The Seventh Year - 1986

Technically, I should have included the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in my last post since it occurred during my sixth year of life. But, to emphasize what kind of calendar year 1986 was, I decided to group it in with this blog.

January 28, 1986: the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after take off. My actually memories of the events surrounding the event are blurred. For some reason I remember coming home from school and seeing my mom crying watching the news coverage of it. The T.V. (our 13 inch black and white) kept replaying the scene. I remember watching it over and over. I was told a school teacher was on board and it made me sad - although, I don't think I fully grasped the event at that time. The reason I think the surrounding memory is blurred is because I thought my kindergarten teacher had already died by this point and I was no longer in school. Either way, the following August, I was back in kindergarten.


The events surrounding my brother's death are also fuzzy. I've thought back on it SEVERAL times. For a long time, I blamed myself for it. I always thought I was supposed to be watching him that day. I was six, he was two. We don't talk about it much in our family - not that's it's the elephant in the room, no there's a different feeling to it than that - and not that it's a taboo subject either. I remember it as though I was playing at my friend's (Cameron's) house that day. Andrew was roaming the construction company parking area - we all used to, it was our playground as far as we were concerned. My dad's younger brother didn't see him and backed over him, a complete accident - no I was not around to witness it, Lord knows how much more screwed up I'd be now if I did. My dad says he got the news while out working. He knew before anything was said that something was wrong - and he knew it was Andrew. He raced to the hospital laying on the horn in his dump truck the whole way there. Again, I never saw him (Andrew) in that condition, but I remember being told he was pretty flattened... but still "alive." My father gave him a blessing to live long enough to be life flighted down to Phoenix. He did live, just long enough to donate (and again, I may be wrong on this) his eyes, some skin and his kidneys? I've often wondered who were the recipients, and if they're alive today. My granny (my mom's mom) was called over to watch the rest of us kids. I remember her getting off the phone when she got the official news that Andrew had died. She held me in her lap and sobbed. I cried too, but I wonder now if it was more so because I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew it wasn't good - it couldn't be if granny and Tevia were crying so hard. A few days (or so) later, my parents came home and we had the funeral. I don't remember who was there except for my mom's brothers, especially David, Ben and Ezra. They were always the fun joking uncles that would come to our house and tie us up and "torture" us. It was hell as a kid, but the most fun at the same time - and they wouldn't stop even if we said "uncle." But at the funeral, there was none of that. Again, I don't think I understood fully that Andrew was never coming home, I just knew that something was wrong if my uncles were crying. I looked in the casket several times. He smelled. He didn't look dead. He looked pretty good - except his eyelids were sewn shut - the stitches were pretty apparent. The smell of calla lilies and carnations still take me back to THAT funeral every time I smell them. Especially the carnations.


Later that year our family went camping. I think it was for a family reunion out to Brown Creek. It was a regular spot for us to camp. We had even visited the ranger lookout station a few times in years past that was a few(?) miles from our camp. I think most of the roads in the area were old logging trails. There were no designated camp sites and I don't recall it ever being a busy or popular spot for other campers. One of the days we were there, I had an involuntary bowel movement in my jeans (I crapped myself). This was a fairly common problem and my dad was sick of it. He got upset and decided to take me away from camp so he could "cool off" a bit before punishing me. After getting a ways away, he took off running. As a six year old, my only instinct (scared already as to what my punishment would be) was to run after him so I wouldn't be alone in the forest. It didn't take long for him to be so far gone that it was apparent my yells and cries for him to come back were only heard by the dense forest. It was late in the day and getting dark. I tried to find my way back but didn't have a clue as to which direction to go. I decided to head up hill since I knew there was a ranger station at the top of a hill... somewhere. Night fell. I kept walking - taking only a few short breaks. Sometimes I sat with the moonlight shining right down on my new checker patterned canvas shoes - I remember thinking how stupid I was for being so proud of them earlier, and now would have traded them in a heartbeat to be safely back at camp. I walked almost the entire night, I think. I tried to stay close to the small stream since I knew everyone was camped by it, somewhere. I kept having visions, hallucinations, of my cousin's tent. I had never seen a dome tent before, so the image of his kept coming to my mind; I stepped in the stream and ran into a tree more than once during such hallucinations. Eventually, I decided I needed to sleep. I curled up in my shirt under a large pine tree and packed some leaves around me. Exhaustion took the best of me and I was fast asleep, despite my fear, in a matter of what seemed like seconds. No sooner than I had closed my eyes than it was day. Almost mid-day. I woke to a warm sun, well into the sky, and the most comforting sound (to this day) that I have ever heard. A diesel engine. I thought it was my grandpa. I ran to the sound. It wasn't him, but it was a familiar friendly face. I didn't know who he was at the time, but I knew I knew him, or was supposed to know him, somehow. He was my mom's best friend's husband, Ernie Sutter. He was out looking for me. Apparently they had quite the search team trying to find me, even a helicopter. I remember Ernie looking down at me from his big truck, warmly smiling and telling me to "get in, everyone's been wondering where you went off to." He offered me some food (granola bar, or a powdered doughnut) and a Pepsi. I gladly ate the food, but refused the drink; back then we weren't allowed to drink caffeine. He drove me back to camp. I remember my mom running to me and hugging me. Crying. I can only imagine now, what she (and my dad) were going through that night --- I was almost the second son in just a few months. I hear that my brother Quentin comforted my mom while I was lost by telling her, "don't worry, Andrew will protect him." I don't remember much else from the rest of that camping trip, but to this day, if I close my eyes and listen to the wind blow through a Ponderous Pine forest (yes, specifically) it takes me back. I can't explain why, but it's eerily comforting in a way.

That fall, I started kindergarten again. My teacher was Mrs. Hall. She was a younger teacher and not much taller than me - and she was beautiful. I had a crush on her the entire year. It made every "keepin-on-track" award I won that much more special. Keepin-on-track awards were a slip of paper that teachers would give to reward students. The student's name was put on it and it was dropped off in the Principal's office. Each week the office would draw a few slips from a box and the lucky winners would get a cool (crappy) prize. But, hey, in kindergarten (back before ipods and cell phones) everything was a cool prize! I remember the forever long bus rides home each day - our stop was near the end. One day I came home and gave my mom a card we had made in school. We were supposed to write something we liked about our parents (or something like that). I put that "my mom is cool because she doesn't get mad or care if I'm dirty." Just my luck, she noticed my hands were pretty dirty, as they usually were, and told me to go wash them.... I'm pretty sure she only said that because she had a visitor over - because, usually, she didn't care.