Go West, Young Man Pt.1

After our time and numerous adventures in Springfield, Missouri, my father took a job at a drug rehab center north of Phoenix, Arizona. The facility was set up as a ranch where the clients, the workers, and the workers' families lived.

My parents decided we would camp our way out west to New River, Arizona. I can still recall some of the stops along the way. Some of the campsites were a bit more kept up than others. One of my memories includes camping in Colorado. On our way through, we ended up at Wolf Creek Pass. If my memory is correct, it was the end of June and the beginning of July when we stopped there. I remember there was still snow on the ground, and we ended up having a snowball fight. If memory serves me correctly, I believe I ended up with a pair of pants full of snow. Of course, there was no way I deserved it.

We then drove through New Mexico. It was here that some of our vehicle misfortunes came into play. At that time, the air conditioner stopped working in the van, and my brother, Joe, was getting extremely sick. Just imagine no air conditioning and lots of puke… Oh, how it made for a lovely introduction to the Southwest. Unbeknownst to us, the summer of 1988 would eclipse the heat record with the number of days that stayed above one hundred degrees in the Phoenix area.

 Arizona was not an easy time for me or anyone in the family. There were many promises given to my parents by the people who ran the program, but what we ended up with was not the same. This made it tricky because we simply couldn't just up and leave. We were supposed to have an apartment ready when we arrived at the ranch. Instead, we ended up in a 40-foot fifth wheel with all the windows busted out. Someone from the ranch had 'fixed' the windows by taping plastic over the windows. My parents slept in the one bed available. My brother and I slept on a platform while my sister slept on a couch. The joke regarding the place was that you could go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet, brush your teeth, and wash your feet. And that was if you were a kid! Yeah, it was small. You went outside to change your mind. 

As kids, we adapted and made the most of the situation. Often, you would find my brother Joe playing under the trailer, one of the only places where a person could get out of the sun besides going indoors. But who wanted to do that, seeing as there was no air conditioning? Who knows where Erika would be? She was known to take off and walk in the desert. Me, on the other hand, well, let's just say I had a really big 'sandbox' that I could play in.

One of the first lessons I learned while out there was that 'you cannot walk in your bare feet.' I loved going without socks or shoes but quickly learned not to because of little thorns known as goat heads. They looked like they were from a horror movie. Walking across the ground barefoot, attempting to miss the thorns, was like walking blindly through a minefield.

Of course, having learned quickly that you should always have some type of footwear on, you might find me with some sticks battling it out with the unseen forces attacking my 'fort' made up of tumbleweeds, sagebrush, and cacti. In the midst of one of these attacks, I had been gravely wounded by one of these unseen foes. Collapsed in a heap on the arid sand, attempting to mend myself while still fighting the unseen enemy, I suddenly felt a sharp pain. 'Man, this make-believe war is really starting to feel real,' I thought to myself. I rolled over in the sand, taking aim with the crooked barrel of my bough peashooter. Using a pile of sand as a shield, I attempted to maneuver myself into a better angle where I would not be in the direct line of fire from the enemy. Suddenly, I jumped, feeling a sharp pain shoot up through my body from the nether regions. 'Yyyeeooowww,' I screamed. Obviously, this whole invisible army thing was becoming too real.... 'Aaaaaahhhhh,' I screamed again as another bolt of pain jolted through my body. 'I quit. I give up!' I yelled as I jumped up from where I had been lying. Looking down, I realized that in the midst of my rolling around fighting the attacking army and attempting to 'heal' myself, I had rolled smack dab into the middle of an ant hill, and in doing so, they had gone up the pant legs of my shorts. No figuratives. No hypotheticals. It became a literal scenario of 'ants in the pants.' Running and screaming, I tore my shirt off, and before long, I was down to my skivvies and sneakers. All the effort in fighting off the enemy on one front, I had been attacked, completely caught off guard by a silent counter-offensive that ended in my skivvies. In my retreat, I vowed revenge for another day, but today, today I was simply too beaten down, along with being black and blue.