It was good to be graduated. I actually turned nineteen just before graduating, I was old for my grade because of my kindergarten year(s). Under normal circumstances I think most LDS males at that time would be packing to head off on a mission; but not me. I still wasn't even sure I was going to go at all; the prospect of getting on with a married life seemed much more appealing. I remember my dad sitting down with me one day and telling me: it's your choice, you need to figure out for yourself whether to go or not - but make sure you study it out and pray about it. I did just that, and decided I needed to go.
I hadn't prepared for a mission in any form; except maybe some spiritually by graduating from seminary - in fact I was actually voted most likely to become a seminary teacher by my seminary class, I think it was because I had so many of the scripture mastery scriptures memorized and kicked but at scripture chases. My biggest concern, although it probably shouldn't have been, was how I would pay for the mission. I ended up having the opportunity to help a guy start a business and he paid me well for it. His business was janitorial work - cleaning the Northland Pioneer College campus in Holbrook and Winslow, as well as a few residential carpet cleaning jobs. I set him up with all his computer and billing systems as well as some hiring and training. The work was at night - all night - and it was rigorous. He and I would drive up to Holbrook every night to clean, then out to Winslow to clean. Then during the days, most days a week, we'd have a residential home carpet cleaning job - anywhere from Show Low to St. Johns. I worked for him and got him all set up to keep his business going right up till I left to enter the Mission Training Center (MTC).
I also did some work building houses with a man named Kirby Karkula. He had his own business doing remodels, home repairs and even building custom homes. The summer of '99 I helped Kirby do several remodels. It was always fun working with him (just he and I) and I learned a lot. One home we remodeled (and repaired) was an OLD home in the outskirts of Show Low (headed towards Globe). The house was built out of timbers from the local forests. The walls were solid 6x12s stacked side by side. It was just a small single level home but it weighed so much it had started to sink. We had to dig under the home and raise it up with jacks to put it on new foundation pillars. It was a heck of a job.
Speaking of moving lifting houses - I also had the opportunity to lift, and MOVE an entire home with my dad and brothers. I can't remember if it was the summer of '99 or another year, but it was around that time. It was a two story cabin and I can't remember where it was - I think somewhere on the Apache reservation - but we moved it into Pinetop (I think). It too was a learning experience, and a bonding one too. It was a good time for my brothers and I. Nephi had just gotten back from his mission in Japan, and I was getting ready to leave to Ecuador. Raising the home to get it up on the special truck wheels was a SLOW process and required a lot of patience and ingenuity. We used large jacks to raise each corner at the same time, usually just a few inches at a time, to build up temporary supports until it got high enough to roll the wheels under. It seemed like a two steps forward one and a half steps back kind of a process. Once we finally got it on wheels we SLOWLY moved it down the highway and had to get highway patrol and police to close roads - getting through a few of the stop lights was a trick - I still can't believe we did it sometimes.
I think that was the summer my dad, brothers and I took a job clearing trees (stumps) from a huge lot of land. There were hundreds of stumps we had to clear. We used four of my grandpa's backhoes and an OLD dump truck. The four of us made the job into a contest (competition has always been pretty big in our family) - to see who could get the most stumps out the fastest. Pretty sure my dad won, but excluding him, I think Quentin and I were next best. We even switched up which hoe we used to keep us on our toes - one of them had backward controls from the others (I think the John Deer was backwards from the Case and Cat). There's no doubt in my mind that Quentin would kick my butt with a backhoe and give my dad a run for his money.
October 25, 1999 Bethany came over and we said goodbye. The next day I drove up to Utah with my parents to go into the MTC. The night of the 26th we stayed with my mom's cousin Lois in Orem. October 27, I was dropped off at the MTC. I guess it wasn't much different than most missionaries experiences - we went in, watched an orientation movie, said goodbye and left through separate doors. I think one difference I had than a vast majority of missionaries that go in to the Provo MTC is I knew NO ONE there. I've since realized most of the missionaries there had friends, even relatives, enter the same time and sometimes even get called to the same missions. Everything was new for me - even the mountain scenery - I had only visited Utah twice before, once to drop Nephi off in the MTC and once just to visit when I was like eleven or twelve years old (maybe younger).
Bethany wrote me EVERY day while I was in the MTC. My MTC comp was from Lompoc, CA and was a pretty weird kid, but he was laid back and we got along great. He and I used to have contest of who could eat the most mashed potatoes and gravy every night. There was a companionship in my district (a short firefighter from Washington state and a big Polynesian from Oklahoma) who got into an argument about whether or not it was appropriate for a girl to fart in front of a guy, or if they even fart at all - ever. Quite possibly the DUMBEST thing to argue about, but one of them ended up punching a door over it (so he wouldn't punch his companion) and he broke his hand. We spent two LONG months there, so I blame the cabin fever for the door punching. Yes, two months, I spent Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas there - and if it weren't for the Y2K scare, I would have been there for New Year's too, but all missionaries that were close to ready to go, got shipped out early to miss the chance of having problems getting out of the country.
I was one of three missionaries that got sent to the Guayaquil, Ecuador mission, my comp was sent to Quito. I remember arriving in the country late at night and going through customs. I was certain I had the language down pretty well - I was WRONG. All I can say is, deer-in-the-headlights-look. To make matters worse, I had forgotten to fill out the paper work required to get into the country while on the plane so I had some problems getting in. It was okay though, while I was waiting I got to listen to No Doubt's "Don't Speak" - it was the first "real" music I got to listen to for two months. We loaded up in the mission van and were driven to the mission home. On the way we swung by the newly built Guayaquil temple - we came up over a hill and it came into view, all lit up - it was beautiful. Just then, it turned 11pm and the temple lights went off. But it was cool to see for a second. I slept like a rock that night and met my new comp (trainer) the next day. Elder MacMullen. He and I were in a threesome with an other kid (because I came early - so they weren't having changes yet). **I know a lot of this lingo may not make sense to some people reading this, I'm sorry - I'll explain upon request**
My first area was Vinces. I LOVED it there. We lived in the top (third) floor of a building right in the center of the small city. I arrived December 27, just before New Year's. For New Year's, Ecuadorians make paper mache effigies of people and object representing the old year and then they fill them with fireworks and blow them up for the New Year. On New Year's night, we went up to the roof of our apartment building and dropped water balloons on the people below - yeah, it probably wasn't the best idea, and not very becoming of a missionary, but... we were still human and 19-20 year old boys - what do you expect? It was fun until one of us hit the wrong guy down below and he came up - needless to say, we spent the rest of the night in our apartment where we belonged.
We used to play Rook almost every night - Nielson, Lenhart, MacMullen and I. I loved that area. I was only with MacMullen for a couple of months then he got moved somewhere else. My second comp was Elder Gardner - a RED head from Utah. He was a lot of fun. MacMullen was a LOT of fun too, but I think sometimes I didn't realize that because I was a little to uptight when it came to rules and regulations of the mission (with the exception of New Year's night, I was still coming off the cabin fever effect from the MTC). Elder Gardner was a little more straight arrow and he and I got along great. After just a month together, I got transferred to another city, Quevedo. My new comp there Sean Hendrickson. He was from Phoenix, AZ and he and I got along GREAT. He took the *figurative* MTC stick that was up my butt and beat me with it until I remembered how to have fun again - how to enjoy what it was I was out there to do. Even though we had fun we worked hard. He used to play his guitar for me some nights. It was just he and I in an apartment to ourselves - this was a new thing for me. Every morning a bread vendor on a "triciculo", three wheeled bike, would come by our window (we lived on the second floor) and he would whistle and yell "cara sucia!" Cara sucia means, dirty face, it was a kind of small bread roll. Sean and I would buy and eat almost a dozen of them each almost every morning for breakfast.
While we were together in Quevedo, Sean and I put together a lot of athletic activities with the other missionaries in the area. One we played a huge game of Ultimate Frisbee. It was one of my best games ever. I remember getting SO muddy and being SO sore after that game. There was a national soccer stadium in the city that I wanted to play in so much. I went and found the owner of the stadium and asked him if we (missionaries) could use it for an afternoon. (Yes, my Spanish was coming along nicely by this time). The owner asked me what I'd give him in return - I told him we were a bunch of church missionaries and we had no money - and not much to give other than our message of Jesus Christ. He told me that if we got him a soccer ball, just as a token of "thank you" to show our appreciation - like a transaction - he would let us play. That afternoon I went out bought a soccer ball (they're for sale EVERYWHERE down there) and sent the word out to all the missionaries that we would be playing soccer in the national stadium there. When we all showed up to play, I had the missionaries all sign the soccer ball and I gave it to the owner along with a Book of Mormon. It was SO much fun playing in that stadium!
I turned 20 in that area. Our "momita" family - the family that cooked lunch for us every day - made me a birthday cake. They had some of the cutest little kids. They presented me with my cake and sang happy birthday - at the end of the song they told me to take the first bite out of the cake with my mouth... when I went down to take the bite they slammed my face into it. The kids tried to blame the other missionaries that were there, but someone captured a picture of the culprits - I'll have to get the picture out and scan it and post it tomorrow -- that's where the twenty first year begins.
I have a list of memories written down I'm trying to fit in all of this - the more I think about my life, the more that keep coming to mind.
My granny Borrego taught me a lot of things, I used to spend a lot of time with her and around her house. She used to set up a slip-n-slide in her yard in the summers that Quentin, Brandt, our cousin Chris and I used to play on. We also used to go crawdad hunting in the irrigation ditch that ran at the edge of her property. She taught me how to iron shirts (my grandpa's shirts) when I was very young. I remember her teaching me every aspect of it, including the yolk of the shirt (the section at the top of the back between the shoulders) and how to iron it correctly. She also taught me how to cook. As a Mexican, she made some of the best Mexican food. I wish I would have learned more from her. When I was a teen, she became a 4H instructor and had a few of her grandchildren (my cousins and I) as her students - or whatever we were called. We learned about gardening (which I already knew about) and we made food. I think that was when she taught me how to make her green chili chicken enchilada casserole. She and I also made a jeans quilt together. I still have it. One time I drew a swastika on the side of her sand box, I was pretty young, and I had no idea what it was, I think I was just trying to draw a pin wheel, but she chewed me out pretty good for that one - never made that mistake again. I also learned the hard way not to say just anything to her that my uncles would tell me to say. One of them told me to ask her was "mierda" was - I got smacked, then my uncle did.
My great grand parents (my mom's grand parents - her dad's parents) lived next door to each other. We used to go do service for them randomly as a family - and ALWAYS got fed whenever we showed up - it was LITERALLY impossible to drop by their home without getting fed, and not just a snack, a full Mexican style meal. My great grandma had an old wood burning cook stove in her garage where it seemed she was always cooking tortillas on. My grandpa also made her a big rotating basket she would roast green chilis in - I LOVE the smell of roasting green chilis - always reminds me of her and that house. My great grandma let me have sleep overs when I was very young and I remember her telling me stories of her working in hotels when she was younger and she taught me the "correct" way to make up a bed. She had fake spiders on her fireplace chimney (inside the kitchen) that I used to be afraid of when I was really young, it took me a few years to realize they were fake. She also had a round table in her dinning area that looked like a lemon. I loved eating at their place, I was sad when they moved away. They moved somewhere between Show Low and Mesa, to some trailer park. I remember visiting them once and they made microwave popcorn for us, they burned the heck out of it and every time I smell burnt popcorn I think of them.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
The Nineteenth Year - 1998
The summer of 98 was a good summer. I became a cashier at Megafoods and enjoyed what I did. All the other cashiers (a bunch of old ladies) loved me. Every week we had produce quizes we had to pass off (basically showing we knew what the produce was and then for a bonus what the UPC code was for each item. I was proud of myself for never missing a name and rarely not knowing the code. Of course now, I'd be hard pressed to identify half of the produce I once knew and the only code I remember now is bananas - 4011. I was fast too. I would still step down and help with bagging when needed, I was probably the best bagger that store has probably ever seen. I'm sure not everyone would agree with that analysis, but from a strictly logical standpoint on efficiency and the ability to bag like items - there's no arguing those facts - I was the best. One of my favorite things about being a cashier though was getting the money that came through. Not just money, rare coins and bills. I used to go through every quarter and set aside and buy the silver ones. I had quite a few come through. I also ended up getting a mercury dime, and a few buffalo nickles. One time I helped a customer at the video counter and he paid with a five dollar silver certificate. I couldn't believe it! I asked him if he knew what it was and he said, "yes, but I don't have any other money and I want to see this movie." Fine with me. I bought the five out of the till right then. My biggest purchase was a 1947 one hundred dollar bill - it kind of sickens me to say that I don't really know what ever happened to that. I'm sure - just like all those people that I got their rare money from - a greater need came up that I HAD to spend it... probably on Bethany.
My mom never liked her really. She says now that she never had a problem with her, but back then, it was clear to me she didn't like her. I didn't care much because her family loved me and so we spent all our time at her place. However, by the time school started up again, she and I were not supposed to be seeing each other anymore - but we still tried. One time when I was at soccer practice at woodland lake park, she drove by in hopes she'd get to see me out there. She was looking back and the road turned, but she didn't, and she crashed her car into a tree. Her brother came running up to me on the field - I was completely shocked to see him there - and he told me she was just in an accident down the street. I was expecting the worst. I ran to the wreck site to find her bleeding on her face. She cut her nose - but mostly wounded her pride I think. It was probably a good thing she wrecked that car, an old Ford - something - I don't even know if it had a name, it was a boat - but she ended up getting a newer little car after that.
