The Sixteenth Year - 1995

The end of eighth grade was a welcome change.

That summer I worked for my uncle Chris Cool, basically just helping him around his house and with some rental properties. He offered to sell my his 1962 long bed Chevy truck. As a fifteen year old, I was more than excited at the proposition - especially considering I didn't think I would ever own a vehicle. I worked hard that summer and got the truck. I fixed it up and got it running - even drove it a few times. Before I was even able to get my permit, I came home from school one day to find my truck gone. My dad said he traded it to a guy that worked for my grandpa for a small Nissan car. The idea was great - I never was much of a truck guy, even less of a Chevy guy, so the idea of getting a much newer Nissan car sounded like it could be good. However, I did love my truck and looked forward to driving it - but it was gone. The guy that my dad traded my truck with skipped town and I never saw the car, him, or my truck, again.

Halloween, 1995, freshman year. I went trick or treating with Jacob Browning, Brian Cinnamon and some other kid - one of Brian's friend. We had a great haul that night. Hit up all the best neighborhoods. On our way home that night we were excited to get back and check out our candy loot and listening to loud music - as loud as music can get in a Ford Festiva. Jacob Browning was driving. He treated a red light like a stop sign - but didn't even really look for traffic. I remember telling him the light is red then being blinded by headlights. Next thing I remember I was waking up covered in glass and the car was crumpled. Jacob was convulsing next to me - covered in blood, he was unresponsive/unconscious (I was in the front passenger seat). I tried to open the door but couldn't get it open so I climbed out where the windshield had been. Brian and the other kid's faces were covered in blood. I was obviously in shock - all the first aid training and emergency preparedness I had been taught to that point went out the window. This was still a time before cell phones. It was late and I felt completely helpless. I noticed the older sister of one of our other friends all of a sudden standing on the sidewalk near the scene - she was crying and looked terrified. I went over to comfort her. I didn't know why she was there but thought she had stopped and noticed the accident and realized who was in there and how bad it probably was. Paramedics and firefighters came. My dad and uncles (and friends of the family) made up most of the crew. I went over to talk to them and try to explain what had happened. The next thing I knew Kerry Ross (one of the firefighters, and good family friend) had me strapped to a gurney. Kerry, being true to himself, didn't just strap me in, he tapped me down head and all. He said it was so I "wouldn't fall off." He thought he was so funny. We were all transported to the hospital. I later found out the girl I was comforting was the one who hit us. She was driving a big Dodge truck with a lift - we never had a chance. Jacob Browning was gone for a while. Paramedics revived him and he was life flighted down to Phoenix. He was in a coma for about a month but recovered - mostly. Last I heard he's still a little deaf in one ear. Brian and his friend both had to have extensive reconstructive surgery on their faces. Their heads slammed into each other. I was the only one wearing a seat belt - I ALWAYS wear my seat belt - I walked away basically without a scratch. None of us ever saw any of the candy we collected that night, but the ambulance and fire crews filled up on it!

Freshman year biology class I was partners with Angela Dolan. She was new to our school that year. We got to dissect a pig fetus. For extra credit, the teacher told us to try and remove the brain and keep it intact. I think Angela and I were the only two to successfully get it out intact in our class.

I used to ride to seminary with my cousin Trevor everyday. We would go to Taco Bell before - and sometimes in lieu of - class, to get their breakfast burritos. Taco Bell used to have the BEST breakfasts ever! My favorite were the country breakfast burritos and the fiesta breakfast burritos.




The more I think about my younger years, the more things I remember that I missed recording.

We always had cats growing up. Lots of cats. They were never fixed and we never took them to a vet. If one died, there were more around. But a few cats were special to us, well, to me. One of the cats we had was named Samantha (Sam for short). She gave birth to a cat we named Buster. We used to think buster was such a big cat that it could beat up dogs. I don't think he actually ever did but it was fun to pretend he did. On the other end of the spectrum was the smallest cat we ever had. His name was Speck. He was born the runt and was way feisty. Speck looked like he had a golf ball stuck in his belly. We ended up having to give him away to the Elsworth family - and it died shortly after. Stripes was another great cat - not that one cat is much different than the next, except for how it looks. Two of my cousins from mesa (Justin and Daniel) used to make Stripes dance to the jingle from a Crunch Bar commercial - *crispity, ha ha ha, crunchity, ha ha ha!" Maybe you had to be there.

My great uncle (Karl) had horses; one of them was a little Shetland pony. My cousins used to catch it and put a blanket on it so we could ride it bare back, well... almost bare, he did have the blanket. The same uncle owned a feed store just up the street (across the horse fields in front of our house). I loved going up there and getting into the salt lick shipments - big pallets full of boulders of salt, probably not very sanitary, but I liked to eat the rocks anyway. I loved how that feed store smelled. I would go there sometimes just to smell it - and to check the sticky mouse traps for mice, now and then they'd have mice in them, but more often they'd just be full of bugs.

I used to rollerblade a lot when I was younger. Quentin and I would go to the old Wal-Mart parking lot with Cameron and a few other friends to play roller hockey and just rollerblade around. I used to be able to jump a shopping cart on my blades. To refuel for energy we would go across the parking lot to the Taco Bell and get their 49 cent fiesta tacos and burritos - back when Taco Bell was affordable. I used to also rollerblade with my cousin Dessi on their basketball court near her house. She would bring a boom box and we would go in circles around the court listening to They Might Be Giants - that album (Flood) still reminds me of that every time I hear it.

