Train Of Thought-y Stuffs: Childhood Story

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AC Grayling called, he said your hair is epic, dude.

In need to shake off the rust from my unplanned blog break. Since last weeks Black Monday my brain has been racing so much that, once again, my thoughts do not belong to myself so anything like writing for pleasure, much less this blog, or even thinking (or not thinking) for pleasure is a far away pipe dream. Still, I ain't no quitter and I am gonna do this atheist blogging thang I tell ya. You know what I always say, (even if the post and the writing is shitty) write, then publish, let the chips fall where ever they randomly fall and chalk it up to experience.

I wuz gonna write about the brainiacs that just got the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine. john and Shinya will share the million gazillion dollar prize because they found that any cell in the body can be reprogrammed, coaxed, into being a different type of cell in the body. Super basically, a damaged cell can be changed into a not damaged or broken cell, lung to heart, skin to whatevah, bla bla bla...

There is a lot of atheist-y stuffs to comment on like you crazy scientists are playing the role of God (even tho they are not), God gave you cancer for a reason so to find a cure goes against God's ultimate plan (the plan that mere humans cannot ever understand), we shouldn't use government money to fund anti-Christian-really evil science stuffs and, there is always an and, it reminded me of a team leader type in the Buddhism I was practicing years ago, he was cloning genes in 89' and I told him "that's God's work (I really said that)."Fark that noize...now.

The team leader type, Sam, lived in Montgomery Village (Santa Rosa) and that was sooooo (one of ) my stomping grounds growing up in the 80's.

I would say Howarth Park is comparable to fairy Tale town in Sac Town.

Right next to (or is it within) Montgomery Village is Howarth Park. For people living in Sacramento it would be like going to a sick arse forest- park, with hella redwoods, that is totally nestled in your neighborhood the same way Land Park is so totally right here. Really, from where I lived it was a 15-20 minute bike ride and once you got offa the main road you would be in a redwood park with hella trails and even a lake (or three).

In the summer evenings my dad would take myself, my bro and my cousins to watch this particular company softball team play softball under the lights. The air was heavy but the ice cream was cold (yes, even I ate ice cream back then). My dad was so cheap he would never buy us tickets to see our team  so we sat way out in left field on the free bleachers. Of course I was the smallest and it was hard for me to see over the fence. I liked it better when the team place in the park next to our house-it was free and even lil' young me could see all the action.

This team was so sick and besides that...they were minorities. We lived in white-ville so anything with minorities participating was pretty exciting. There were some black dudes (they all played the outfield), a bunch of Mexicans, I think a Guamanian dude as the catcher and the shortstop (the best player on the field) was Filipino. My brother, cousins and I would scream so loud and jump up and down when kuya (brother in Filipino) turned double plays against the super huge white men.

This is the lake where I saw the skinny dippers.

[I think the reason we started to watch the games at Howarth Park instead of the fields right next to our house, where it was for free, was because some huge drunk white men were 1. intentionally throwing the softball at me and hitting me when they were "warming up", or 2. they were too drunk to catch the ball and it inadvertently hit me a couple of times. It didn't matter, my dad called them out (the whole team) and told them to stop hitting me or he would kick their asses (all of them). I remember getting hit one time and my dad called bullshit and the whole team lined up in front of me on the ground (my cousins and bro around me) with my dad in between the two groups. They yelled back and forth "you better not be doing this on purpose...why don't you guys move somewhere else" kinda stuffs. Just like so many times in my childhood I was totally scared (of my dad)  because he was fuckin' pissed. Eventually the whole team of super huge drunk white men playing company softball moved a ways away to warm up and bystanders came up to my dad thanking him and siding with him. I was so fuckin' scared for those drunk huge white dudes that night. When we got home my mom eventually found out that dad threatened to kick everyone's asses and they argued, the house shook and she made him promise to not go back to that park anymore because "the police might be waiting." After that we started watching the games across town where you had to pay to get in (now that I think about it, why would you have to pay. I think my dad just said that because if we went to close, they might recognize us-pretty much the only Filipino people in town) and the teams warmed up far away.]

I Googled "drunk company softball" for this one.

One night under the heavy summer air while the mosquitoes bombarded the lights, a cyclist got in a huge wreck and his ear was hanging off his head and we couldn't stop staring. we were, like, ten-ish.

On the same field, years later, the Sizzler I worked at challenged the across town Sizzler to some softball. Their team was preppy and all dudes while our team had hotties and dudes with feathered hair that drove Camero's. (Even tho I was only 16) We had a keg in out dugout and I remember being pissed because we lost. "This must be what the Bad News Bears felt like when they lost in the first movie," I said. That was probably the last time I played softball (aprox 30 years ago).

Across the street from Howarth Park was the movie theaters. It was rundown and super crappy. It was also where I saw the original Star Wars for the first time.

This is the part of the park where I played with a baby for the first time...and liked it. 