Soccer was great. I played all four years in high school; and all four years we went to the state tournament - I think we were conference champs all four years too. We never did win state though. Our team was consistently cursed with the ability to play great soccer, without the ability to finish - score. Most of our games were won by defense - and I owned the field when it came to defense. In AYSO I always played in the forward position, but as I got older and the game progressed and the coaches got better, I was moved further and further back on the field - every good soccer player knows your fastest and best players play defense. My sophomore year I played a wing halfback, then junior year center half, then my senior year I was co-captain and the center full back - last line of defense before the keeper. I loved that position. I controlled the entire field from there.
In junior high, eighth grade, I did track and field - mostly just field - high jump. I LOVED it. However, in high school I worked year round - but I cut hours to make it work for me to play soccer, there was no way I was going to give THAT up. Every year I wanted to try high jump again - but my money needs always outweighed my "wants" to do track. My senior year I said, "to heck with it... it's my senior year, I'm livin it up!" I went out for track and made the team. We didn't have an official high jump coach because the coach that was doing it left the year before. One of the coaches knew a bit about it, but for the most part we were on our own. I used to watch tapes and highlights of Olympic high jumping and tapes about form - plus I remembered a lot of what my jr. high coach taught me. Before long I was kind of coaching the high jump teams - male and female. I also did long jump, triple jump and for one meet I did the 110 hurdle relay and the pole vault relay (because the kid that was supposed to compete walked off the team at the start of the meet and I volunteered to fill in). High jump was by far my favorite, and best, event - I won several medals that I want to put on display... someday. In all honesty I never really was able to jump that high, it was my form that got me over the bar. My best jump was six feet ten inches. I cleared that mark both on grass and during an indoor event. I'm sure if I would have lifted weights and trained a little better I could have done better. I was stupid. Looking back I had amazing talent and I probably could have gone to college for jumping. I always thought about trying to walk on to a college team, but my knees got pretty bad after high school - and I was afraid of failure, so I never did. If I have any regrets in life - not pursuing high jumping is definitely one of them.
Graduating was great. I never really thought I'd go off to college - I was pretty sure I was going to marry Bethany and stay on "the mountain" for the rest of my life. In my future plans announcement I wrote to be read during my acceptance of my diploma at graduation I said I was going to serve a mission and go to college - in all honesty, I didn't really think either of those things was going to happen. Technically, at this point, I'm into my twentieth year - so, I'll pick up on that story tomorrow.
Back to when I was much younger. I think I must have been about five or six. My Whatcott cousins and I (and probably my siblings) went down to Rainbow Lake to play. We were playing around the area where the lake flows under the highway. I was trying to catch small fish with my bare hands and I accidentally grabbed a piece of broken glass instead. I cut my middle finger on my right hand pretty bad. My cousin, Brian - who's about Tevia's age, wrapped my finger up with a cattail leaf and carried me all the way back to his parent's house to get it fixed up. To this day, I have a big scar on that finger where I cut it - it forms a double print on that finger, half arch, half loop.
We used to love to go (and even get) toilet papered. I'm pretty sure it was mostly us and our cousins that would just get each other, but really, that's what my world consisted of for most of my childhood (my cousins and I). One time, in high school, I think it was Shane and I, toilet papered Christine Webb's house - they were living just across from us at the time. There was a big willow tree in their front yard and we got it good - must have used at least 48 rolls! The next day I saw her grandpa, my great uncle, Ray (who must have been 90 at the time - or seemed like it) cleaning up the mess. I felt SOOO bad. I went over and helped him clean it up, and pretended I had no idea who did it - but they sure should be ashamed of themselves, whoever they are!
Uncle Ray. He was always my favorite of my grandpa's brothers. My grandpa, my dad's dad, was the youngest of his large family - and most all of them still lived within a mile radius of him (and me for that matter). As a result I had a LOT of cousins around growing up. As uncle Ray got older, even older than he was when I was born, he ended up getting his car taken away - he kept wrecking it. Instead he got himself a three wheeled bike and he kept on working. That man worked himself - well, to death really. I don't think he was super educated, I don't think any of my grandparents or their siblings went to college (I could be very wrong about that, but I've never heard otherwise so, that's my guess). I remember I would love to sit and watch my uncle Ray sit down with a pencil and a piece of cardboard as he did his math to figure out how much wood he needed to cut - not length, how many cords (amount). He did a lot of logging and wood cutting in his day. In fact, when I was in jr. high, I think, he cut one of his fingers off, well, smashed it off with a splitting maul. Accidents happen in that industry. His brother, my uncle Jay, who lived just down the street from Ray, broke his neck in a logging accident when I was in elementary school. I remember him wearing a halo for months - it kind of scared me, to see that contraptions bolted into his head. But he ended up being okay.
Ray had a son named Meb. Meb Webb. Meb was an inventor, I guess. I don't know how else to classify him. He created a device to roast corn nuts. He claims he invented them, and he very well could have - but I doubt it. I remember going over to his shop and eating them hot off the conveyor belt. They really weren't as good as the ones you can now buy in the stores, but back then, they were all I knew. I used to eat bags of them. Meb also invented a way to remove moles. Yes - this is the story of how I went from the Cindy Crawford look to the scarred up face most people know today. I had my mole pretty much as long as I can remember. As time went on and I got bigger, so did my mole. We never had health insurance, a family doctor, or even a dentist - so it shouldn't be surprising that I had no idea there was even such thing as a dermatologist - much less that I had ever been to one. So when Meb came to me one day claiming he could remove the bane that was on my face, I was interested. Meb showed me some indistinguishable scars on his face and body where he said he had removed moles. I bought in. He gave me some mixture of - something - and told me to apply it for a day or two and the mole should fall off. He said I may feel a little burning too - and burning I did feel! It felt like battery acid on my face. It burned the area pretty good. Sure enough, the mole came off - along with a good portion of the skin above my upper lip. To this day, Quentin gets a kick out of my experience with "Meb's Remove-A-Mole." The scar has softened, but is still pretty obvious - I'm sure I put too much on - mostly because I hated that mole so much I wanted to make sure it came off and I thought more would work better and faster - plus, for some reason, I thought it would only affect the mole, not the surrounding skin. What can I say, I was an idiot - this was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I think.
It's already almost 1:00am now. This post was supposed to be done yesterday (May 7). I do have picts that need to go with this, so I'll post them later after I get them scanned in.
My mom never liked her really. She says now that she never had a problem with her, but back then, it was clear to me she didn't like her. I didn't care much because her family loved me and so we spent all our time at her place. However, by the time school started up again, she and I were not supposed to be seeing each other anymore - but we still tried. One time when I was at soccer practice at woodland lake park, she drove by in hopes she'd get to see me out there. She was looking back and the road turned, but she didn't, and she crashed her car into a tree. Her brother came running up to me on the field - I was completely shocked to see him there - and he told me she was just in an accident down the street. I was expecting the worst. I ran to the wreck site to find her bleeding on her face. She cut her nose - but mostly wounded her pride I think. It was probably a good thing she wrecked that car, an old Ford - something - I don't even know if it had a name, it was a boat - but she ended up getting a newer little car after that.
Soccer was great. I played all four years in high school; and all four years we went to the state tournament - I think we were conference champs all four years too. We never did win state though. Our team was consistently cursed with the ability to play great soccer, without the ability to finish - score. Most of our games were won by defense - and I owned the field when it came to defense. In AYSO I always played in the forward position, but as I got older and the game progressed and the coaches got better, I was moved further and further back on the field - every good soccer player knows your fastest and best players play defense. My sophomore year I played a wing halfback, then junior year center half, then my senior year I was co-captain and the center full back - last line of defense before the keeper. I loved that position. I controlled the entire field from there.
In junior high, eighth grade, I did track and field - mostly just field - high jump. I LOVED it. However, in high school I worked year round - but I cut hours to make it work for me to play soccer, there was no way I was going to give THAT up. Every year I wanted to try high jump again - but my money needs always outweighed my "wants" to do track. My senior year I said, "to heck with it... it's my senior year, I'm livin it up!" I went out for track and made the team. We didn't have an official high jump coach because the coach that was doing it left the year before. One of the coaches knew a bit about it, but for the most part we were on our own. I used to watch tapes and highlights of Olympic high jumping and tapes about form - plus I remembered a lot of what my jr. high coach taught me. Before long I was kind of coaching the high jump teams - male and female. I also did long jump, triple jump and for one meet I did the 110 hurdle relay and the pole vault relay (because the kid that was supposed to compete walked off the team at the start of the meet and I volunteered to fill in). High jump was by far my favorite, and best, event - I won several medals that I want to put on display... someday. In all honesty I never really was able to jump that high, it was my form that got me over the bar. My best jump was six feet ten inches. I cleared that mark both on grass and during an indoor event. I'm sure if I would have lifted weights and trained a little better I could have done better. I was stupid. Looking back I had amazing talent and I probably could have gone to college for jumping. I always thought about trying to walk on to a college team, but my knees got pretty bad after high school - and I was afraid of failure, so I never did. If I have any regrets in life - not pursuing high jumping is definitely one of them.
Graduating was great. I never really thought I'd go off to college - I was pretty sure I was going to marry Bethany and stay on "the mountain" for the rest of my life. In my future plans announcement I wrote to be read during my acceptance of my diploma at graduation I said I was going to serve a mission and go to college - in all honesty, I didn't really think either of those things was going to happen. Technically, at this point, I'm into my twentieth year - so, I'll pick up on that story tomorrow.
Back to when I was much younger. I think I must have been about five or six. My Whatcott cousins and I (and probably my siblings) went down to Rainbow Lake to play. We were playing around the area where the lake flows under the highway. I was trying to catch small fish with my bare hands and I accidentally grabbed a piece of broken glass instead. I cut my middle finger on my right hand pretty bad. My cousin, Brian - who's about Tevia's age, wrapped my finger up with a cattail leaf and carried me all the way back to his parent's house to get it fixed up. To this day, I have a big scar on that finger where I cut it - it forms a double print on that finger, half arch, half loop.
We used to love to go (and even get) toilet papered. I'm pretty sure it was mostly us and our cousins that would just get each other, but really, that's what my world consisted of for most of my childhood (my cousins and I). One time, in high school, I think it was Shane and I, toilet papered Christine Webb's house - they were living just across from us at the time. There was a big willow tree in their front yard and we got it good - must have used at least 48 rolls! The next day I saw her grandpa, my great uncle, Ray (who must have been 90 at the time - or seemed like it) cleaning up the mess. I felt SOOO bad. I went over and helped him clean it up, and pretended I had no idea who did it - but they sure should be ashamed of themselves, whoever they are!
Uncle Ray. He was always my favorite of my grandpa's brothers. My grandpa, my dad's dad, was the youngest of his large family - and most all of them still lived within a mile radius of him (and me for that matter). As a result I had a LOT of cousins around growing up. As uncle Ray got older, even older than he was when I was born, he ended up getting his car taken away - he kept wrecking it. Instead he got himself a three wheeled bike and he kept on working. That man worked himself - well, to death really. I don't think he was super educated, I don't think any of my grandparents or their siblings went to college (I could be very wrong about that, but I've never heard otherwise so, that's my guess). I remember I would love to sit and watch my uncle Ray sit down with a pencil and a piece of cardboard as he did his math to figure out how much wood he needed to cut - not length, how many cords (amount). He did a lot of logging and wood cutting in his day. In fact, when I was in jr. high, I think, he cut one of his fingers off, well, smashed it off with a splitting maul. Accidents happen in that industry. His brother, my uncle Jay, who lived just down the street from Ray, broke his neck in a logging accident when I was in elementary school. I remember him wearing a halo for months - it kind of scared me, to see that contraptions bolted into his head. But he ended up being okay.
Ray had a son named Meb. Meb Webb. Meb was an inventor, I guess. I don't know how else to classify him. He created a device to roast corn nuts. He claims he invented them, and he very well could have - but I doubt it. I remember going over to his shop and eating them hot off the conveyor belt. They really weren't as good as the ones you can now buy in the stores, but back then, they were all I knew. I used to eat bags of them. Meb also invented a way to remove moles. Yes - this is the story of how I went from the Cindy Crawford look to the scarred up face most people know today. I had my mole pretty much as long as I can remember. As time went on and I got bigger, so did my mole. We never had health insurance, a family doctor, or even a dentist - so it shouldn't be surprising that I had no idea there was even such thing as a dermatologist - much less that I had ever been to one. So when Meb came to me one day claiming he could remove the bane that was on my face, I was interested. Meb showed me some indistinguishable scars on his face and body where he said he had removed moles. I bought in. He gave me some mixture of - something - and told me to apply it for a day or two and the mole should fall off. He said I may feel a little burning too - and burning I did feel! It felt like battery acid on my face. It burned the area pretty good. Sure enough, the mole came off - along with a good portion of the skin above my upper lip. To this day, Quentin gets a kick out of my experience with "Meb's Remove-A-Mole." The scar has softened, but is still pretty obvious - I'm sure I put too much on - mostly because I hated that mole so much I wanted to make sure it came off and I thought more would work better and faster - plus, for some reason, I thought it would only affect the mole, not the surrounding skin. What can I say, I was an idiot - this was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I think.