A guy I used to babysit for sold me a little 50 cc dirt bike when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I fixed it up - just enough so it would run, and Shane and I used to ride it all over the woods behind my house. There was an irrigation ditch that ran beside part of one of the trails. We used to ride along that ditch and sing Credence Clearwater Revival's "Rollin Down the River." One time we were riding from my house to his while carrying a cooler. If you don't know how big a 50cc bike is, this may be hard for you to imagine, but I would usually steer/drive and Shane would be on the back. I would have to actually sit on the gas tank and he was on the seat. We barely fit just the two of us as it was, so carrying anything made things even more difficult. Halfway across the main road Shane almost dropped the cooler and pulled back on me causing the bike to jackknife and flip. The bike landed right on my leg - not that it was heavy, but the exhaust pipe burned my calf pretty badly - some third degree burns even. we got up and pushed the bike, hobbling, the rest of the way to his place. We got there and his grandpa was up visiting from Tucson; his grandpa was an old war vet and knew just what to do with a burn wound like that. He took iodine and an extra firm bristle brush to it. Hurt SOOOO bad! I couldn't help but think he was only making it worse - but it healed without infection and to this day, I can't even see a scar from it.

Shane I did a lot of stupid things together. One winter we climbed on the roof of our two story house - climbing on the roof was actually no big deal, my siblings and I used to do it ALL the time, there was a big juniper next to our house that made it easy to get up there. But, no, we didn't just climb up, we climbed up, pushed some of the snow off and sledded down. We just used one of those roll up flat plastic sleds, and not that it would have mattered, the sled didn't stay below us. My siblings and I tried to fly off that roof more than once too, or at least parachute with sheets. Surprisingly, none of us ever broke a bone - but my joints remind me of my stupidity everyday.

I loved summers. My siblings and I used to love to sleep outside. Sometimes in a tent in our yard, but more often than not, on our balcony. We would move cushions out there and load up with blankets. I don't know what the thrill was of sleeping outside, but I loved it. I think most summer nights were spent out there.

One summer some of my older cousins (maybe younger uncles) set up an old water slide (who knows where that thing ever came from) that went from the balcony to the ground. We ran water down it and onto black plastic on the ground below. We filled it with dish soap and had our own make sift water park in our back yard.

Some steps lead from the balcony, in the back of the house, down to the ground. We used to sled down them in the winter. The stairs inside the house often got sled down as well, but usually in a sleeping bag. I remember when the inside stairs were first put in. We had fire wood stored on the balcony out front. Just inside the house there was a big hole cut in the floor for the new stairs that were going to be put in. I woke up early one morning with my arms full of firewood and stepped in that door and fell to the bottom floor. Our house seemed like it was constantly under construction. The location of our stairs and living spaces changed so many times over the years, and it's been so long since I've been back, I don't even know for sure what it looks like anymore. We went from living just up stairs with the lower level being a shop of some sorts, to turning the entire thing into a house. The windows that were in the front of the home on the lower level came from an old church building that was demolished.

I actually got to help with the demolition, I must have only been five or six years old, but I remember helping pull up the floor boards in the old gym of the church. Around that same time I remember spending a lot of time with an old man named Stanley Lee. He was a lonely senior citizen who had a great strawberry garden. I loved going with him to pick strawberries.

One time my brothers and I helped my dad remove a huge old Ponderous Pine from the old Rose Apartments in Lakeside. It took several days to do the job. When we finished, Rose, the owner, gave my brothers and I a crap load of old furniture and such junk. We thought it was the mother load of treasures. We ended up having a yard sale and selling most of it, and from what I remember we made a good deal of cash.

Money was not something we saw a lot of when I was younger. My parents had some friends who lived in Mesa (Apache Junction, I think) - the Jones family. They had children about the same ages as me and my siblings. We didn't go down to visit very often, but it seemed like every time we went down, it was like we lived next door and were best of friends. One trip down, us kids found a fifty dollar bill in an alley or something. Tevia was the oldest so I think she actually got it, but we all got some candy from it. We used to love to get the bubbleicious gum with goo flavored soda pop; Dr. Pepper was the one I remember liking the most. Later in life, when Nephi got a job, I remember him ironing his paper money and said it was something Spencer Jones (the Jones boy his age) taught him. Later, when I started making paper money, I did the same. It made me feel rich to have crisp dollar bills.

I did a lot of babysitting when I was younger. It was my primary source of income until I was old enough to legally get a "real job." I think it's safe to say I was one of the best babysitters of all time. Even from a young age I would prepare meals for the kids I was sitting, get them ready for and in bed, and clean the homes of the people I babysat for, all before the parents would get home. Preparing, and serving, meals was my favorite part. I used to create "menus" for the kids I sat and presented them with options for dinner. They got to "order" their dinner as if they were in a restaurant and I even had them "pay" with fake money. I think it made them feel like responsible adults getting to order and pay for their own food. I miss babysitting. It's so much easier than raising my own kids.