Howarth Park is just one park of (I think three) that make up Annedel State Park. My mom used to have company picnics on the other side of the park at a place called Spring Lake. I really like going there as a kid because the water was warm, much much warmer than the Russian River (the other swimming spot we used to go to). Just like now, back in those days, I got cold easily. I remember one time I was playing with one of my moms co-workers, like, one year old baby. Even tho I come from a big family, I recall that it was the first time I thought babies were the coolest thing in the world. He came from big white people and his nick name was Moose because he was unusually large for a one year old. Moose is probably 7ft tall and aprox 33 years old right now.

One of the many forks in the road.

The other third of the Annedal State Park I didn't get to enjoy until I was a teenager. A couple of things happened 1. mountain bikes were invented and 2. I started smoking teh weeds. The cross country team would practice there and sometimes have meets there. I would always pretend like I got lost on a trail and smoke some weed on a high ledge and watch the team go by. "Hey where did you go," they would ask. "Fuck man, are you supposed to go left or right at the fork." It worked every time.

For a while this dude Matt and I would borrow his dads mountain bikes and the dad would drive us to the park (because Matt was a nerd and if he had to ride bikes to the park he would have been spent by the time hwe got there) to  ride for an hour or so. Matt was, like, a grade or two younger than I and we connected because he played drums and like the Police and so did I. He would call, like, every week and we would make plans. We never hung out at school tho (I was one of the cool kids and he was awkward and shy), but a couple of times a month we would "hook up" and go ride mountain bikes in our lycra shorts, of course I wouldn't ever wear a shirt and Matt always let me go on the trails before  him (I guess because I was older). Now that I look back, Matt was kinda gay, but I didn't know or care what that was back then. I just wanted to ride bike in the redwoods. I have a reoccurring dream where I'm lost on those trails, but I'm not pretending lost...I'm lost.

If you went up a certain trail then you would end up at a lake on top of a mountain. One time we saw an outta shape (well, at least not shapely) woman and her two male friends skinny dip in the lake. Weird to look back on that now. There wuz two bro dudes hanging out, three adults that looked like English teachers all roll up to the same spot on the lake, the adults take off their clothes and go swimming together-naked, while me and my friend (both teenagers) stumbled over words trying to make sentences and watched. Doesn't seem like that situation would even happen right now.

Matt started to weird me out and I was older than him and I started to smoke pot anyways so I never returned his calls after a certain amount of time. By that time I have a Volkswagen van and I learned how to cut school. We also graduated from teh weeds to acid. Geez, where do I begin with this one.

My van was orange, early mid 70's and the super lame automatic passenger (not camping) style.

One time we cut school, took acid and went to the part of the park near Spring Lake. The way that the sun reflected offa the water looked like diamonds and we sat there with our horrible DIY new wave bi-level hair cuts and smoked cloves and pot. I smoke Djarmun's back then. The ones with the think brown paper. The ones that would last hella long-n-shit.

Fuck snakes.

I was in love with my best friend Chelsea with her red hair, green eyes and all, but she was my cousins girlfriend and my cousin was also my best fiend. Last time I saw her was at Reggae on the River in the early 90's when you used to be able to drive right up to the concert, park and pitch your tent there (now you halfta walk from parking to camping, then to the concert). So anyways, we were tripping on acid and a snake wiggled across her path and she screamed. I laughed because there was this little snake and huge Chelsea jumping up and down scared of the little snake. We walked past it and continued our trip.

Our beer of choice back then was Mickeys big mouth's. It is also the beer I was drinking when I got my dui.

One night we were with R.Y.O. and some of their downtown friends (that's how we got beer) and this dude that started seeing my hottie friend, Liz, punched me in the face and broke my prescription Ray Bans. I got up and Liz jumped in front of us "no, no, it was just an accident," she said to me. I replied, "like it was an accident when he raped that girl." Everyone got silent and looked at us. I stood my ground ready and Liz started crying because she knew she was not powerful enuff to stop me or him. He was shuffling his feet, his white man face turned red and as he stomped off he said, "nothing has been proven." I was gonna kick his ass that day. Other than that, that is the closest I have ever been to a fight (1).

One time my friend Mark and my cousin cut school and took my van to Annedal St. Park and dropped acid. ( I will always remember this shit...) That was the day we were walking shoulder to shoulder on a small trail and a gremlin on a mountain bike rode  between us without touching any of us and as he passed by he said, "Wzzzzyyyy." We didn't really think anything of it. We stopped to smoke a clove and then started waking again. After a mile or so of brilliant conversation we cicrled back and returned to the previous spot and saw the clove that I left there. It was a quarter from done when I left it there and burnt itself out on this log leaving ash that looked exactly as if the physical cigarette was still there. I was amazed by this and kept saying, "This is reality! This is reality!" Mark and my cousin just grinned from ear to ear.

We got back to the van and put Metalica Kill 'Em All on my boom box. Still to this day, that is the hardest, hardest album ever. On the way back it started to rain while it was still sunny. At the stop light near Stanroys music shop we looked up through the huge front windshield of the van and wuz...amazed.

Oh and one more thing...there is no God. UR welcome.

The album that changed everything...everything. 

* No editing, no worries, mate. Chalk it up...

(1) No one ever wants to mess with the 5.2 117lb Asian dude. I think they think that I know martial arts (because I do, but they don't really know that)