It's already almost 1:00am now. This post was supposed to be done yesterday (May 7). I do have picts that need to go with this, so I'll post them later after I get them scanned in.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Eighteenth Year - 1997
The summer of '97 our family took a trip to California to go to Six Flags and Disneyland. Just before the trip I got a settlement for the accident I was in on Halloween night freshman year. It was a pathetic settlement - $400. Well, for me, that was actually good money; but compared to what the other passengers got (tens of thousands of dollars) I kinda felt like I should have bent over and grabbed my ankles when they handed me the check. Of course, the other passengers secured lawyers whereas my father said it was dishonest to do so. I have to admit, on THAT particular case, I think Karma, or God, or whatever - would have sided with me to get a lawyer. It bothered me a lot but I never let it get to me so much that it consumed me. I think a part of me just took it as fate that I would never be one to fall ass backwards into money - and I'm okay with that. I was taught to work pretty much from the day I was born. I remember my dad saying (more often than he probably remembers) "six days shalt thou work - no where in the Bible does it say anything about playing!" So really, I didn't complain that I got $400 bucks - especially just before a trip to Cali.
At Disneyland, Quentin and I headed off together to ride rides and just enjoy Disneyland without the adults. I have to admit this was my first time at D-land where I got to do this so I was a little excited - even if I was seventeen. We walked around and I noticed some girls kind of following us around. I went and talked with them and before long, we were all hanging out and riding rides together. They were native to Orange County and had season passes, so they came to D-land ALL the time. I ended up making out with one of them on a few of the rides and we exchanged addresses (not email, I'm not even sure it existed yet) when we said goodbye at the end of the night (when the park closed). She and I wrote each other the rest of the summer and part of the next school year - but seriously, it was just a fling, I wasn't going to keep writing her forever.
Six Flags was a blast! It was the year the Superman ride opened so the line to it was RIDICULOUSLY long. That meant, other lines of older rides weren't so busy. We rode the Ninja at least ten times in a row without waiting at all. I used part of that $400 settlement to pay for my dad, Quentin and I to ride the Dive Devil. There was a fee to ride it in addition to the admission to the park fee; plus I paid for the video of us on the ride - I wonder whatever happened to that video!! I remember being SO scared on the way up. My dad was giddy as a school girl. We had him pull the rip cord, and he did so GLADLY. I kept my eyes close the entire way up, and only opened them for a second just before he pulled the cord. It was SO much fun! I would like to do it again, with my dad, his excitement for that ride made it unforgettable.
The summer of '97 was also the year I worked at The Zoo Family Fun Center. It was a laser tag, arcade and dance center. The Zoo opened up brand new that summer and I was part of the first crew hired. It was SO much fun to work there. The regulars knew me as "Tigger" because that was my laser tag ID. I became a manager and ran the all night laser tag tournaments. The all night laser tag events were fun. In reality, they consisted of about 20 of the geekiest geeks getting together and playing laser tag ALL night long. I'm almost a little embarrassed to say how good I got after a while. We used to change up the setting on the packs to make the games more interesting - I never did get sick of playing. However, I never liked cleaning the indoor jungle gym. We had to disinfect it every night. It smelled like dirty socks all the time.
I went down with the owner, and a few other employees, to Las Vegas on a "business trip" to train on how to maintain the laser tag packs and become better players to better promote the game. The trip was a blast! We stayed at the Excalibur Hotel - all expenses paid. One of the days we went to ride the roller coaster at the New York, New York Hotel. We got on and the coaster started to go. As it reached the top of the first big ascent a bright flash of lightening filled the sky immediately followed by a VERY loud crash of thunder. Just as the cars started to move over the top of the crest a wall of rain started to downpour on us. It was AWESOME! However, if you've never been moving fast through large drops of rain, let me tell you - it hurts. Needless to say they closed the ride to wait out the rain and we ended up being the last to go that day. One of the many all-you-can-eat buffets we had while we were there was in the Luxor. We started a food fight in there and were asked to leave... the funny thing about it was, I'm pretty sure it was the owner of The Zoo who took us there that started it.
I was dating one of the girls I was working with at the time (who also went on that trip). She was 21 years old (I was only 17), so I felt like pretty hot stuff dating an older woman - plus she really was a lot of fun. My parents didn't like me dating her, and I couldn't tell if it was because she was older, or a different religion, but whatever it was, it only made me want to date her more. I think it was her who helped me perfect my driving skills I have today (in a manual car). She owned a Toyota Camry and would let me drive it whenever we went out - I wasn't that great at it (and wasn't used to driving a vehicle that ran properly - since my Datsun required one foot on the gas at ALL times or else it would stall, no idle whatsoever) but she used to tell me, "it's better to rev it than to lug it."
There were problems with the owners of the company (The Zoo) and before long, they closed the doors for good. I stopped dating the older girl and ended up getting a job at Megafoods (a warehouse style grocery store) in Show Low. I started as a bag boy. I actually loved that job. I really enjoyed the customer interaction I got everyday - mostly with the elderly people. Pretty much all my jobs before this (excluding the fun center) consisted of manual labor (which I still did working for my grandpa now and again) or printing T-shirts in a room with usually just my dad and my aunt. My managers there were Alex and Scott. Scott was a plump older guy that was bald and, although he usually looked grouchy, had a great fun loving personality. He would pull me aside to help him with random assignments, usually to just tell me a joke or call me a "bitch." I wish I could have him saying that on audio somehow - it was the funniest thing to hear and always made my day. Alex was a good manager to work with too. He was engaged to the owner's daughter - although, I questioned his sexual preference sometimes. I think it was the mustache. I later became a cashier, but that didn't happen until I turned eighteen, so you'll have to wait for those stories next blog.
March of '98 (still my eighteenth year of life) I met Bethany Day. I was invited over to watch a movie (5th Element) by JR Whipple at his house. Funny thing was, it was his younger brother, Trevor, that was having the party, but JR said there were girls over so I decided to make an appearance. Bethany and I hit it off that night. She squished the Whipple's already morbidly obese cat's face to make it fatter for the "fat kid riding the motorcycle" joke - you've never heard that one? Too bad. I got her number that night and called her the next day - I didn't know there was a "waiting three days" rule back then. It didn't matter, she was happy to hear from me. She lived just across the street from the Megafoods I worked at and started to come in at nights with her sister to get Campbell's Cheese soup - but really just to see me. Things progressed well and she and I started dating.
Before spilling over into my nineteenth year, I'm going to do another flashback of memories from when I was much younger:
It kind of amazes me how many camp outs I remember going on with the scouts - the more I think about my life. One year we went on a winter camp out to the old Sunrise Ski area - a place where a lot of people, including me and my fam, used to go snow tubing. In fact, on this camp out, we also brought tubes. One of the advantages of having a grandpa who has a construction shop in his (and our) back yard, was a seemingly endless supply of inner tubes - sometimes they just had to be patched and inflated and we were good to go. I must have been about 13 on this particular camp out. I was definitely one of the younger scouts, but I wasn't the most picked on - that title belonged to Ammon Mangum. He was an older scout but... well, kind of like Rod and Tod Flanders, if you watch The Simpsons. It didn't help that he was a bit of a strange duck too. He lit a long (probably 10-15 foot) branch on fire and ran around with it before throwing it up into a big tree. Sure everything was covered with snow... but seriously - who does that?! Oh, side story, one year we went to a camp retreat with several troops, and during one of the flag ceremonies, Ammon locked his knees (because he wanted to show off how straight and reverent he could stand) and he passed out. We got a lecture from Dan Browning (Jacob's dad and one of our leaders at the time) about how to stand at attention - with knees slightly bent. Back to the winter camp. Shane and I set up our tent on a hill and tried to pack snow around it for insulation. In the morning we were at the bottom of the hill with the tent up-side-down. One of the scouts left his jeans out to dry that night and in the morning they could stand on their own, frozen stiff - I seemed to have learned a lot of life's lessons, by experience - the hard way, during scouting events.
On other camp outs, where Dan Browning was our leader, we usually played a war game called "search and destroy." Dan was a captain in the armed services. "Six years in the Marines, seven years in the Army;" he used to always say. Search and destroy was a night game played with two teams, one would go out and hide, the other would try to find them. Each team used pine cones, or cow pies, or horse biscuits - whatever was available - as ammunition. Last man (or team) standing, won. Dan taught us the importance of using peripheral vision at night in the low light and the importance of keeping still (and holding breath if necessary) while hiding. A few physiology and anatomy classes later, I under stand WHY what he taught us works. His games were always fun, and although some people might think the games could promote "war," our troop always seemed closer knit when playing, even the older scouts showed more comradeship to the younger ones.
Dan used to take us on camp outs down stream from Show Low lake in the forest behind his house. One time, Shane had to come late - after dark (work or something). We heard him coming through the trees and Dan got up to greet him - Dan style. About 50 yards from our camp Dan spotlighted him at gun point. Dan commanded him to state his name and business. Shane and the rest of us were like, "uh, are you serious." We all knew his pistol was loaded too... it ALWAYS was - six years in the Marines, seven years in the Army. Dan would wake up with that gun in his hand if he heard a stick snap from 50 yards away. It always baffled me though how he didn't even stir the night we tossed a can of shaving cream on the fire and it exploded - we used the shave cream to cover one of the other scouts while he was sleeping, don't remember who, but I'm sure it was fun.
Dan was serious about his war games. We used to have battles American Gladiator style with "pudgel sticks." Basically broom sticks and pvc pipe with a bit of padding... the padding never stayed on long though and we were soon beating each other up with bare sticks. Dan caught us making dry ice bombs once, he told us that unless we were going to put hard corn kernels, or something along those lines, in it for shrapnel, it wasn't worth making the bomb. We never did use anything for shrapnel though, we were just in it for the sound. Seeking a bigger boom, Jacob - his son - took one of his hand grenades and we went to the woods to throw it. We weren't stupid enough to throw it just anywhere, so we went on a cliff and planned to toss it down below where the river was - just in case it caused a fire. I have to say, fortunately for us, it was just a smoke grenade - although at the time we were all pretty disappointed.
When my brothers and I were younger, maybe when I was eleven or twelve-ish (maybe even nine or ten), my dad used to take me Nephi and Quentin out to learn how to drive and shoot his old bolt action 22 rifle. It seems, other than working with him, this was the only "manly" thing my dad took us to do. But I always looked forward to it. He would take us out usually on a weekend, after working or doing some chore - almost like a treat; and it was. We all took turns shooting cans and bottles with the rifle then we'd load up and take turns trying to drive the car. We used to go out towards Shumway, somewhere between Show Low and Snowflake. The car was a manual (stick) and I stalled it more than I drove it. I would get excited when we would load up and go to the store to buy ammo - knowing I'd get to drive too! We had all driven before - loaders and backhoes for my grandpa, even on the highway, but there was something about driving a CAR! Even if it was the old POS Datsun station wagon - we owned a lot of Datsuns when I was growing up.
That car had been beat up a few times. Once, my mom was leaving to the store, and us kids were bothering her about something while she was trying to back out, and my uncle Kim (dad's brother) hit the car in his truck. It dented it up pretty bad on the rear fender and my mom's head hit the side window and was bleeding. I can't say it was either driver's fault, but my uncle was speeding - people always drove too fast on that dirt road. That car also got dented up in the front from one of us kids (I think it was me) trying to back it up one time. I learned the hard way that the front end swings wide when you cut the wheel in reverse. The car ended up knocking a trailer off its support - good thing there wasn't any damage to the equipment on the trailer. The car finally had to be put down when Nephi rear-ended a truck in Globe on his way back from Mesa with some friends. He really didn't hit that hard, but it was enough to put that old car out of its misery.
At Disneyland, Quentin and I headed off together to ride rides and just enjoy Disneyland without the adults. I have to admit this was my first time at D-land where I got to do this so I was a little excited - even if I was seventeen. We walked around and I noticed some girls kind of following us around. I went and talked with them and before long, we were all hanging out and riding rides together. They were native to Orange County and had season passes, so they came to D-land ALL the time. I ended up making out with one of them on a few of the rides and we exchanged addresses (not email, I'm not even sure it existed yet) when we said goodbye at the end of the night (when the park closed). She and I wrote each other the rest of the summer and part of the next school year - but seriously, it was just a fling, I wasn't going to keep writing her forever.
Six Flags was a blast! It was the year the Superman ride opened so the line to it was RIDICULOUSLY long. That meant, other lines of older rides weren't so busy. We rode the Ninja at least ten times in a row without waiting at all. I used part of that $400 settlement to pay for my dad, Quentin and I to ride the Dive Devil. There was a fee to ride it in addition to the admission to the park fee; plus I paid for the video of us on the ride - I wonder whatever happened to that video!! I remember being SO scared on the way up. My dad was giddy as a school girl. We had him pull the rip cord, and he did so GLADLY. I kept my eyes close the entire way up, and only opened them for a second just before he pulled the cord. It was SO much fun! I would like to do it again, with my dad, his excitement for that ride made it unforgettable.
The summer of '97 was also the year I worked at The Zoo Family Fun Center. It was a laser tag, arcade and dance center. The Zoo opened up brand new that summer and I was part of the first crew hired. It was SO much fun to work there. The regulars knew me as "Tigger" because that was my laser tag ID. I became a manager and ran the all night laser tag tournaments. The all night laser tag events were fun. In reality, they consisted of about 20 of the geekiest geeks getting together and playing laser tag ALL night long. I'm almost a little embarrassed to say how good I got after a while. We used to change up the setting on the packs to make the games more interesting - I never did get sick of playing. However, I never liked cleaning the indoor jungle gym. We had to disinfect it every night. It smelled like dirty socks all the time.
