This will be a fun blog for me to write you. I get to recount my childhood and I hope when you read it, that it takes you back to your childhood too. I was this wild kid who always attracted animals of all kinds. Here are some of my childhood memories. Like a kid running into a candy store, I popped out of my mother and hit the ground runnin she'd say, and I haven't stopped for anything but food, water or a girlfriend since. That's a pretty accurate metaphor. If you lived out in the country, I'm that crazy kid from the woods who'd show up in your yard and play with your kids.
Always sneaking off and getting into mischief. My fathers shot gun saved me more than once. Twice exactly. Once from rabid skunk and another time I was playing in an irrigation ditch that had been filled with water. A small child can swim in the big ones. But sometimes dangerous animals are in them too. A cottonmouth was in the water one day with me and my dad shot it too. I've always celebrated life and tried to sample everything about it.
My mom said my eyes would light up whenever I saw the sunrise. She said I rarely ate and was always excited.
I am convinced that I remember the details of when I was born in the little one car town back in Texas. I was born in a hospital not much bigger than a small duplex apartment building. I can recall back to when I first saw the light, a bright bulb set in an aluminum cowling protruding out of the ceiling in the delivery room, at least that's what it looked like to me. Don't under estimated babies, they begin collecting data immediately I guess! My said all people don't have that kind of recall. My mother right today will tell you that my description amazes her. Neither her or my dad have ever described that room to me. You know back then they slapped a babies butt to open their eyes. Maybe that's what made me like I was. Maybe.
My mother loves to tell the story how one day her and my dad did a stupid thing. They left me alone in my crib at the farm house while they drove to the store around midnight. When they came back there were wolves throughout the yard and two had already entered the house. My dad always had a gun and the moment the car lights revealed them he jumped out shooting in the air. When they saw two run out of the house she said she feared the worst. But nope, I was lying in my crib wide awake she said.
Both my collar bones have been broken from being slam into a fence and another time tossed into a fence from several yards away. Both times by two different bulls I was teasing from inside their pins. I was 7 and 8. I think most city people would think I'm exaggerating, but most country folks would know I'm not. That's where I come from! That's who I am.
Always sneaking off and getting into mischief. My fathers shot gun saved me more than once. Twice exactly. Once from rabid skunk and another time I was playing in an irrigation ditch that had been filled with water. A small child can swim in the big ones. But sometimes dangerous animals are in them too. A cottonmouth was in the water one day with me and my dad shot it too. I've always celebrated life and tried to sample everything about it.
My mom said my eyes would light up whenever I saw the sunrise. She said I rarely ate and was always excited.
I am convinced that I remember the details of when I was born in the little one car town back in Texas. I was born in a hospital not much bigger than a small duplex apartment building. I can recall back to when I first saw the light, a bright bulb set in an aluminum cowling protruding out of the ceiling in the delivery room, at least that's what it looked like to me. Don't under estimated babies, they begin collecting data immediately I guess! My said all people don't have that kind of recall. My mother right today will tell you that my description amazes her. Neither her or my dad have ever described that room to me. You know back then they slapped a babies butt to open their eyes. Maybe that's what made me like I was. Maybe.
My mother loves to tell the story how one day her and my dad did a stupid thing. They left me alone in my crib at the farm house while they drove to the store around midnight. When they came back there were wolves throughout the yard and two had already entered the house. My dad always had a gun and the moment the car lights revealed them he jumped out shooting in the air. When they saw two run out of the house she said she feared the worst. But nope, I was lying in my crib wide awake she said.
Both my collar bones have been broken from being slam into a fence and another time tossed into a fence from several yards away. Both times by two different bulls I was teasing from inside their pins. I was 7 and 8. I think most city people would think I'm exaggerating, but most country folks would know I'm not. That's where I come from! That's who I am.
My mother said that at 16 she was not well equipped to deal with a colicky baby like I was. She said she couldn't take it so she gave me over to a white lady who lived down the road. She said she saw her carrying me and crying one day walking along a dirt road and she stopped her car, got out and asked her what was wrong. And she told her that I was crying and she couldn't get me to stop.
From that day on this lady came over every morning to the house and would stay with me and you she said, all day helping me with you. She showed me how to fold a towel and lay it across my knees and lay you face down on it on your stomach and how to rock you till you burped". She told me that this lady was as much my mother as she was, Because one day she had to go away, and she gave me to this lady. I remember her raising me. She was young and pretty like my mom was. She me a long time. My mother doesn't talk about why she me to her. I remember feeling safe and warm all the time with her. She toted me everywhere even after I could walk she'd still carry me all the time.
From that day on this lady came over every morning to the house and would stay with me and you she said, all day helping me with you. She showed me how to fold a towel and lay it across my knees and lay you face down on it on your stomach and how to rock you till you burped". She told me that this lady was as much my mother as she was, Because one day she had to go away, and she gave me to this lady. I remember her raising me. She was young and pretty like my mom was. She me a long time. My mother doesn't talk about why she me to her. I remember feeling safe and warm all the time with her. She toted me everywhere even after I could walk she'd still carry me all the time.
The first words I spoke were not mommy or daddy, they were s_ _ _ pot, f_ _ _ you and a few other choice words. I was afraid of my own shadow at night but not of anything else; just my shady, literally. Not snakes, wolves, bulls, horses or people. In fact she say's I was incredibly bold and aggressive at a very young age.
