Red Sky at Morning
(Part II of a Weird and Terrible Saga)
The Placerville that I knew was not the Placerville of today. This was pre-gentrification, although we could see it slowly oozing up the hill toward us through El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park and knew it was only a matter of time. I suppose people who live there now like it the way it is, but I prefer what was lost. I prefer the true rustic charm it once possessed, not today’s affected veneer. I prefer having no McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Jack in the Box. We did have a Kentucky Fried Chicken (this was long before their name frightened away customers due to its implications of clogged arteries, thus forcing the initialism), a Round Table Pizza, and a Denny’s (eventually two – one at each end of town), but there was room to breathe. When I go through there now, the place has turned claustrophobic, chain on top of chain all trying to choke the life out of each other. No, Placerville when I lived there was basically a place to stop and get gas and get gas (for the car and belly) on your way from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe. No one stopped to shop, to see wineries, to site see. They came in, dropped some cash, and got the hell out and left the locals alone.
The Placerville that I knew was exactly the kind of place that would drive an adolescent nuts, and it did. There was absolutely nothing to do of the sort of things teenagers enjoy. Just to go to the movies meant a 40 mile drive to Sacramento. There was a small theater on Main Street, but it seemed to be the final place on the planet to which films were distributed before their being locked away forever in some hidden vault in the bowels of Hollywood. Kids would cruise the town from end to end, back and forth like sharks trapped in a tank and with the same look of boredom and ennui. It was a living scene from American Graffiti without the wholesomeness, and with the Round Table parking lot replacing the drive in. It personified pent up adolescent frustration and seething. It was swell.
After spending a good deal of my life in high school, I can say with some authority that my experience was fairly typical – a paradoxical mixture of trying to fit in and trying to stand out. The meaningless was ritualistically raised to the status of meaningful, and the twin terrors of confusion and yearning reigned.
I distinguished myself academically, but walked a line between academics and athletics. I make no pretense that I was in anyway special in doing so, plenty of students did and some of them, like Joe and Jay and Dave, were my friends. I mention it merely differentiate myself from the extremes of geek and jock. Although I went through the typical social vagaries of adolescence, a world where friends are ranked and labeled, I would have to say my most consistent friend was Pat Kinkade. Pat and I shared a similar sensibility of detachment; we recognized the irony of the life in which we were immersed and were amused by it. (Incidentally, Pat’s older brother is Thomas Kinkade, millionaire. While I harbor no ill-will toward Thom, I am bewildered by his success. I find his work overly sentimental and saccharine, and I do not understand the appeal. However, I do not understand the appeal of many things, so I accept it for what it is. I must say, though, that I am surprised and impressed by his business acumen. For example, the 2009 Hammacher Schlemmer Christmas catalog seems to have a Thomas Kinkade product on every page, each with a handpainted or hand-numbered element and each coming with its very own certificate of authenticity verifying its reality for those who cannot believe they now own it. My taste in kitsch leans more toward “The Animatronic Singing and Talking Elvis” head rather than “The Thomas Kinkade The Night Before Christmas Talking House” on the opposite page. Although it is tempting to hear Thom recite the holiday classic “in a clear voice,” the Elvis head sings a variety of songs, has 37 monologues, and moves its lips. Not only that: at $129.95, Elvis is five bucks cheaper. What a deal!)
My entire high school social career was guided by the goal of being selected as Class Clown. Unfortunately, my ambition was thwarted by the yearbook staff my senior year when they decided to no longer make such selections as Class Clown, Most Likely to Succeed, etc., for fear of hurting the feelings of those students not selected. I had to resign myself with being awarded the Outstanding English Student.
My high school academic career began with the delusion that I was going to be the next Jacques Cousteau. (Steve Zissou would have been a more accurate role model.) I planned to major in marine biology and swim with the fishes for money. I even got my SCUBA card thinking it an essential career move. Around junior year, I looked into the requirements for the major and was surprised to see the level of math required for a life science. I had the ability to do the math (I actually scored higher on that portion of SAT than the verbal), but I did not enjoy it. I decided to abandon my delusion for another and look for a school to major in film.