I went down with the owner, and a few other employees, to Las Vegas on a "business trip" to train on how to maintain the laser tag packs and become better players to better promote the game. The trip was a blast! We stayed at the Excalibur Hotel - all expenses paid. One of the days we went to ride the roller coaster at the New York, New York Hotel. We got on and the coaster started to go. As it reached the top of the first big ascent a bright flash of lightening filled the sky immediately followed by a VERY loud crash of thunder. Just as the cars started to move over the top of the crest a wall of rain started to downpour on us. It was AWESOME! However, if you've never been moving fast through large drops of rain, let me tell you - it hurts. Needless to say they closed the ride to wait out the rain and we ended up being the last to go that day. One of the many all-you-can-eat buffets we had while we were there was in the Luxor. We started a food fight in there and were asked to leave... the funny thing about it was, I'm pretty sure it was the owner of The Zoo who took us there that started it.
I was dating one of the girls I was working with at the time (who also went on that trip). She was 21 years old (I was only 17), so I felt like pretty hot stuff dating an older woman - plus she really was a lot of fun. My parents didn't like me dating her, and I couldn't tell if it was because she was older, or a different religion, but whatever it was, it only made me want to date her more. I think it was her who helped me perfect my driving skills I have today (in a manual car). She owned a Toyota Camry and would let me drive it whenever we went out - I wasn't that great at it (and wasn't used to driving a vehicle that ran properly - since my Datsun required one foot on the gas at ALL times or else it would stall, no idle whatsoever) but she used to tell me, "it's better to rev it than to lug it."
There were problems with the owners of the company (The Zoo) and before long, they closed the doors for good. I stopped dating the older girl and ended up getting a job at Megafoods (a warehouse style grocery store) in Show Low. I started as a bag boy. I actually loved that job. I really enjoyed the customer interaction I got everyday - mostly with the elderly people. Pretty much all my jobs before this (excluding the fun center) consisted of manual labor (which I still did working for my grandpa now and again) or printing T-shirts in a room with usually just my dad and my aunt. My managers there were Alex and Scott. Scott was a plump older guy that was bald and, although he usually looked grouchy, had a great fun loving personality. He would pull me aside to help him with random assignments, usually to just tell me a joke or call me a "bitch." I wish I could have him saying that on audio somehow - it was the funniest thing to hear and always made my day. Alex was a good manager to work with too. He was engaged to the owner's daughter - although, I questioned his sexual preference sometimes. I think it was the mustache. I later became a cashier, but that didn't happen until I turned eighteen, so you'll have to wait for those stories next blog.
March of '98 (still my eighteenth year of life) I met Bethany Day. I was invited over to watch a movie (5th Element) by JR Whipple at his house. Funny thing was, it was his younger brother, Trevor, that was having the party, but JR said there were girls over so I decided to make an appearance. Bethany and I hit it off that night. She squished the Whipple's already morbidly obese cat's face to make it fatter for the "fat kid riding the motorcycle" joke - you've never heard that one? Too bad. I got her number that night and called her the next day - I didn't know there was a "waiting three days" rule back then. It didn't matter, she was happy to hear from me. She lived just across the street from the Megafoods I worked at and started to come in at nights with her sister to get Campbell's Cheese soup - but really just to see me. Things progressed well and she and I started dating.
Before spilling over into my nineteenth year, I'm going to do another flashback of memories from when I was much younger:
It kind of amazes me how many camp outs I remember going on with the scouts - the more I think about my life. One year we went on a winter camp out to the old Sunrise Ski area - a place where a lot of people, including me and my fam, used to go snow tubing. In fact, on this camp out, we also brought tubes. One of the advantages of having a grandpa who has a construction shop in his (and our) back yard, was a seemingly endless supply of inner tubes - sometimes they just had to be patched and inflated and we were good to go. I must have been about 13 on this particular camp out. I was definitely one of the younger scouts, but I wasn't the most picked on - that title belonged to Ammon Mangum. He was an older scout but... well, kind of like Rod and Tod Flanders, if you watch The Simpsons. It didn't help that he was a bit of a strange duck too. He lit a long (probably 10-15 foot) branch on fire and ran around with it before throwing it up into a big tree. Sure everything was covered with snow... but seriously - who does that?! Oh, side story, one year we went to a camp retreat with several troops, and during one of the flag ceremonies, Ammon locked his knees (because he wanted to show off how straight and reverent he could stand) and he passed out. We got a lecture from Dan Browning (Jacob's dad and one of our leaders at the time) about how to stand at attention - with knees slightly bent. Back to the winter camp. Shane and I set up our tent on a hill and tried to pack snow around it for insulation. In the morning we were at the bottom of the hill with the tent up-side-down. One of the scouts left his jeans out to dry that night and in the morning they could stand on their own, frozen stiff - I seemed to have learned a lot of life's lessons, by experience - the hard way, during scouting events.
On other camp outs, where Dan Browning was our leader, we usually played a war game called "search and destroy." Dan was a captain in the armed services. "Six years in the Marines, seven years in the Army;" he used to always say. Search and destroy was a night game played with two teams, one would go out and hide, the other would try to find them. Each team used pine cones, or cow pies, or horse biscuits - whatever was available - as ammunition. Last man (or team) standing, won. Dan taught us the importance of using peripheral vision at night in the low light and the importance of keeping still (and holding breath if necessary) while hiding. A few physiology and anatomy classes later, I under stand WHY what he taught us works. His games were always fun, and although some people might think the games could promote "war," our troop always seemed closer knit when playing, even the older scouts showed more comradeship to the younger ones.
Dan used to take us on camp outs down stream from Show Low lake in the forest behind his house. One time, Shane had to come late - after dark (work or something). We heard him coming through the trees and Dan got up to greet him - Dan style. About 50 yards from our camp Dan spotlighted him at gun point. Dan commanded him to state his name and business. Shane and the rest of us were like, "uh, are you serious." We all knew his pistol was loaded too... it ALWAYS was - six years in the Marines, seven years in the Army. Dan would wake up with that gun in his hand if he heard a stick snap from 50 yards away. It always baffled me though how he didn't even stir the night we tossed a can of shaving cream on the fire and it exploded - we used the shave cream to cover one of the other scouts while he was sleeping, don't remember who, but I'm sure it was fun.
Dan was serious about his war games. We used to have battles American Gladiator style with "pudgel sticks." Basically broom sticks and pvc pipe with a bit of padding... the padding never stayed on long though and we were soon beating each other up with bare sticks. Dan caught us making dry ice bombs once, he told us that unless we were going to put hard corn kernels, or something along those lines, in it for shrapnel, it wasn't worth making the bomb. We never did use anything for shrapnel though, we were just in it for the sound. Seeking a bigger boom, Jacob - his son - took one of his hand grenades and we went to the woods to throw it. We weren't stupid enough to throw it just anywhere, so we went on a cliff and planned to toss it down below where the river was - just in case it caused a fire. I have to say, fortunately for us, it was just a smoke grenade - although at the time we were all pretty disappointed.
When my brothers and I were younger, maybe when I was eleven or twelve-ish (maybe even nine or ten), my dad used to take me Nephi and Quentin out to learn how to drive and shoot his old bolt action 22 rifle. It seems, other than working with him, this was the only "manly" thing my dad took us to do. But I always looked forward to it. He would take us out usually on a weekend, after working or doing some chore - almost like a treat; and it was. We all took turns shooting cans and bottles with the rifle then we'd load up and take turns trying to drive the car. We used to go out towards Shumway, somewhere between Show Low and Snowflake. The car was a manual (stick) and I stalled it more than I drove it. I would get excited when we would load up and go to the store to buy ammo - knowing I'd get to drive too! We had all driven before - loaders and backhoes for my grandpa, even on the highway, but there was something about driving a CAR! Even if it was the old POS Datsun station wagon - we owned a lot of Datsuns when I was growing up.
That car had been beat up a few times. Once, my mom was leaving to the store, and us kids were bothering her about something while she was trying to back out, and my uncle Kim (dad's brother) hit the car in his truck. It dented it up pretty bad on the rear fender and my mom's head hit the side window and was bleeding. I can't say it was either driver's fault, but my uncle was speeding - people always drove too fast on that dirt road. That car also got dented up in the front from one of us kids (I think it was me) trying to back it up one time. I learned the hard way that the front end swings wide when you cut the wheel in reverse. The car ended up knocking a trailer off its support - good thing there wasn't any damage to the equipment on the trailer. The car finally had to be put down when Nephi rear-ended a truck in Globe on his way back from Mesa with some friends. He really didn't hit that hard, but it was enough to put that old car out of its misery.
Lately.....a picture post.
My sisters and I at the festival. It was windy.
What the....was this taken before I had Aayla??? Because I really can't tell :(
Jacob and I at the Coy Ponds.
Pretty waterfalls!
Ellery and I at the top of the waterfalls.
Ellery is strange. She is actually a big baby when it comes to little things and gets scared easily lately. BUT, she loves snakes. Here she is HOLDING it! yuck.
Monkey bar fun!
She loves to swing and be outside. Check out the hair.
Here is another hair shot. Long, scraggly, mullety. Needing a change...
So Abbie cut it!
I think it turned out SO cute. She looks so much older.
I love it! No more rag-a-muffin hair!
Aayla is growing so big! She's got the chubbiest cheeks, and big rolls on her thighs. I don't remember Ellery being as chubby as her.
She's really starting to smile and interact a lot. She likes her toy and swing, but HATES her tummy time. We've been trying to get her to roll over but she won't. She'll lay there with her head down on the ground and just cry and cry until we roll her over.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The Seventeenth Year - 1996
The summer of '96 I went down to Mesa to live and word with my uncle Ezra for a couple months. Ezra was once the head grounds keeper at the Mesa Temple, but at the time he ran his own landscaping company doing lawns for private homeowners. I have to admit, I don't remember it ever being too hot - even mid day pushing a lawn mower in the valley of the sun. One of the homes we did was the owner of Terri's Consign and Design, a furniture company. She lived in the Awatookie Foothills in a mansion. Being a young country boy, it was the coolest house I had ever seen. Looking back now, I think it was kind of old and ugly.
Later that summer I bought an old '79 Datsun pickup from my dad's parents for $50 to replace the truck I lost the year before. I had to rebuild the carburetor in that piece of crap a couple of times, but I guess it ran and that was good enough for me. It was an ugly tan color and held together with Bondo and bailing wire. It previously belonged to my dad's younger brothers and they pretty much beat the hell out of it. One of them had forgot to close the hood all the way one time before driving off; the hood flipped up and turned inside out and slammed into the windshield. So the hood was pretty much all Bondo and the windshield was cracked all over. As much of a piece of crap as it was and as much as I truly hated that truck, I loved it, and sometimes wish I still had it. I put a stereo in it the cheapest I could buy - and a bunch of small cheap speakers that I built boxes for. The sound was terrible but I could get it pretty loud. In high school, what more do you need? It was perfect for tossing my books in an getting to and from soccer practice everyday.
Soccer. Coach Nick was an English man. I think he was in the Royal Army as a sniper at one time and he played for the British National team as a keeper. You have to be clinically insane to do that, and he was. We had to run so much! I can still hear him yelling in his British accent, "when I blow my whistle, you'll run, really fast - and when I blow it again, you'll sprint even faster, then when I blow it again, run really fast - and you'll keep doing that until I get tired." He never did get tired - and we ran a LOT for it.
I made friends with the attendance secretary of my high school - Mrs. Williams (Gayle). She probably wasn't more than four and a half feet tall but was a giant in my book. I used to skip class and head out through her office and tell her I was leaving. She'd give me that sigh and a look like *again? - just go to class Jacob.* Then I'd tell her I would pick her up some breakfast on my way back. Starting my sophomore year, I probably missed more days (and half days) of school than anyone else in my high school, but I don't think I was ever counted as absence thanks to Gayle. She used to tell me I should marry her daughter - she was a senior at the time and way cute, but we both knew she was out of my league.
That fall Shane and I spent a LOT of time at my aunt and uncle's house (Chris and Marie Cool). They had just bought a new (old) home and were fixing it up. The thing had those nasty popcorn ceilings everywhere and wallpaper on just about every wall... it was a mess! But I enjoyed the time with them and with Shane. To this day, I still love painting walls because it reminds me of that time. There was a room in the back of the house that Marie let Darryl (my Native American - foster - cousin) stay in. His "rent" was that he had to paint the room. He went out and bought himself a pack of Zima and went at it. The next day we went to look at his work. I still remember laughing at how bad it was; he definitely finished off the Zima before getting started on the painting.
Shane and I used to go to the stake dances in Show Low a lot back then. I'm not sure why... we never really danced. I was too shy or embarrassed and he was to... anti morman girls. But still, we would go. On the way to one of the dances one time, Shane and I got passed by a car full of girls. He told me to speed up and pass them, so I did, next thing I knew he had his bare ham pressed against the passenger window. We took the back way to the stake center and when we got there, that same car full of girls pulled too - they either didn't realize it was us, or just pretended to not notice. After the dances a bunch of us would go to Denny's for shakes - it was the ONLY place open after 10pm in our small town.
Shane had a knack for finding a reason to expose his butt - moon people. One time we went camping with the scouts out in the middle of no where. I actually think it was the same camping trip when we hiked Becker's Butte. We camped just off the main road that ran through the Salt River Canyon on the way to Globe. That night a lowrider pickup got high centered near our camp site and we all had to go help push him free. Later, we went up to the highway and a bunch of us mooned cars. You have to imagine, driving down a dark road in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden seeing six white butts hanging over the guardrail. We all thought it was pretty funny. Another scout camp out at Show Low Lake, Shane and I decided to moon our scoutmaster, (Dave "Super Dave" Skousen). We started away from camp and walked in backwards with our pants down. Dave tried to pretend he didn't notice hoping we'd give up, but we kept on walking. I tripped and Shane fell on top of me... seizing his opportunity, Shane tried to sit on my face bare butt. Later that night, we decided to cook a can of beans for dinner... without opening the can. You only ever need to try that once. Needless to say, we didn't get to eat the beans.