She laughs when she tells of the time I was riding in the back seat as she and my dad was heading down the road to Plainview Texas, and my dad said "sit down back there boy" and I said "no you shit head" and hit him in the back of the head with my metal toy cap gun. I wasn't even scared when he stopped the car and spanked me she said, but I remember the spanking. Do you have a lot of memories from your childhood?
My parents were wild, young, dumb and mean. Once they left me in the car and I got into the glove box, took my dads 38 pistol out and shot a hole in the dash. The windows were rolled up and the sound waves knocked me unconscious. I remember the ringing before everything went black. They say they found me unconscious with the gun lying beside me. This is all true dumb country stuff I'm sharing with you. If you are reading this and you are from the country, you know.
Things changed when they moved us to California. I got asthma really bad and stopped breathing a lot. They rushed me to the hospital and doctors saved my life a number of times. That scenario played out more times than I care to remember. I practically lived in an oxygen tent from the age of 11 to 14. Then one day it was gone.
She laughs when she tells of the time I was riding in the back seat as she and my dad was heading down the road to Plainview Texas, and my dad said "sit down back there boy" and I said "no you shit head" and hit him in the back of the head with my metal toy cap gun. I wasn't even scared when he stopped the car and spanked me she said, but I remember the spanking. Do you have a lot of memories from your childhood?
My parents were wild, young, dumb and mean. Once they left me in the car and I got into the glove box, took my dads 38 pistol out and shot a hole in the dash. The windows were rolled up and the sound waves knocked me unconscious. I remember the ringing before everything went black. They say they found me unconscious with the gun lying beside me. This is all true dumb country stuff I'm sharing with you. If you are reading this and you are from the country, you know.
Things changed when they moved us to California. I got asthma really bad and stopped breathing a lot. They rushed me to the hospital and doctors saved my life a number of times. That scenario played out more times than I care to remember. I practically lived in an oxygen tent from the age of 11 to 14. Then one day it was gone.
My fearlessness has gotten me into some pretty tough messes along the way in my life, but it's given me a great deal of wisdom to share. Both my collar bones have large breaks in them from those bull attacks as a result of those antics on the farm. To get into a bullpen with a bull is one thing, but you gotta run right after you get the bull's attention, and not run in a circle around the bull, that really pisses them off. We were at about 7 and 8 at that time (my friend Jaime would do it too). I had a dog named Ranger. Ranger was a giant dark brown Great Dane and I loved him. He was my best friend as a child. I used to ride him like a horse. My mother would send my dad to find me in the car whenever she called out for me and I didn't answer. They always knew they’d need the car. Because I'd ride Ranger miles away.
I used get up in the mornings at day break and go right outside, get on Ranger and ride him for miles down the road at times, not realizing how far we had gone. I loved exploring the residuals of the ending night. Right to today, you will often find me basking in the early morning sun, I love the warmth of the morning sun, its better than coffee to me.
One early morning I saw a man get struck by lightning, they say he lived, I remember seeing him sitting on his tractor and plowing his field at daybreak when out of the dark gray sky without a sound, came a bolt of lightning, the loud cracking sound didn't come till after the lightning had come and gone, then it started to rain and thunder as more lightning flashes splintered and cracked the skies like and egg cracks. I ran to his house, banged on the door and told his people, I guess his wife. Then I ran home with Ranger. My dad said the man lived. He said the lightning hit the tractor mostly.
One early morning I saw a man get struck by lightning, they say he lived, I remember seeing him sitting on his tractor and plowing his field at daybreak when out of the dark gray sky without a sound, came a bolt of lightning, the loud cracking sound didn't come till after the lightning had come and gone, then it started to rain and thunder as more lightning flashes splintered and cracked the skies like and egg cracks. I ran to his house, banged on the door and told his people, I guess his wife. Then I ran home with Ranger. My dad said the man lived. He said the lightning hit the tractor mostly.
My mother and father would drive to visit some of our relatives who lived in nearby cities and spend the nights there for awhile and in the mornings they would all drive out to the fields and pick cotton. They would leave me in the car, they said it was too hard to watch me out there with the kinds of poisonous snakes that were out there. If I wondered off in those fields and got bitten we were too far away from anywhere to get help.
Sometimes when I think about to that night of wolves, I wonder if somehow during that night a bond of some kind took place because some years later a beautiful wolf followed me home from a hike and rabbit hunt just after we moved here to California. Of course we moved to the outskirts of the city to a place called Otay Lakes. My friends, parents and relatives couldn't believe it and they couldn't stop talking about it. I've always had a way with animals. My mother thinks that's why I got asthma. She says it was a psychological reaction from being take away from animals.
We really became close, the wolf and I. I would hug him, lay on him and we played tag all the time together. He would lower his head and let out a fierce growl when people approached me but never bit anyone. He never growled at my mother and father or my brothers, but still didn't trust him, they'd just call me away from him most of the time refusing to come close. They said he was just too big. I named him Lobo which is wolf in Spanish. Then one day I woke up and went outside to him like I did every morning, and he was not there.
I called out loud running and crying for miles but I never saw him again. My eyes are tearing as I write this. After a month or so I quit looking. I just knew it was right. That he had to go back to the wild. I stopped crying a lot and one day resumed my life as if it never happened. My dad said that's how it would play out, and it did. By the way, my dad never kept the gun loaded in the glove box anymore and he kept the glove box locked. I know because I looked for it again. These are the memories that I can escape to when life gets complicated for me. I hope you enjoyed reading them.
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