The Beardo Analogues, Take 1

Beardo =

(an·a·logue) - A way of transmitting speech in the form of a continually varying electrical audio signal.

Way back in the spring of 1981, my dad took the family on a vacation to California. We saw my mom's aunts and uncles in Los Angeles and Torrance, we saw Disneyland (although I don't remember that at all), the San Diego Zoo, and a bunch of other crap that was probably repressed in my young psyche over a decade ago.

We stayed for what seemed like a month, and then my dad decided that we were going to move to California. I was six years old. At that point I was in my second half of the school year in kindergarten at Washington Elementary school. A decision was made to fly me back by myself so that I could stay with my grandparents and finish the school year while the rest of the family looked for a place to live. My sister wasn't old enough for school yet, so she got to stay in the hot-ass desert. The only memories I have of flying on a United Airlines plane by myself at six years old are that (a) the stewardesses were all really nice to me (and hot), (b) the lunch that I was served was a basket full of crackers and breadsticks and crap and a submarine sandwich that was so big I couldn't get my mouth around it, and (c) I got to go up in the cockpit and they gave me a little 'junior pilot' pin or whatever. No professional basketball players or talk of Greco-Roman wrestling was involved.

So I finished the school year and by that time the rest of the family was back in Michigan. My dad found a job at a Sears Roebuck as a service repairman (which is what he had been doing here), and a house to rent in Banning, CA. Are you familiar with Banning at all? It's in the middle of the fucking desert. Surrounded by the Palm Desert, the San Bernardino Mountains, thousands of acres of wind-propellers creating clean renewable energy, and only about a half hour away from the San Andreas fault line. Good times. Maybe you've heard of Palm Springs as a resort area for rich people or San Bernardino as a stop on the way from LA to Vegas? Those cities are nearby. Maybe you've heard of the massive Coachella music festival that takes place every summer. That happens in the Indio/La Quinta area, which also isn't far away. Basically, the Palm Desert is about an hour east of Los Angeles. Again, in the middle of the fucking desert. Death Valley isn't far away, either.

I remember the house we were renting was a split-level a lot like our house in Marysville. It was all cement block painted white with a cement block fence painted white going all around the front and back yard. This was common in tract housing in the west in the 1950s. As far as the white-painted cement block is concerned, anyway. Every morning when the grass was still dewy yet there were probably about a hundred snails all along the fence. They were huge, too. I don't think I ever saw a snail up close before or after that. The bedroom that was mine was the first door on the left after you walked in the front door of the house. I think that was the biggest bedroom I ever had until recently. One wall of the room was full of drawers built right into the walls. I never did find out why there were so many drawers of different shapes built into it, but it saved space, so that was nice.

The neighbor kids across the street had HBO, which was kinda rare back then. I can't remember the boy's name, but he was my age. He was pretty normal, watched a LOT of HBO. His little sister had muscular dystrophy and used a wheelchair. Oddly, I have absolutely no memories of their parents.

Down the street was a seriously fucked up family. Even then I could tell how fucked up they were. I remember there was always a trail or three of ants going to and from their house up and down the driveway. Their oldest son was a fuckup with eyes too close together, a mullet, and a lot of freckles. He was probably 12 at the time. He may as well have been one of the kids who hang out behind the 7-11 smoking cigarettes, asking people to buy beer for them. That's how I saw him then and that's how I see him now. One time he tried shooting my sister with a BB gun (she was 4). He missed, but I remember my dad threatening to kill him if he would've hit her. There was never any way to prove what he was trying to do, besides him bragging about it all the time to the neighbor kids. The same family had a younger son who was a year younger than me. He was a goofy looking kid with a lot of freckles and red hair. Bowl cuts suck, dude. That kid always seemed to be amped up on pounds of sugar at a time. Sort of like little Chrissy in the movie "Pecker."

His sister Christine was a different story altogether. We were the only two kids who got on the schoolbus at our bus stop. The rest of the kids in the area were too young for school or a lot older. She was a year older than me and in second grade. Early on, I was instructed (by her) to go to her house on the way to the bus stop and wait for her, then we'd walk together. She started calling me her boyfriend eventually. One time she told me that her dad said I was a "bum." Who says that about a six year old kid? Not to mention, the house I lived in was always clean (because my mom had a lot of time on her hands - she wasn't working). Their house had thousands of little arthropod tenants, mine did not. Whose home more closely resembles that of a 'bum'?

Anyway, the school there sucked, my ADD went undiagnosed, I had to spend half a day twice a week in a portable outside the high school where I was 'treated' for my speech problems, and the first grade teacher twice told me that I "would never amount to anything." More good times in Cal-i-for-ni-ay.

In the desert out on Route 10 between Banning and Palm Springs there's this little town called Cabazon. Okay, I don't know if there's really a town there, I just know there's a truck stop and the area is referred to as Cabazon. If you've ever seen "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," you've seen the 'Wheel-Inn Cafe' and it's famous cement dinosaurs. We stopped there a couple times, but the dinosaurs were always closed. "Sorry kids, the dinosaurs are closed today." It feels weird typing that, it sounds funny.

After six months of hell in the desert, my mom, my sister and I got on a Greyhound bus in the middle of the night with a couple of suitcases and moved back to Michigan without my dad. He re-married and then divorced some woman in La Quinta whom he had another son with, then he moved up to Oregon where I think he still lives. Somewhere out there I have a 14-year old half-brother named Steven.

That's all that I really found interesting or worthwhile in California, the Dinosaurs of Cabazon, the acres and acres of wind-propelled turbines quietly producing clean energy in the desert, and the little girl down the street. Otherwise, fuck that place, I hate California.