I was a member of the Spanish Club both my freshman and sophomore years; it was a requirement to be eligible to go on the big trip to Mexico. To help raise money to go, students had to work concessions at the various Blue Ridge High sporting events. My mom used to make her home made green chili burritos to sell at the concessions to help raise money also. She makes the best burritos north of the Rio Grande... probably the best south of there too. The Mexico trip was SO much fun, a once in a lifetime experience. All the students that went seemed to get along and I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. We flew into Mexico City and Senor Thompson (our Spanish Teacher) chartered transportation to Patzcuaro. However, there wasn't enough room for everyone to fit in the vehicle chartered so Three of the students (me, JR Whipple and Caleb Rowell) and one chaperon (Dave "super Dave" Skousen) we put on a regular public transit bus. The bus didn't leave until about six or so in the evening and it was a LONG ride to where we were going. We watched Waterworld and two other movies (that I slept through). We got into Patzcuaro at about 3am. From the bus station we took a taxi to the hotel. The taxi driver was true to Mexican form. We spent half the time on the wrong side of the road of going the wrong way on a one way street... of course, at 3am, I guess it didn't really matter. I LOVED the small towns we visited and the sites we saw. We went to Patzcuaro lake and took a boat to an island there. There was a statue of some guy that we got to go up into his fist. I guess this was supposed to be the Mexican version of the Statue of Liberty, but it was a guy and only consisted of a figure from the waist up. Still it was cool to see. The town smelled of fish - EVERYWHERE. It stunk, but I liked it. It smelled like a real Mexican town, poor with nothing to hide... not like a lot of the tourist towns that most people go to.
We also visited the city of Uruapan. It was a bigger city and the hotel we stayed at was amazing. It had two big courtyards and all the rooms were around them. We were usually served eggs and refried beans for breakfast - I love that meal. Uruapan's streets were full of shops and street vendors. It was a little more touristy than Patzcuaro and the fact that this was around La Semana Santa (the holy week - Easter) all the vendors were out in full force. It gave us students several opportunities to practice our Spanish - even though I don't think most did.
On our way back to Mexico City we stopped in a small town to eat. There were a bunch of kids playing soccer in a field and a few of us joined in to play too. It was a lot of fun. I wish we could have played longer. There was also another town where kids were playing with some tops (that you wind with a string and throw to spin). Most of us students bought one and tried it, I never did get any good at it, but it was fun trying to interact with the children in their native language. In one town we stopped we ran into some elderly American tourists, probably from Texas by their accent. I talked to them for a bit and asked them if they know Spanish and how they're liking their trip. They said they didn't know any Spanish but were getting along fine. And they were surprised to discover that if you tell the begging children in the streets "no" in English they understand and will leave you alone.
The final leg of the trip was in Mexico City and to the ruins of Teotihuacan - home of the pyramids of the moon and the sun. Mexico City was HUGE! We went up to the top of the Latin American Tower one night and looked around... there was no end to the city it seemed. We also strolled the park that was built on the site of the largest hospital collapse during the earthquake in Mexico City in 1985. The park was nice - but I remember being told to keep your hand on your wallet. There were artists painting with spray paint, it was the first time I had ever seen anything like it and I wished I had money to get one. We also visited the Zocalo and the Plaza de las Tres Culturas while were in Mexico City.
Teotihuacan was amazing! Our tour guide was great. We were taken around the back of one of the pyramids where he put on a presentation of a type of ritual of the ancient inhabitants. He played a song on a conch shell and did a little singing too. At another pyramid he had us line up and he clapped his hands at different locations in front of the pyramid to demonstrate that the sound of the echo was that of the quetzal bird and he could play the scales of a piano depending on where he stood when he clapped. The pyramid of the sun was enormous!!! Because it was the holy week, the place was packed. Lines of people everywhere! Caleb and I were trying to race to the top of the pyramid and we took off around one of the corded off areas - a bunch of the guards there blew whistles at us, but we kept going anyway. All I really remember about the pyramid of the moon was that it had super steep steps. The whole place we really neat, and I hope to return someday. On our way back to the city from the ruins, we stopped by the Mexico City Temple. Senor Thompson was LDS and said he was stopping there because it was a special place to him and to the Mexican history and culture and that students are welcome to get out and walk the grounds.
Our last day in Mexico City I remember going to a McDonald's. I ordered a Mc Pollo Sandwich and fries. I thought it was SO good to eat "American" food after the week or so in Mexico. Looking back, I can't believe I used to eat, and even liked McDonald's - GAG! I saved my box from my sandwich for years after that, cause it said "Mc Pollo" I thought that was pretty cool.
Later that summer I bought an old '79 Datsun pickup from my dad's parents for $50 to replace the truck I lost the year before. I had to rebuild the carburetor in that piece of crap a couple of times, but I guess it ran and that was good enough for me. It was an ugly tan color and held together with Bondo and bailing wire. It previously belonged to my dad's younger brothers and they pretty much beat the hell out of it. One of them had forgot to close the hood all the way one time before driving off; the hood flipped up and turned inside out and slammed into the windshield. So the hood was pretty much all Bondo and the windshield was cracked all over. As much of a piece of crap as it was and as much as I truly hated that truck, I loved it, and sometimes wish I still had it. I put a stereo in it the cheapest I could buy - and a bunch of small cheap speakers that I built boxes for. The sound was terrible but I could get it pretty loud. In high school, what more do you need? It was perfect for tossing my books in an getting to and from soccer practice everyday.
Soccer. Coach Nick was an English man. I think he was in the Royal Army as a sniper at one time and he played for the British National team as a keeper. You have to be clinically insane to do that, and he was. We had to run so much! I can still hear him yelling in his British accent, "when I blow my whistle, you'll run, really fast - and when I blow it again, you'll sprint even faster, then when I blow it again, run really fast - and you'll keep doing that until I get tired." He never did get tired - and we ran a LOT for it.
I made friends with the attendance secretary of my high school - Mrs. Williams (Gayle). She probably wasn't more than four and a half feet tall but was a giant in my book. I used to skip class and head out through her office and tell her I was leaving. She'd give me that sigh and a look like *again? - just go to class Jacob.* Then I'd tell her I would pick her up some breakfast on my way back. Starting my sophomore year, I probably missed more days (and half days) of school than anyone else in my high school, but I don't think I was ever counted as absence thanks to Gayle. She used to tell me I should marry her daughter - she was a senior at the time and way cute, but we both knew she was out of my league.
That fall Shane and I spent a LOT of time at my aunt and uncle's house (Chris and Marie Cool). They had just bought a new (old) home and were fixing it up. The thing had those nasty popcorn ceilings everywhere and wallpaper on just about every wall... it was a mess! But I enjoyed the time with them and with Shane. To this day, I still love painting walls because it reminds me of that time. There was a room in the back of the house that Marie let Darryl (my Native American - foster - cousin) stay in. His "rent" was that he had to paint the room. He went out and bought himself a pack of Zima and went at it. The next day we went to look at his work. I still remember laughing at how bad it was; he definitely finished off the Zima before getting started on the painting.
Shane and I used to go to the stake dances in Show Low a lot back then. I'm not sure why... we never really danced. I was too shy or embarrassed and he was to... anti morman girls. But still, we would go. On the way to one of the dances one time, Shane and I got passed by a car full of girls. He told me to speed up and pass them, so I did, next thing I knew he had his bare ham pressed against the passenger window. We took the back way to the stake center and when we got there, that same car full of girls pulled too - they either didn't realize it was us, or just pretended to not notice. After the dances a bunch of us would go to Denny's for shakes - it was the ONLY place open after 10pm in our small town.
Shane had a knack for finding a reason to expose his butt - moon people. One time we went camping with the scouts out in the middle of no where. I actually think it was the same camping trip when we hiked Becker's Butte. We camped just off the main road that ran through the Salt River Canyon on the way to Globe. That night a lowrider pickup got high centered near our camp site and we all had to go help push him free. Later, we went up to the highway and a bunch of us mooned cars. You have to imagine, driving down a dark road in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden seeing six white butts hanging over the guardrail. We all thought it was pretty funny. Another scout camp out at Show Low Lake, Shane and I decided to moon our scoutmaster, (Dave "Super Dave" Skousen). We started away from camp and walked in backwards with our pants down. Dave tried to pretend he didn't notice hoping we'd give up, but we kept on walking. I tripped and Shane fell on top of me... seizing his opportunity, Shane tried to sit on my face bare butt. Later that night, we decided to cook a can of beans for dinner... without opening the can. You only ever need to try that once. Needless to say, we didn't get to eat the beans.
I was a member of the Spanish Club both my freshman and sophomore years; it was a requirement to be eligible to go on the big trip to Mexico. To help raise money to go, students had to work concessions at the various Blue Ridge High sporting events. My mom used to make her home made green chili burritos to sell at the concessions to help raise money also. She makes the best burritos north of the Rio Grande... probably the best south of there too. The Mexico trip was SO much fun, a once in a lifetime experience. All the students that went seemed to get along and I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. We flew into Mexico City and Senor Thompson (our Spanish Teacher) chartered transportation to Patzcuaro. However, there wasn't enough room for everyone to fit in the vehicle chartered so Three of the students (me, JR Whipple and Caleb Rowell) and one chaperon (Dave "super Dave" Skousen) we put on a regular public transit bus. The bus didn't leave until about six or so in the evening and it was a LONG ride to where we were going. We watched Waterworld and two other movies (that I slept through). We got into Patzcuaro at about 3am. From the bus station we took a taxi to the hotel. The taxi driver was true to Mexican form. We spent half the time on the wrong side of the road of going the wrong way on a one way street... of course, at 3am, I guess it didn't really matter. I LOVED the small towns we visited and the sites we saw. We went to Patzcuaro lake and took a boat to an island there. There was a statue of some guy that we got to go up into his fist. I guess this was supposed to be the Mexican version of the Statue of Liberty, but it was a guy and only consisted of a figure from the waist up. Still it was cool to see. The town smelled of fish - EVERYWHERE. It stunk, but I liked it. It smelled like a real Mexican town, poor with nothing to hide... not like a lot of the tourist towns that most people go to.
We also visited the city of Uruapan. It was a bigger city and the hotel we stayed at was amazing. It had two big courtyards and all the rooms were around them. We were usually served eggs and refried beans for breakfast - I love that meal. Uruapan's streets were full of shops and street vendors. It was a little more touristy than Patzcuaro and the fact that this was around La Semana Santa (the holy week - Easter) all the vendors were out in full force. It gave us students several opportunities to practice our Spanish - even though I don't think most did.
On our way back to Mexico City we stopped in a small town to eat. There were a bunch of kids playing soccer in a field and a few of us joined in to play too. It was a lot of fun. I wish we could have played longer. There was also another town where kids were playing with some tops (that you wind with a string and throw to spin). Most of us students bought one and tried it, I never did get any good at it, but it was fun trying to interact with the children in their native language. In one town we stopped we ran into some elderly American tourists, probably from Texas by their accent. I talked to them for a bit and asked them if they know Spanish and how they're liking their trip. They said they didn't know any Spanish but were getting along fine. And they were surprised to discover that if you tell the begging children in the streets "no" in English they understand and will leave you alone.
The final leg of the trip was in Mexico City and to the ruins of Teotihuacan - home of the pyramids of the moon and the sun. Mexico City was HUGE! We went up to the top of the Latin American Tower one night and looked around... there was no end to the city it seemed. We also strolled the park that was built on the site of the largest hospital collapse during the earthquake in Mexico City in 1985. The park was nice - but I remember being told to keep your hand on your wallet. There were artists painting with spray paint, it was the first time I had ever seen anything like it and I wished I had money to get one. We also visited the Zocalo and the Plaza de las Tres Culturas while were in Mexico City.
Teotihuacan was amazing! Our tour guide was great. We were taken around the back of one of the pyramids where he put on a presentation of a type of ritual of the ancient inhabitants. He played a song on a conch shell and did a little singing too. At another pyramid he had us line up and he clapped his hands at different locations in front of the pyramid to demonstrate that the sound of the echo was that of the quetzal bird and he could play the scales of a piano depending on where he stood when he clapped. The pyramid of the sun was enormous!!! Because it was the holy week, the place was packed. Lines of people everywhere! Caleb and I were trying to race to the top of the pyramid and we took off around one of the corded off areas - a bunch of the guards there blew whistles at us, but we kept going anyway. All I really remember about the pyramid of the moon was that it had super steep steps. The whole place we really neat, and I hope to return someday. On our way back to the city from the ruins, we stopped by the Mexico City Temple. Senor Thompson was LDS and said he was stopping there because it was a special place to him and to the Mexican history and culture and that students are welcome to get out and walk the grounds.
Our last day in Mexico City I remember going to a McDonald's. I ordered a Mc Pollo Sandwich and fries. I thought it was SO good to eat "American" food after the week or so in Mexico. Looking back, I can't believe I used to eat, and even liked McDonald's - GAG! I saved my box from my sandwich for years after that, cause it said "Mc Pollo" I thought that was pretty cool.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Fifteenth Year - 1994
Over the past few days I've kept thinking of things I missed in previous years already covered. However, since the first ten posts are a little fuzzy on the chronology anyway - I didn't think it would be such a big deal to back track a bit.
