Tag: dreamer

#6 The Fun:

As a child we attended rendezvous. This is a reenactment of the pre 1840s.  We slept in a tepee, carried knifes, shot black powder rifles and cannons! Needless to say this shit was fun as hell. i learned to make a fire from flint and steel, weave baskets, sew (even if I’m not that good at it) and use common sense.

the kids in my “neighborhood” and myself all had access to quads or four wheelers, go karts, dune buggies, trucks and horses. Things got broken… but we fixed them!

I learned to drive a go kart about the age of 8 followed by quads then trucks.

We stated out until the sun went down. After dark we played man hunt in the front yard.

I learned to shoot a bow and arrow, throw knives and tomahawks and even make a potato cannon.

One summer me and my brothers decided to dig a big ass hole, like a swimming pool but it was more like a mud hole, we even made a slide. It stayed about two summers before our dad filled it in.

We had a fort in the back yard and a few self-made tree houses in the neighbor’s woods.

Summers were hot so we would swim in just about anything. Ponds, rock pits, stock tanks etc. We would use canoes homemade rafts and borrowed boats… image 5 kids carrying a boat down a dirt road on foot in 100 degree weather.

I’m not sure how we didn’t get sick or lose and fingers but we all made out okay all things considered.

We were young and wild. We learned through action and play.

#3 The Animals:

nature animal agriculture cow
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We had a pet dog. The rule was “It’s only a pet if you don’t intend to eat it”. With that being said we also had chickens, two turkeys, four rabbits, a cow, a snake (for a short time) and a pig. At different times the numbers changed a bit.

Well in my area we had a “large cat sanctuary” and a “wild cat sanctuary”. Then a few dumb asses who had some pets they should. And few crazy mother fucker who had some pets and did good.

Any way the large cat sanctuary had several lions. At night you could hear them in all their glory. On calm warm summer nights you could feel the vibrations in the air from their calls. If a farmer had a horse die you had two options; rent a backhoe and bury it or donate it to the cats for food. The cats were the cheaper option. Now the wild cat sanctuary had smaller wild cats. Some bob cats, a lynx and a few others I can’t remember the names. I do remember my dad taking us to seeing them and getting to play with them. They are so cute but you can feel the power they have when playing. Killers for sure.

Now for the dumb ass…. some guy had a pet cougar… yeah… so any way rumor has it he couldn’t afford to feed him right and the cougar got restless and broke out, they tried to catch him but it’s a cougar VS a dumb ass. So the cougar just roamed around in the woods and would eat a cow from time to time. Anyway we never went in the woods at night. The cougar was never captured.

A few roads over a friend introduced me to a guy with a black bear. the bear was “trained” he knew some cool tricks and the bear was ridiculously smart and regularly got out of the containment, but knew where the easy food was so never went far (because he was spoiled).

The lizard guy was just that, a guy with a lot of lizards of different types and some really nice containment.

Wild hogs are assholes. Growing up I just assumed all snakes are poisonous because MOST are here. And the spiders…. omg. They are everywhere in every color and size. I hate spiders! The reasoning I have for hating them the most is… if a snake bites you, you know. If a spider bites you… your arm turns black THEN you know. They are sneaky.

#2 The Tech:

photo of green data matrix
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We had no cable or wifi. Satellite was too expensive and required cutting down trees. We had a land line and AOL dial up.  The tv had an antenna on the side of the house that occasionally needed to be adjusted because of the wind.

I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was 13 and I remember it was basically a go phone. No games app or anything like that. It made calls and I could text. It was plastic and I swear it was indestructible. I was almost the only one of my friends that had a cell at the time because I had a job and needed to call for a ride.

We did not have any game systems until later when I got an original Atari for some yard work I had done for a neighbor. Sometimes my brother would bring his game boy or play station with him when he came to visit but that wasn’t a regular form of entertainment.

I had a basic desk top computer that I ran with dial up and free AOL trial CD’s. And yes I gamed for years like that. You don’t know LAG until you raid a dungeon on a free dial up trial… Lime wire was the shit. Don’t know it? Google it! And don’t forget the walk man mp3 player with anti-skip. Because you know…. dirt roads.

#1 The New Location:

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I was raised in a small town in east Texas from about the age of 5 or 6. I lived there until I was 22ish. Actually I was in an unincorporated community outside of a small town in east Texas. We had no town curfew, no police and lots of wild animals. The county sheriff came out if 911 was called but did not patrol our area otherwise. We had running water and a volunteer fire department. All sewer was in the form of a septic system and gas was in a large tank that got filled as needed. We had deer, hogs, snakes, spiders (omg the spiders), mosquitoes, wild dogs, a cougar (yes for real), lions, bobcats, the lizard man, and a bear. I know you’re thinking “WTF is going on in Texas”?
We didn’t have any real rivers but we had rock pits, ponds and a lake and a half of lake. The half a lake had alligators so we didn’t really swim in it, mostly camping, drinking and mudding with trucks and quads. Most of the rock pits have undertows so we stayed close to the edge, side note fuck snakes they swim. The ponds are just ponds nothing crazy just some cow shit. The lake was okay but it was the farthest from the house and had mosquito issues.
Most of the land was flat. Like super flat, and what wasn’t farm land was heavy woods, so about 50/50.
The sun was and still is a bitch. One summer we hit 112F… actual temp NOT a heat index.

#0 The Big Bang

I was thinking today about my life. I commonly make the joke that I was born in a time warp. However it’s actually accurate. Lets begin.

My parents had some sexy time a while back. They had the big bang and nine months later here I am.

I was born in Utah. First home a house in West Jordan. Cemetery on 3 sides and a road and a creek on the other, adorned with a crack house. Nice quiet house with a mostly private road. House had a basement that was creepy as hell. Two dogs Hans and Gretchen. Both German shepherds Hans was white though and the city took him for biting a man. I remember my first day of school or preschool, I cried, don’t remember any other days. Some family moved in with us. We all later moved.

The second house in Fountain Green Utah. Population at that time 200. Up in a valley. We had snow gates on the roads and the church owned snowmobiles.. New construction home 35 acres of land, very nice. Cold winters. We got to ride quads and snowmobiles without adult supervision, had to be home by dark because of badgers and mountain lions. In the winter a lion would sleep in the window well of my room. I had a vivid imagination and didn’t mind playing alone even though I had my sister and nephews around. We had one dog Gretchen. Hans bit a guy at the previous house and was taken by the city. We also had a cow, two pigs, some chickens, asshole geese and a few Texas longhorns that grazed the back field. The field was ours the longhorn belonged to the neighbor. And a tree where bald eagles reared their young.

Divorce:

House 3: East Texas, age about 5 or 6. Now that I’m older memories make more sense.