But nostalgia and regret at loved things lost does that, just as association shines through misty eyes like a favourite song remembered for its place and people of first hearing.
I associate Carisbrook, the whining grinding turnstiles, the biting cold in winter, the excitement upon entry in all seasons, with Lankford Smith.
Lankford was a close family friend, hence as a kid, I tended to follow him around.
He ended a 22-season Otago cricket career the year I first went to Carisbrook, but as Albion captain, he continued on in senior cricket, still with cravate, and I saw many of those games.
I remember Albion clinching the senior title at the North Ground, speedster Geoff Anderson splitting a bail in half with the winning delivery.
It sailed halfway to the boundary where I picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket.
It may still be somewhere in our basement.
I'm sure Warwick Larkins would like to have it glass-enshrined out at Culling Park.
Doyen of New Zealand cricket writers, Dick Brittenden, wrote (Smith of Carisbrook) that Lankford was the finest cricketer never to play for New Zealand.
Lankford may have been on the receiving end of a conspiracy theory involving working class cricketers - Andy Haden will be pleased to know this allegedly came out of Christchurch - the theory that also accounted for George Mills missing out on the 1949 New Zealand tour of England.
But Lankford did play soccer for his country.
He was good at every sport, extraordinarily agile and fit.
Every year two days before Christmas, his birthday, he would come to our house, balance in a press-up position on his right hand, and twist right back over to pick a brand-new handkerchief with an L in the corner, his birthday present, from the floor on the other side with his teeth.
He could still do this in his 60s.
Lankford was always at Carisbrook when I was there.
I would sit with him, have lunch with him underneath the Rose Stand, listen to his stories and meet his cricketing friends.
When he became a New Zealand selector writing for the Saturday night Star Sports, I did his research.
Lankford could evaluate a cricketer well enough, but he was always vague on numbers and hard facts, I would provide these from a vast cricketing library inherited from my grandfather.
Soon my notes started turning up unchanged in the paper.
Lankford had a word with the editor, and a writing career I had never contemplated for a second began.
I was 15.
Lankford was a very generous man.
A few years later I was playing for a local media team at Prospect Park against his Celebrity XI.
When our wicket-keeper decided he wanted to bowl, I took over the gloves.
Lankford went up the pitch and blithely walked past the first ball so I could have the honour of stumping him.
But the ball walked past me as well, I was so stunned he had missed it.
He didn't give me another chance.
He knew if he did and I missed it again, my team-mates would throw me into the Town Belt.
Lankford's health and fiercely cheery attitude to life declined sadly in his final years.
I remember standing with Otago cricketing legend Bert Sutcliffe at Carisbrook as Sutcliffe bemoaned the state of his former captain, the man who drove him on to his record 385 when Sutcliffe kept indicating to the pavilion he had had enough and Lankford kept furiously signalling to stay out there and score more.
We lost Lankford shortly after that.
His three daughters took his ashes out to Carisbrook.
A number of Otago's favourite sporting sons' urns have been sprinkled or buried there.
Sutcliffe is down in front of the terraces.
Lankford's daughters carried his ashes right out into the middle.
Where he belonged.
Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