In fourth grade, I had a sleep over at Ryland Shaffrey's - I think it was his birthday party. His dad owned Pat's Place Pizza in Show Low - it was where everyone went for pizza parties after AYSO soccer games - if you wanted the best pizza in town. He lived up past Porter Mountain and to me, I thought they had a huge house. We stayed up almost all night playing Nintendo (Contra, California Games, Excite Bike, all the classics...). He also had a real Galaga Arcade - all you had to do to play was open the front and push a button for credits, no quarters necessary. However, it wasn't all fun that night. They broke out an ouiji board. I never saw one before and didn't know what it was. The other boys there were pretty into it and I figured they were just making it move on their own. Finally I decided to try it. Ben Stiddham and I were using it and it said it wanted to talk to me - that it was my great grandfather. I asked what his name was and it got it right - first and middle name... no way Ben would have known that. Then I asked how he died and he said he was murdered. I was pretty sure that wasn't true and figured whatever was making that thing move, wasn't good - so I didn't get near it the rest of the night, and haven't touched one since.
In fifth grade - or the summer before, Shane and I were out playing on the construction equipment like we usually did. I wasn't feeling up to it much and kept wanting to just go home and lay down. He kept telling me to toughen up and have fun because we didn't get many opportunities to just go play. We ended up playing most the day but by mid afternoon my pain was too much, so I went home to get some rest. When I got home my mom told me I had to do the dishes. I hated doing the dishes... I always had to do the dishes, maybe because I did the best job and was the most efficient at it.... but dishes in our house was a nightmare... hundreds of pots, pans, plates, flatware cups, cups and cups, it seemed like our family would dirty EVERY dish we had pretty much every day - and we didn't own a dishwasher - it was all done by hand. I really was feeling very sick but my mom didn't buy it and said, "if you're well enough to go play, you're well enough to do the dishes." I did the dishes. Right after finishing I laid down on the living room floor huddled in pain. My mom realized by this time something really was wrong and decided to try and diagnose the problem - after a few tests, including asking me if I wanted some mashed potatoes and gravy and fried chicken (my favorite meal) and I turned it down, she figured I must have appendicitis. It was pretty late at night by this time, maybe 9ish, but they called a family physician and we met at his office. I'm not sure how they got a hold of him, or who he was, or why they chose him (we didn't have a family doctor - and I'm pretty sure this wasn't an urgent care or anything) but they took me there for an official diagnosis. Just as we arrived I felt I needed to vomit, I ran to the bathroom as fast as I could hobble and it let loose just as I opened the door. I sprayed the entire bathroom from ceiling to floor with vomit. I have never puked so much, or so hard, in all my life before or since that. The Dr. confirmed the diagnosis and I was sent to the hospital for surgery. I remember being given something to drink to settle my stomach so I wouldn't puke during surgery. After getting the anesthesia the doctor told me I may feel my eyes go crossed and I'll feel sleepy, but I should just count back from 100. I remember thinking, "I want to stay awake, I want to feel them cut me open." I tried to stay awake and fight my eye going crossed, because they did - but, the next thing I knew I was waking up in my recovery room. That next day Shane came to visit. He apologized for making me keep playing. I loved being in the hospital, lots of good attention from the staff and and cable TV! I watched so many episodes of Inspector Gadget - I never wanted to leave.
Sixth grade we got to do some fun trips in my Horizon's class. The best one was going to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ - discovery location of the planet formerly known as Pluto. It was a fun trip. We went in a fairly small group, since it was just us nerds in Horizons, and we got a pretty intimate tour of the place - so I thought, I've since been back, not too long ago, and they give pretty much the same tour now. But at that time, it was a great trip!
Back to the present (1994). I don't remember much about my eighth grade year. I may have blocked most of my memories from that year for a reason, and someday, I may remember them. In P.E. we played a lot of sports outside on the fields: soccer, flag football, softball. I was in the P.E. class with most of the jocks and jerks. It seemed like I would always end up on the "losers" team - not that we always lost, but we just weren't cool - who picked these teams anyway? Well, I played as hard as I worked and I was pretty good at most any sport we did. The jocks and jerks didn't like me being better than them - this was mostly when we played soccer - so they came up with the "FJU Plan." I wont say what the "F" stood for, I'm sure you can figure it out, but the "JU" meant: Jacob Up.... put it together - that was their plan, their strategy to win. I have to admit, it only gave me more desire to win and play harder, and we usually won. Needless to say, I got into, and lost, my share of locker room fights that year.
I also tried my hand at wrestling - basically to fill the void of still no soccer for my age group. I had never done it before (on a mat with a coach - but my siblings and I went at it enough that I had SOME experience). I was never pinned in my year of wrestling, and I don't think I ever even lost a match - but I was never able to bring myself to make wrestling my thing... maybe it was the outfits.
The eighth grade science club trip was AWESOME! For the big, end of the year trip, we went to Fort Stanton Caves, NM. Along the way I think we stopped at some lava flow (lava tubes) and a few other attractions. One of the years we even stopped off at the catwalks my family had been to several times before - can't remember if it was 7th grade or 8th grade that we did that though. At the Fort Stanton Caves, we had to wear a lamp on a hard hat to go in - the cave was not developed like Carlsbad. There was also a lot of crawling to get into several of the places. My lights were some disposable flashlights my dad had me tape to my hard hat. Looking back, I probably should have been embarrassed, but I don't think I really was, it was just a fun trip and I didn't care. I was so proud of myself not being afraid of the caves that I even went all the way to the smallest tube of the cave up to the point that they had it sealed off with bars. It was a tight squeeze (even for skinny little me) but I went. I've always wanted to go back some day, and maybe someday, I will.
On the ride back from the trip, a bunch of us were playing truth or dare in the back of the bus. Christina Metcalf and I were dared to kiss. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but - come on, we were eighth graders. It was night, so we didn't bother trying to hide or anything - just as we went for it Robert Hummer (I think) snapped a picture of us. I don't know why, but I was SO afraid of what he was going to do with that picture. It shouldn't have mattered... but it did. I wish I could go back and undo what I did next, but I can't, so, I'm sorry Robert. I found his camera later that night on the bus and took his film from it - yes, these were the days of real film in a camera, no digital cameras, no "delete." I ruined an entire roll for one stupid picture.
In fourth grade, I had a sleep over at Ryland Shaffrey's - I think it was his birthday party. His dad owned Pat's Place Pizza in Show Low - it was where everyone went for pizza parties after AYSO soccer games - if you wanted the best pizza in town. He lived up past Porter Mountain and to me, I thought they had a huge house. We stayed up almost all night playing Nintendo (Contra, California Games, Excite Bike, all the classics...). He also had a real Galaga Arcade - all you had to do to play was open the front and push a button for credits, no quarters necessary. However, it wasn't all fun that night. They broke out an ouiji board. I never saw one before and didn't know what it was. The other boys there were pretty into it and I figured they were just making it move on their own. Finally I decided to try it. Ben Stiddham and I were using it and it said it wanted to talk to me - that it was my great grandfather. I asked what his name was and it got it right - first and middle name... no way Ben would have known that. Then I asked how he died and he said he was murdered. I was pretty sure that wasn't true and figured whatever was making that thing move, wasn't good - so I didn't get near it the rest of the night, and haven't touched one since.
In fifth grade - or the summer before, Shane and I were out playing on the construction equipment like we usually did. I wasn't feeling up to it much and kept wanting to just go home and lay down. He kept telling me to toughen up and have fun because we didn't get many opportunities to just go play. We ended up playing most the day but by mid afternoon my pain was too much, so I went home to get some rest. When I got home my mom told me I had to do the dishes. I hated doing the dishes... I always had to do the dishes, maybe because I did the best job and was the most efficient at it.... but dishes in our house was a nightmare... hundreds of pots, pans, plates, flatware cups, cups and cups, it seemed like our family would dirty EVERY dish we had pretty much every day - and we didn't own a dishwasher - it was all done by hand. I really was feeling very sick but my mom didn't buy it and said, "if you're well enough to go play, you're well enough to do the dishes." I did the dishes. Right after finishing I laid down on the living room floor huddled in pain. My mom realized by this time something really was wrong and decided to try and diagnose the problem - after a few tests, including asking me if I wanted some mashed potatoes and gravy and fried chicken (my favorite meal) and I turned it down, she figured I must have appendicitis. It was pretty late at night by this time, maybe 9ish, but they called a family physician and we met at his office. I'm not sure how they got a hold of him, or who he was, or why they chose him (we didn't have a family doctor - and I'm pretty sure this wasn't an urgent care or anything) but they took me there for an official diagnosis. Just as we arrived I felt I needed to vomit, I ran to the bathroom as fast as I could hobble and it let loose just as I opened the door. I sprayed the entire bathroom from ceiling to floor with vomit. I have never puked so much, or so hard, in all my life before or since that. The Dr. confirmed the diagnosis and I was sent to the hospital for surgery. I remember being given something to drink to settle my stomach so I wouldn't puke during surgery. After getting the anesthesia the doctor told me I may feel my eyes go crossed and I'll feel sleepy, but I should just count back from 100. I remember thinking, "I want to stay awake, I want to feel them cut me open." I tried to stay awake and fight my eye going crossed, because they did - but, the next thing I knew I was waking up in my recovery room. That next day Shane came to visit. He apologized for making me keep playing. I loved being in the hospital, lots of good attention from the staff and and cable TV! I watched so many episodes of Inspector Gadget - I never wanted to leave.
Sixth grade we got to do some fun trips in my Horizon's class. The best one was going to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ - discovery location of the planet formerly known as Pluto. It was a fun trip. We went in a fairly small group, since it was just us nerds in Horizons, and we got a pretty intimate tour of the place - so I thought, I've since been back, not too long ago, and they give pretty much the same tour now. But at that time, it was a great trip!
Back to the present (1994). I don't remember much about my eighth grade year. I may have blocked most of my memories from that year for a reason, and someday, I may remember them. In P.E. we played a lot of sports outside on the fields: soccer, flag football, softball. I was in the P.E. class with most of the jocks and jerks. It seemed like I would always end up on the "losers" team - not that we always lost, but we just weren't cool - who picked these teams anyway? Well, I played as hard as I worked and I was pretty good at most any sport we did. The jocks and jerks didn't like me being better than them - this was mostly when we played soccer - so they came up with the "FJU Plan." I wont say what the "F" stood for, I'm sure you can figure it out, but the "JU" meant: Jacob Up.... put it together - that was their plan, their strategy to win. I have to admit, it only gave me more desire to win and play harder, and we usually won. Needless to say, I got into, and lost, my share of locker room fights that year.
I also tried my hand at wrestling - basically to fill the void of still no soccer for my age group. I had never done it before (on a mat with a coach - but my siblings and I went at it enough that I had SOME experience). I was never pinned in my year of wrestling, and I don't think I ever even lost a match - but I was never able to bring myself to make wrestling my thing... maybe it was the outfits.
The eighth grade science club trip was AWESOME! For the big, end of the year trip, we went to Fort Stanton Caves, NM. Along the way I think we stopped at some lava flow (lava tubes) and a few other attractions. One of the years we even stopped off at the catwalks my family had been to several times before - can't remember if it was 7th grade or 8th grade that we did that though. At the Fort Stanton Caves, we had to wear a lamp on a hard hat to go in - the cave was not developed like Carlsbad. There was also a lot of crawling to get into several of the places. My lights were some disposable flashlights my dad had me tape to my hard hat. Looking back, I probably should have been embarrassed, but I don't think I really was, it was just a fun trip and I didn't care. I was so proud of myself not being afraid of the caves that I even went all the way to the smallest tube of the cave up to the point that they had it sealed off with bars. It was a tight squeeze (even for skinny little me) but I went. I've always wanted to go back some day, and maybe someday, I will.
On the ride back from the trip, a bunch of us were playing truth or dare in the back of the bus. Christina Metcalf and I were dared to kiss. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but - come on, we were eighth graders. It was night, so we didn't bother trying to hide or anything - just as we went for it Robert Hummer (I think) snapped a picture of us. I don't know why, but I was SO afraid of what he was going to do with that picture. It shouldn't have mattered... but it did. I wish I could go back and undo what I did next, but I can't, so, I'm sorry Robert. I found his camera later that night on the bus and took his film from it - yes, these were the days of real film in a camera, no digital cameras, no "delete." I ruined an entire roll for one stupid picture.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Fourteenth Year - 1993
I'm not sure I remember anything specific about the summer between 6th and 7th grade. I think that was the year we hiked Becker's Butte in the Salt River Canyon with the scouts. Shane and I were the youngest two to go; plus we invited our friend Chad Ashcraft to come too. He wasn't a scout but we all thought it'd be a fun trip anyway. Chad was a slower hiker than the rest of the group. I can't say it was a HARD hike, but it definitely wasn't easy either. We had to hike almost straight down the side of a canyon wall then up the other side of one - no trail.
The rest of the group hiked on ahead, I wanted to do the same; but since he was our friend and we invited him, Shane made me stay back and hike with Chad. We got separated from the rest of the group on our way up the other side. Chad got stabbed in the face with a Spanish Dagger and we fell even further behind the group. It wasn't long before we were lost. Okay, we couldn't get TOO lost, we could see where we needed to get to, it was just a matter of finding our way up the face of that - almost cliff - to get to the butte; and we knew we had to do it before the storm rolled in on us. Well, we never did make it to the top of the butte. A lightning storm came in and we found ourselves running to get back down and up the other side and out of the canyon before it got much worse. Fred Johnson was on the hike with us; he was carrying an external frame backpack. If you don't know Fred, Fred is probably six and a half feet tall - probably taller than that - and was lanky as ever back then. Just imagine him running up the side of a canyon in a lighting storm carrying a pack with two lighting rods sticking up off his back... it was a pretty funny site - I think it was the fastest I had ever seen him move.