After being impressed by their School of Speech (counting no less than Charlton Heston as an alumnus), I applied and was accepted to Northwestern University. They even offered me a full scholarship pending the completion of financial disclosure forms. Since I was under eighteen, these papers were required of both my mother and Nasty Edwin, who (after consulting an attorney!) felt he could not in good conscience complete them as they may obligate him financial in some obscure manner in the future. The opportunity offered by NU was withdrawn. This being prior to Proposition 13, the State of California had plenty of money to offer its citizens for education, so I applied and was accepted to UCLA. I was offered two Cal Grants: one for my scholarship and one for financial need. I accepted the former since being poor was nothing I had worked to earn. I was also surprised to be awarded a Scaife Foundation Scholarship – surprised because everyone else invited to the interview stage was planning to major in science or engineering. (I missed out on a National Merit Scholarship; I was a runner-up. Many people do not know that while the winners get their college education paid for, the bridesmaids do receive a lovely lime green gown, which I still enjoy wearing occasionally to this day.)
I chugged along steadily and expectantly toward graduation.
Story 1
My freshman English teacher asks me to stay after class and into lunch to discuss my book report. She begins asking me a series of questions regarding the concepts present in the book. The book is Aristotle’s Poetics. I am confused by her obvious surprise at my ability to answer her questions. It does not occur to me that she is quizzing me because she does not believe I actually read the book. I just think she is as interested and excited about Aristotle’s concepts as I am. I also fail to recognize that she is a first year teacher and knows very little about Aristotle. She eventually sends me on my way.
Story 2
Early senior year and I am in Brit Lit. Mr. Purdy passes out a new translation of the old English poem “The Wanderer” and tells us that we may find it useful to have this translation in college. I immediately grasp the absurdity of this assertion. I am convinced two things are obvious. First, “The Wanderer” is not going to be a major part of anyone’s college education. Second, when we get to English class at a university, the expectation will not be that we have our own copy of the poem. To illustrate these observations, I stand up in class and announce, “Well, then I better just keep this in my wallet,” and fold the paper, place it in my wallet, and sit down. My classmates are delighted by my impertinence; Mr. Purdy is less so.
When graduation day arrived, I prepared to drive myself into town for the evening ceremony. My plans were to go party-hopping with Pat after. I was running late, however, and when I rushed out, I found my brother Mike had just arrived at the house and his car blocked mine. High school was very different for Mike. His life spiraled quickly out of control into escalating delinquency. Finally, he committed battery on a student from another school at a football game, and the court offered him the choice of jail or military service. He chose the latter, but he ended up going UA (what was formerly called AWOL) and received an “other than honorable” discharge. To individuate myself, I have pressed a separation between us. By this time a history of many physical altercations had created a gulf.
As he walked toward me, I could see a cryptic smile on his face. Since he stuck out his hand to congratulate me, I like to think now that the source of this smile was some sort of understanding that I represented an alternative path that he could have followed if circumstances had proved different. I’ll never really know because instead of taking his hand, I brushed it aside and told him to “fuck off” and get his Jeep out of my way.
I graduated wearing orange pants and spent the night as planned. Giddy with lack of sleep, we recounted the night’s events to Pat’s mother and Thom as the morning sun edged through cracks in the curtains of their living room. The phone rang. Pat’s mom answered it and called me to it, telling me it was my mother. My mother told me I needed to come home in order to watch my little brother and sister. Michael had been killed, and she had to go identify his body.
Story 3
I am watching The Tonight Show one night my freshman year of high school. Michael comes home ebullient and loquacious. He jabbers at me from the kitchen while cutting open a package of hotdogs with a steak knife. I reply to his banality with a typically sardonic comment, and when I reach up to turn the dial on the television, he throws the steak knife, and it sticks in my left arm.
Story 4
From where I am standing, I can almost see the entire house. The front door is directly opposite, to its right is the small kitchen, to its left the living room with the fireplace that is the only heat for the house. In winter it is my chore to split logs after school like Abe Lincoln. There are doorways to the two bedrooms closer to me. There is another bedroom, a converted porch, that I can’t see through the kitchen. I am standing in the doorway to the bathroom because my mother has asked me to. The bathroom door is open, and she sits on the toilet crying. I realize she has asked me to stand here because she has no one else to tell this to and she must tell someone. Despite plummeting over a cliff with two friends in his Jeep, I learn that my brother’s body has very little trauma, just a small discoloration on the side of his head. I do not know what to say or do for her. I only graduated high school the day before, and adulthood hangs loose about me like borrowed robes. So I say and do nothing but watch her cry.
