployment benefits many people were surviving on ran out in July.

As a parent I find myself at a bit of a loss this Halloween season. With three girls, aged 12, 10 and 2, Halloween is one of the bigger holidays on our yearly horizon.