Seventh grade; junior high - back to the bottom of the food chain. The best thing about that year were the science club trips. Yes, I was a science club geek. But in all honesty, the "cool kids" that weren't in the science club, really missed out on some good trips - and maybe that's what made them so good - less jerks to deal with. In seventh grade I remember two trips, one was to the Tonto Natural Bridge (the natural bridge I had been to before with my family) and to Carlsbad Caverns, NM.
Mr. Ellison (my third grade teacher's husband) was the either grade science teacher and he and Mr. Thomas (the seventh grade science teacher) always went all out for the big science club trips. They each took turns driving the bus for the trips too, and we would always love it when Big Tom (Mr. Thomas) drove, because we liked to count how many curbs he would hit. Both teachers were NOTORIOUS for really REALLY bad, super lame, jokes - some science related and some, just way lame. On the trips, we would have to fill out assignments that had to be completed before getting to eat each day. It wasn't hard stuff, but it was educational and usually relevant to both science and the particular trip we were on at the time. On the Carlsbad trip, we stopped at White Sands, NM - this is the place one of the space shuttles did an emergency landing in 1982. The sands were so much fun. We would run and jump off the tops of the dunes to see who could get the most hang time. I got burried in the sand, just like being at the beach, without the water.
We had sand EVERYWHERE when we left. Carlsbad Caverns were great too. Inside, we got to go on a special educational tour and were taken into a room where the guide shut off all the lights. It was pitch dark except for a candle lantern that I was chosen to hold. The lantern was similar to the ones that were used when the caves were first discovered and being explored. Then to understand the darkness, the candle was blown out. I remember at that moment thinking, "wow, this is so cool, I guess there's really nothing to be afraid of in caves." From that time on, being in caves didn't bother me. One of the best things about those trips were the hotels - trying to figure out how to sneak out of our rooms at night, without getting caught. Mr. Ellison and Thomas used to put tape on the outsides of the student's doors, if your tape was broken in the morning - you were in big trouble. I guess they mostly didn't want the boys getting in the girls' rooms and getting into other such shenanigans that junior high students could get into. I think our groups were pretty good for the most part, sure we tried to sneak out, and succeeded at times, but even when we did, we never did anything that would have gotten us into trouble (except for the fact that we snuck out).
The Tonto Natural Bridge trip was fun too. I don't remember much about it, other than we got to swim (play) in the water at the bottom of the hike. I'm pretty sure my parents were chaperons on all of these trips. I don't think I minded it that much, since they were never helicopter parents and treated me just like any of the other students.
Check out how high I have those shorts pulled up!
I think seventh grade was also the year I was in a school play. I don't remember what it was called but I know it was the dumbest play ever written. It was about a superhero's lawsuit trial. I don't remember the exact premise, but I know I was the prosecuting attorney. I'm sorry to anyone who had to sit through and actually watch that. Needless to say, the superhero (defense) won the case - it was rigged from the start.
I played football in seventh grade. Yes, I know, big tough me. I was a wide receiver and a free safety. The only reason I played was because there was no AYSO soccer available for my age group at the time and no jr. high team either. I think I was like third string, but I think I did actually get playing time every game. At that age, it wasn't much more than a step up from the playground football we would play in mid school - which we did a LOT of - except now, we got to wear pads, play on grass and sometimes, people actually came to watch us play. I was a scrawny little kid and hated hitting practice. Our team's cheer we used to get fired up was "want some, get some!" I made a T-shirt design with that slogan and a cool football picture on it at my parent's T-shirt shop that I tried to sell - I used to always try to come up with ideas to earn money. I think the design and idea were good, but since it came from me, and I wasn't popular, no one ever bought one. I wore the only one ever made, I think. I wonder what ever happened to it.
Art class was fun. Not because I liked the class, but because we had a deaf student in the class that sat at our table. David Todd. He had a hearing aid that came with a cordless microphone that allowed the teacher or students to talk into so he could hear (since non of us knew sign language and ADA wasn't exactly in full force in our small town. Shane and I sat across from David and had his mic. We used to gently sing Billy Joel's "River of Dreams" into David's mic. Since David was deaf he never knew how loud he was being and he would start joining in singing with us - loudly! He would always get in trouble for it (not big trouble, just told to be quite by the teacher). We thought it was so funny, and it was, and now, I can't listen to that song without thinking of that.
In English class, we read, or were supposed to read (I don't think I ever really finished it) Watership Down. Actually, I'm pretty sure I never read it - but I remember talking about it with my classmates and being interested in reading it... one of these days I will.
The rest of the group hiked on ahead, I wanted to do the same; but since he was our friend and we invited him, Shane made me stay back and hike with Chad. We got separated from the rest of the group on our way up the other side. Chad got stabbed in the face with a Spanish Dagger and we fell even further behind the group. It wasn't long before we were lost. Okay, we couldn't get TOO lost, we could see where we needed to get to, it was just a matter of finding our way up the face of that - almost cliff - to get to the butte; and we knew we had to do it before the storm rolled in on us. Well, we never did make it to the top of the butte. A lightning storm came in and we found ourselves running to get back down and up the other side and out of the canyon before it got much worse. Fred Johnson was on the hike with us; he was carrying an external frame backpack. If you don't know Fred, Fred is probably six and a half feet tall - probably taller than that - and was lanky as ever back then. Just imagine him running up the side of a canyon in a lighting storm carrying a pack with two lighting rods sticking up off his back... it was a pretty funny site - I think it was the fastest I had ever seen him move.Seventh grade; junior high - back to the bottom of the food chain. The best thing about that year were the science club trips. Yes, I was a science club geek. But in all honesty, the "cool kids" that weren't in the science club, really missed out on some good trips - and maybe that's what made them so good - less jerks to deal with. In seventh grade I remember two trips, one was to the Tonto Natural Bridge (the natural bridge I had been to before with my family) and to Carlsbad Caverns, NM.
Mr. Ellison (my third grade teacher's husband) was the either grade science teacher and he and Mr. Thomas (the seventh grade science teacher) always went all out for the big science club trips. They each took turns driving the bus for the trips too, and we would always love it when Big Tom (Mr. Thomas) drove, because we liked to count how many curbs he would hit. Both teachers were NOTORIOUS for really REALLY bad, super lame, jokes - some science related and some, just way lame. On the trips, we would have to fill out assignments that had to be completed before getting to eat each day. It wasn't hard stuff, but it was educational and usually relevant to both science and the particular trip we were on at the time. On the Carlsbad trip, we stopped at White Sands, NM - this is the place one of the space shuttles did an emergency landing in 1982. The sands were so much fun. We would run and jump off the tops of the dunes to see who could get the most hang time. I got burried in the sand, just like being at the beach, without the water.
We had sand EVERYWHERE when we left. Carlsbad Caverns were great too. Inside, we got to go on a special educational tour and were taken into a room where the guide shut off all the lights. It was pitch dark except for a candle lantern that I was chosen to hold. The lantern was similar to the ones that were used when the caves were first discovered and being explored. Then to understand the darkness, the candle was blown out. I remember at that moment thinking, "wow, this is so cool, I guess there's really nothing to be afraid of in caves." From that time on, being in caves didn't bother me. One of the best things about those trips were the hotels - trying to figure out how to sneak out of our rooms at night, without getting caught. Mr. Ellison and Thomas used to put tape on the outsides of the student's doors, if your tape was broken in the morning - you were in big trouble. I guess they mostly didn't want the boys getting in the girls' rooms and getting into other such shenanigans that junior high students could get into. I think our groups were pretty good for the most part, sure we tried to sneak out, and succeeded at times, but even when we did, we never did anything that would have gotten us into trouble (except for the fact that we snuck out).
The Tonto Natural Bridge trip was fun too. I don't remember much about it, other than we got to swim (play) in the water at the bottom of the hike. I'm pretty sure my parents were chaperons on all of these trips. I don't think I minded it that much, since they were never helicopter parents and treated me just like any of the other students.
Check out how high I have those shorts pulled up!
I think seventh grade was also the year I was in a school play. I don't remember what it was called but I know it was the dumbest play ever written. It was about a superhero's lawsuit trial. I don't remember the exact premise, but I know I was the prosecuting attorney. I'm sorry to anyone who had to sit through and actually watch that. Needless to say, the superhero (defense) won the case - it was rigged from the start.
I played football in seventh grade. Yes, I know, big tough me. I was a wide receiver and a free safety. The only reason I played was because there was no AYSO soccer available for my age group at the time and no jr. high team either. I think I was like third string, but I think I did actually get playing time every game. At that age, it wasn't much more than a step up from the playground football we would play in mid school - which we did a LOT of - except now, we got to wear pads, play on grass and sometimes, people actually came to watch us play. I was a scrawny little kid and hated hitting practice. Our team's cheer we used to get fired up was "want some, get some!" I made a T-shirt design with that slogan and a cool football picture on it at my parent's T-shirt shop that I tried to sell - I used to always try to come up with ideas to earn money. I think the design and idea were good, but since it came from me, and I wasn't popular, no one ever bought one. I wore the only one ever made, I think. I wonder what ever happened to it.
Art class was fun. Not because I liked the class, but because we had a deaf student in the class that sat at our table. David Todd. He had a hearing aid that came with a cordless microphone that allowed the teacher or students to talk into so he could hear (since non of us knew sign language and ADA wasn't exactly in full force in our small town. Shane and I sat across from David and had his mic. We used to gently sing Billy Joel's "River of Dreams" into David's mic. Since David was deaf he never knew how loud he was being and he would start joining in singing with us - loudly! He would always get in trouble for it (not big trouble, just told to be quite by the teacher). We thought it was so funny, and it was, and now, I can't listen to that song without thinking of that.
In English class, we read, or were supposed to read (I don't think I ever really finished it) Watership Down. Actually, I'm pretty sure I never read it - but I remember talking about it with my classmates and being interested in reading it... one of these days I will.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
The Thirteenth Year - 1992
Sixth grade. Top of the school food chain again. It was Mrs. Gaden's first year teaching. She was enthusiastic and seemed ready to take on anything and make learning as fun as she could... until she met me and the rest of the boys in the class. She gave us far too much rope and we hung her with it. Students in her class were allowed to bring, and eat, snacks in the classroom. I know it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but for us sixth graders - it was huge. Never before were we allowed such privileges - after that year, it was clear why. A few of the boys brought small coolers to school, packed with Three Musketeers Bars and Crystal Pepsi. Letting children tank up on sugar and caffeine unchecked like that is never a good thing. I hear Mrs. Gaden was a MUCH different teacher after that first year - my apologies to her second year class.
We had our maturation lessons in that class - given by Mrs. Gaden. It wasn't uncomfortable having her talk about what the girls would be going through (some had already started) - I had already heard ALL about ALL of that during my probation and community service hours with the high school kids two years earlier. However, there was something - not right - about having to pass around the feminine products she brought in as a demonstration, I could only hope they didn't actually belong to her... but they most likely did - I never asked.
Some of the boys and I in that class created a comic book. There were several characters - similar in powers and features of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but different. One of the characters I invented was a mutant bull. I can't remember his name but I still have the original copy of the first book we made... somewhere. We used to talk about the characters being "buff"... leave it up to Mrs. Gaden to ruin that word for me forever - there's just something about HER trying to explain to us sixth grade boys that "buff" didn't mean what we thought it meant. Although we knew buff could mean naked, you'd have to be an idiot to mix the two definitions up... like, gay and "gay", for instance.
Robbie Westover was in that class with me. He and I ended up doing quite a bit together that summer. Every sleepover included us going through an entire bag of David Sunflower Seeds each... not the original salt flavor, oh no. We went with BBQ, Salsa and Nacho. I'm surprised I don't have some sort of mouth cancer from how many seeds I ate that summer. We played a LOT of Monopoly during those sleepovers too - yes, we were wild ones. South of the inlet to Show Low lake there's kind of a canyon. It has steep walls made of large boulders that form huge cracks, tunnels and shallow "caves" (for lack of a better word). Robbie and I made several forts in those cliffs. To this day, there are few things that are more fun to me than climbing around big rocks.
As usual, I did my share of work too. That T-shirt shop my parents owned (co-owned with my aunt and uncle - Jim and Tammy) kept me busy pretty much whenever I wasn't working for my grandpa doing construction - so really, the moments I had to play were precious, and I cherished them. But work was never that bad. To this day, I can't think of a better abdominal work out than printing thousands of T-shirts or pellons (sample mailer prints). I don't remember really getting paid at that age, but I'm sure my parents compensated me (and my siblings) for the work done - usually in the way of day trips, or just being allowed to live at home; something not to be taken for granted.
Ah, yes, the day trips. We usually took them with Jim and Tammy's family. We went to Payson Zoo (Payson, AZ) - where, apparently the lion that roared at the beginning of the MGM movies, spent the last of his days - or so they said. I think the zoo keeper also said something about one of the bears there being famous for something. You have to imagine, this is no ordinary zoo... any one who has been through Payson, AZ should be clued in right there. This is no San Diego Zoo, or Disney's Wild Kingdom Resort. No, this was basically some hillbilly's back yard. Literally. I think most of the animals were in make shift dog kennels. The animal I remember the most was the baboon - the rawest reddest butt I have ever seen.
Another trip we went to some natural arch somewhere in AZ - I think it was in AZ. There was a short hike to go see it, with some water along the way. I later went back in seventh grade (I think) as part of a field trip with the science club.