People close to me recognized my growing self destructive behavior that summer after high school. My girlfriend asked me to get help. Pat’s mother also counseled me about talking to someone. I couldn’t talk to my mother, who was absorbed by her own demons. I went to the county health department once and talked to a therapist who explained some TM techniques of limited utility. However, I figured I was a smart kid and could deal with this on my own. I swallowed things down and went to college. I did not know that this wound continued to fester beneath the surface and was slowly spreading poison throughout my entire system.
(Part II of a Weird and Terrible Saga)
The Placerville that I knew was not the Placerville of today. This was pre-gentrification, although we could see it slowly oozing up the hill toward us through El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park and knew it was only a matter of time. I suppose people who live there now like it the way it is, but I prefer what was lost. I prefer the true rustic charm it once possessed, not today’s affected veneer. I prefer having no McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Jack in the Box. We did have a Kentucky Fried Chicken (this was long before their name frightened away customers due to its implications of clogged arteries, thus forcing the initialism), a Round Table Pizza, and a Denny’s (eventually two – one at each end of town), but there was room to breathe. When I go through there now, the place has turned claustrophobic, chain on top of chain all trying to choke the life out of each other. No, Placerville when I lived there was basically a place to stop and get gas and get gas (for the car and belly) on your way from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe. No one stopped to shop, to see wineries, to site see. They came in, dropped some cash, and got the hell out and left the locals alone.
The Placerville that I knew was exactly the kind of place that would drive an adolescent nuts, and it did. There was absolutely nothing to do of the sort of things teenagers enjoy. Just to go to the movies meant a 40 mile drive to Sacramento. There was a small theater on Main Street, but it seemed to be the final place on the planet to which films were distributed before their being locked away forever in some hidden vault in the bowels of Hollywood. Kids would cruise the town from end to end, back and forth like sharks trapped in a tank and with the same look of boredom and ennui. It was a living scene from American Graffiti without the wholesomeness, and with the Round Table parking lot replacing the drive in. It personified pent up adolescent frustration and seething. It was swell.
After spending a good deal of my life in high school, I can say with some authority that my experience was fairly typical – a paradoxical mixture of trying to fit in and trying to stand out. The meaningless was ritualistically raised to the status of meaningful, and the twin terrors of confusion and yearning reigned.
I distinguished myself academically, but walked a line between academics and athletics. I make no pretense that I was in anyway special in doing so, plenty of students did and some of them, like Joe and Jay and Dave, were my friends. I mention it merely differentiate myself from the extremes of geek and jock. Although I went through the typical social vagaries of adolescence, a world where friends are ranked and labeled, I would have to say my most consistent friend was Pat Kinkade. Pat and I shared a similar sensibility of detachment; we recognized the irony of the life in which we were immersed and were amused by it. (Incidentally, Pat’s older brother is Thomas Kinkade, millionaire. While I harbor no ill-will toward Thom, I am bewildered by his success. I find his work overly sentimental and saccharine, and I do not understand the appeal. However, I do not understand the appeal of many things, so I accept it for what it is. I must say, though, that I am surprised and impressed by his business acumen. For example, the 2009 Hammacher Schlemmer Christmas catalog seems to have a Thomas Kinkade product on every page, each with a handpainted or hand-numbered element and each coming with its very own certificate of authenticity verifying its reality for those who cannot believe they now own it. My taste in kitsch leans more toward “The Animatronic Singing and Talking Elvis” head rather than “The Thomas Kinkade The Night Before Christmas Talking House” on the opposite page. Although it is tempting to hear Thom recite the holiday classic “in a clear voice,” the Elvis head sings a variety of songs, has 37 monologues, and moves its lips. Not only that: at $129.95, Elvis is five bucks cheaper. What a deal!)
My entire high school social career was guided by the goal of being selected as Class Clown. Unfortunately, my ambition was thwarted by the yearbook staff my senior year when they decided to no longer make such selections as Class Clown, Most Likely to Succeed, etc., for fear of hurting the feelings of those students not selected. I had to resign myself with being awarded the Outstanding English Student.
My high school academic career began with the delusion that I was going to be the next Jacques Cousteau. (Steve Zissou would have been a more accurate role model.) I planned to major in marine biology and swim with the fishes for money. I even got my SCUBA card thinking it an essential career move. Around junior year, I looked into the requirements for the major and was surprised to see the level of math required for a life science. I had the ability to do the math (I actually scored higher on that portion of SAT than the verbal), but I did not enjoy it. I decided to abandon my delusion for another and look for a school to major in film.