More than once, our family went (with the Borregos) to the San Fransisco Hot Springs in New Mexico. Along the way we always stopped at the ghost town of Mogollon, NM and the Catwalk hike. The ghost town was an old mining town, although I don't remember what it used to mine. I loved looking through the old abandoned houses and buildings for treasures (junk). The road to the ghost town seemed so scary when I was younger. I know it wasn't as bad as I remember (because I've been back several times) but I remember our first trip there, I was certain we were going to go off the road and down the sheer 100 foot drop. Our old copper Dodge van (seen in previous posts) seemed to be about two feet too wide to be on the old winding mountain road. However, we always made it just fine. There was a "town" (a few houses and a "museum") just down from the ghost town. I remember wondering why the heck those few people still lived there, and HOW they lived there. I wish I had pictures of the place, it was like going back in time 50 years - 50 years from then, 75 years from now. The Catwalk hike was on the other side of the mountain from the ghost town... I think. It wasn't too far. The hike followed a stream upstream and much of the trail was old catwalk scaffolding that was used to service the pipes that brought water to the mines (I think - I never really bothered to read the signs that explained it). Regardless, the hike was fun and we always liked to play in the big waterfall at the end of the hike - although I was usually too afraid to actually swim up to it, since I couldn't swim. The hot springs were always my favorite. There was a small river that flowed through a canyon; along the river were natural hot springs. People had dug out and made small pools where the hot water percolated up - it was jacuzzi hot while the river was FREEZING cold. Up stream, away from where we would camp, was a huge hot spring. It was probably 30 feet in diameter and one edge of it was against a cliff. The water was bathtub warm - perfect for skinny dipping, which several people did, but I don't think I ever did... not in the big one anyway. There were tiny fish that would nibble on any open sore too... I liked it, they tickled. That was a fun place to go, and we went several times, including a family trip with my great grandparents (my grandpa wouldn't go in the river so my dad and Jimmy carried him across). That was the same trip Nephi and I fashioned fishing spears out of a tent pole and speared us some carp... we didn't know back then you're not supposed to eat carp - and no one told us, they sat back and let us find out why on our own; which we did - the hard way. I later made a trip back there for a Homecoming date my junior year, I think. It was fun - but again, no skinny dipping.
Some day trips were not quite as fun - like the Keneshba (or however you spell/say that) ruins in the heart of the booming metropolis of Globe, Arizona - Google that city sometime if you're bored. I don't remember much about them, but I know we went once. My granny Borrego (mom's mom) had (has) a house there in Globe. I used to love staying there and listening to the trains rumble by and blow their horns. The house is just a few hundred feet from the tracks so the trains were super loud. We had no trains in my hometown - so getting to see and hear trains like this was a treat. One time, my brothers and I went down to put pennies on the track so a train would smash them, but I hurried and took them off just as a train was coming because I thought the pennies would cause the train to derail. To this day, I still have never gotten a penny smashed on by a train.
One time, my dad took me and my brothers on a trip somewhere, we were probably on a T-shirt delivery, and we stopped by some caves. My dad LOVED spelunking, but I was always a little claustrophobic - okay I was TERRIFIED of caves, I always thought I was going to die in one. My dad never FORCED me to go in them, but I always felt a little obligated to, and I think part of me wanted to just so I wouldn't be afraid anymore - it was a pride thing maybe, I didn't want to have that fear. In fact, more than once I remember just stopping while driving with my dad to "check out" some roadside cave. We even stopped while going through the Salt River Canyon one time to look in the caves across from the Becker's Butte lookout. My dad always seemed so adventurous. He was never one for fishing though. He took us fishing - once. I think for this very reason, that one day I could blog about it. He packed up me and my brothers once after working with him all day. We went down to some store and bought a few cheap children's fishing poles. Then we went to Show Low lake and started fishing. Us boys were not sure what was going on but we were enjoying it. Part way through fishing I remember my dad saying, "well, now you boys can never say I never took you fishing; and I'll probably never take you again." And he hasn't really. I have fished two times with him since then, but he didn't "take me," I think Bret was actually the instigator. We didn't catch a single fish that day, but I was always glad he took us. My dad was great at doing small things like that - even if it was just going to dairy queen to buy us all the cheapest treat they had; Dilly Bars. I never liked them that much, but I wouldn't ever turn down the offer to have one!
My brothers and I didn't always get along... in fact, we RARELY got along - when we were younger. One time I remember being at the Show Low park with my family and Nephi and I were fighting about, who-knows-what, and so my dad made us sit in time out just outside the racquetball courts. We kept arguing and finally my dad told us to "just kill each other, and get it over with." I thought he was serious so I picked up a rock (not a big one) and hurled it at Nephi's head. He started bleeding. I don't remember much what happened after that, but I'm sure I got into more trouble.
Growing up, we never had much money. My friend Cameron, who lived just around the corner, always had buckets of pennies. He and I would gather hundreds and hundreds of pennies and spend hours counting and rolling them so we could walk to Ace Hardware store to buy candy. I'm pretty sure the workers there hated us whenever we came.
The main road that went through town was between Shane's house and mine - we were further separated by a huge field on either side of the road. We crossed it several times going back and forth between each others houses. One crossing I will never forget. Just after I crossed the road and started through the Ace Hardware parking lot I heard a loud crash - then a continuous honking noise. I looked back to see an old station wagon and a van that had just collided. The van was smashed up in the middle of the road and the station wagon was slowly rolling off the road into the ditch - with its driver unconsciously laying on the steering wheel (and horn) of his car. I don't know why the situation scared me so bad but it did. And I ran the entire way home, not looking back again.
We had our maturation lessons in that class - given by Mrs. Gaden. It wasn't uncomfortable having her talk about what the girls would be going through (some had already started) - I had already heard ALL about ALL of that during my probation and community service hours with the high school kids two years earlier. However, there was something - not right - about having to pass around the feminine products she brought in as a demonstration, I could only hope they didn't actually belong to her... but they most likely did - I never asked.
Some of the boys and I in that class created a comic book. There were several characters - similar in powers and features of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but different. One of the characters I invented was a mutant bull. I can't remember his name but I still have the original copy of the first book we made... somewhere. We used to talk about the characters being "buff"... leave it up to Mrs. Gaden to ruin that word for me forever - there's just something about HER trying to explain to us sixth grade boys that "buff" didn't mean what we thought it meant. Although we knew buff could mean naked, you'd have to be an idiot to mix the two definitions up... like, gay and "gay", for instance.
Robbie Westover was in that class with me. He and I ended up doing quite a bit together that summer. Every sleepover included us going through an entire bag of David Sunflower Seeds each... not the original salt flavor, oh no. We went with BBQ, Salsa and Nacho. I'm surprised I don't have some sort of mouth cancer from how many seeds I ate that summer. We played a LOT of Monopoly during those sleepovers too - yes, we were wild ones. South of the inlet to Show Low lake there's kind of a canyon. It has steep walls made of large boulders that form huge cracks, tunnels and shallow "caves" (for lack of a better word). Robbie and I made several forts in those cliffs. To this day, there are few things that are more fun to me than climbing around big rocks.
As usual, I did my share of work too. That T-shirt shop my parents owned (co-owned with my aunt and uncle - Jim and Tammy) kept me busy pretty much whenever I wasn't working for my grandpa doing construction - so really, the moments I had to play were precious, and I cherished them. But work was never that bad. To this day, I can't think of a better abdominal work out than printing thousands of T-shirts or pellons (sample mailer prints). I don't remember really getting paid at that age, but I'm sure my parents compensated me (and my siblings) for the work done - usually in the way of day trips, or just being allowed to live at home; something not to be taken for granted.
Ah, yes, the day trips. We usually took them with Jim and Tammy's family. We went to Payson Zoo (Payson, AZ) - where, apparently the lion that roared at the beginning of the MGM movies, spent the last of his days - or so they said. I think the zoo keeper also said something about one of the bears there being famous for something. You have to imagine, this is no ordinary zoo... any one who has been through Payson, AZ should be clued in right there. This is no San Diego Zoo, or Disney's Wild Kingdom Resort. No, this was basically some hillbilly's back yard. Literally. I think most of the animals were in make shift dog kennels. The animal I remember the most was the baboon - the rawest reddest butt I have ever seen.
Another trip we went to some natural arch somewhere in AZ - I think it was in AZ. There was a short hike to go see it, with some water along the way. I later went back in seventh grade (I think) as part of a field trip with the science club.
More than once, our family went (with the Borregos) to the San Fransisco Hot Springs in New Mexico. Along the way we always stopped at the ghost town of Mogollon, NM and the Catwalk hike. The ghost town was an old mining town, although I don't remember what it used to mine. I loved looking through the old abandoned houses and buildings for treasures (junk). The road to the ghost town seemed so scary when I was younger. I know it wasn't as bad as I remember (because I've been back several times) but I remember our first trip there, I was certain we were going to go off the road and down the sheer 100 foot drop. Our old copper Dodge van (seen in previous posts) seemed to be about two feet too wide to be on the old winding mountain road. However, we always made it just fine. There was a "town" (a few houses and a "museum") just down from the ghost town. I remember wondering why the heck those few people still lived there, and HOW they lived there. I wish I had pictures of the place, it was like going back in time 50 years - 50 years from then, 75 years from now. The Catwalk hike was on the other side of the mountain from the ghost town... I think. It wasn't too far. The hike followed a stream upstream and much of the trail was old catwalk scaffolding that was used to service the pipes that brought water to the mines (I think - I never really bothered to read the signs that explained it). Regardless, the hike was fun and we always liked to play in the big waterfall at the end of the hike - although I was usually too afraid to actually swim up to it, since I couldn't swim. The hot springs were always my favorite. There was a small river that flowed through a canyon; along the river were natural hot springs. People had dug out and made small pools where the hot water percolated up - it was jacuzzi hot while the river was FREEZING cold. Up stream, away from where we would camp, was a huge hot spring. It was probably 30 feet in diameter and one edge of it was against a cliff. The water was bathtub warm - perfect for skinny dipping, which several people did, but I don't think I ever did... not in the big one anyway. There were tiny fish that would nibble on any open sore too... I liked it, they tickled. That was a fun place to go, and we went several times, including a family trip with my great grandparents (my grandpa wouldn't go in the river so my dad and Jimmy carried him across). That was the same trip Nephi and I fashioned fishing spears out of a tent pole and speared us some carp... we didn't know back then you're not supposed to eat carp - and no one told us, they sat back and let us find out why on our own; which we did - the hard way. I later made a trip back there for a Homecoming date my junior year, I think. It was fun - but again, no skinny dipping.
Some day trips were not quite as fun - like the Keneshba (or however you spell/say that) ruins in the heart of the booming metropolis of Globe, Arizona - Google that city sometime if you're bored. I don't remember much about them, but I know we went once. My granny Borrego (mom's mom) had (has) a house there in Globe. I used to love staying there and listening to the trains rumble by and blow their horns. The house is just a few hundred feet from the tracks so the trains were super loud. We had no trains in my hometown - so getting to see and hear trains like this was a treat. One time, my brothers and I went down to put pennies on the track so a train would smash them, but I hurried and took them off just as a train was coming because I thought the pennies would cause the train to derail. To this day, I still have never gotten a penny smashed on by a train.
One time, my dad took me and my brothers on a trip somewhere, we were probably on a T-shirt delivery, and we stopped by some caves. My dad LOVED spelunking, but I was always a little claustrophobic - okay I was TERRIFIED of caves, I always thought I was going to die in one. My dad never FORCED me to go in them, but I always felt a little obligated to, and I think part of me wanted to just so I wouldn't be afraid anymore - it was a pride thing maybe, I didn't want to have that fear. In fact, more than once I remember just stopping while driving with my dad to "check out" some roadside cave. We even stopped while going through the Salt River Canyon one time to look in the caves across from the Becker's Butte lookout. My dad always seemed so adventurous. He was never one for fishing though. He took us fishing - once. I think for this very reason, that one day I could blog about it. He packed up me and my brothers once after working with him all day. We went down to some store and bought a few cheap children's fishing poles. Then we went to Show Low lake and started fishing. Us boys were not sure what was going on but we were enjoying it. Part way through fishing I remember my dad saying, "well, now you boys can never say I never took you fishing; and I'll probably never take you again." And he hasn't really. I have fished two times with him since then, but he didn't "take me," I think Bret was actually the instigator. We didn't catch a single fish that day, but I was always glad he took us. My dad was great at doing small things like that - even if it was just going to dairy queen to buy us all the cheapest treat they had; Dilly Bars. I never liked them that much, but I wouldn't ever turn down the offer to have one!
My brothers and I didn't always get along... in fact, we RARELY got along - when we were younger. One time I remember being at the Show Low park with my family and Nephi and I were fighting about, who-knows-what, and so my dad made us sit in time out just outside the racquetball courts. We kept arguing and finally my dad told us to "just kill each other, and get it over with." I thought he was serious so I picked up a rock (not a big one) and hurled it at Nephi's head. He started bleeding. I don't remember much what happened after that, but I'm sure I got into more trouble.
Growing up, we never had much money. My friend Cameron, who lived just around the corner, always had buckets of pennies. He and I would gather hundreds and hundreds of pennies and spend hours counting and rolling them so we could walk to Ace Hardware store to buy candy. I'm pretty sure the workers there hated us whenever we came.
The main road that went through town was between Shane's house and mine - we were further separated by a huge field on either side of the road. We crossed it several times going back and forth between each others houses. One crossing I will never forget. Just after I crossed the road and started through the Ace Hardware parking lot I heard a loud crash - then a continuous honking noise. I looked back to see an old station wagon and a van that had just collided. The van was smashed up in the middle of the road and the station wagon was slowly rolling off the road into the ditch - with its driver unconsciously laying on the steering wheel (and horn) of his car. I don't know why the situation scared me so bad but it did. And I ran the entire way home, not looking back again.
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