After being impressed by their School of Speech (counting no less than Charlton Heston as an alumnus), I applied and was accepted to Northwestern University. They even offered me a full scholarship pending the completion of financial disclosure forms. Since I was under eighteen, these papers were required of both my mother and Nasty Edwin, who (after consulting an attorney!) felt he could not in good conscience complete them as they may obligate him financial in some obscure manner in the future. The opportunity offered by NU was withdrawn. This being prior to Proposition 13, the State of California had plenty of money to offer its citizens for education, so I applied and was accepted to UCLA. I was offered two Cal Grants: one for my scholarship and one for financial need. I accepted the former since being poor was nothing I had worked to earn. I was also surprised to be awarded a Scaife Foundation Scholarship – surprised because everyone else invited to the interview stage was planning to major in science or engineering. (I missed out on a National Merit Scholarship; I was a runner-up. Many people do not know that while the winners get their college education paid for, the bridesmaids do receive a lovely lime green gown, which I still enjoy wearing occasionally to this day.)
I chugged along steadily and expectantly toward graduation.
Story 1
My freshman English teacher asks me to stay after class and into lunch to discuss my book report. She begins asking me a series of questions regarding the concepts present in the book. The book is Aristotle’s Poetics. I am confused by her obvious surprise at my ability to answer her questions. It does not occur to me that she is quizzing me because she does not believe I actually read the book. I just think she is as interested and excited about Aristotle’s concepts as I am. I also fail to recognize that she is a first year teacher and knows very little about Aristotle. She eventually sends me on my way.
Story 2
Early senior year and I am in Brit Lit. Mr. Purdy passes out a new translation of the old English poem “The Wanderer” and tells us that we may find it useful to have this translation in college. I immediately grasp the absurdity of this assertion. I am convinced two things are obvious. First, “The Wanderer” is not going to be a major part of anyone’s college education. Second, when we get to English class at a university, the expectation will not be that we have our own copy of the poem. To illustrate these observations, I stand up in class and announce, “Well, then I better just keep this in my wallet,” and fold the paper, place it in my wallet, and sit down. My classmates are delighted by my impertinence; Mr. Purdy is less so.
When graduation day arrived, I prepared to drive myself into town for the evening ceremony. My plans were to go party-hopping with Pat after. I was running late, however, and when I rushed out, I found my brother Mike had just arrived at the house and his car blocked mine. High school was very different for Mike. His life spiraled quickly out of control into escalating delinquency. Finally, he committed battery on a student from another school at a football game, and the court offered him the choice of jail or military service. He chose the latter, but he ended up going UA (what was formerly called AWOL) and received an “other than honorable” discharge. To individuate myself, I have pressed a separation between us. By this time a history of many physical altercations had created a gulf.
As he walked toward me, I could see a cryptic smile on his face. Since he stuck out his hand to congratulate me, I like to think now that the source of this smile was some sort of understanding that I represented an alternative path that he could have followed if circumstances had proved different. I’ll never really know because instead of taking his hand, I brushed it aside and told him to “fuck off” and get his Jeep out of my way.
I graduated wearing orange pants and spent the night as planned. Giddy with lack of sleep, we recounted the night’s events to Pat’s mother and Thom as the morning sun edged through cracks in the curtains of their living room. The phone rang. Pat’s mom answered it and called me to it, telling me it was my mother. My mother told me I needed to come home in order to watch my little brother and sister. Michael had been killed, and she had to go identify his body.
Story 3
I am watching The Tonight Show one night my freshman year of high school. Michael comes home ebullient and loquacious. He jabbers at me from the kitchen while cutting open a package of hotdogs with a steak knife. I reply to his banality with a typically sardonic comment, and when I reach up to turn the dial on the television, he throws the steak knife, and it sticks in my left arm.
Story 4
From where I am standing, I can almost see the entire house. The front door is directly opposite, to its right is the small kitchen, to its left the living room with the fireplace that is the only heat for the house. In winter it is my chore to split logs after school like Abe Lincoln. There are doorways to the two bedrooms closer to me. There is another bedroom, a converted porch, that I can’t see through the kitchen. I am standing in the doorway to the bathroom because my mother has asked me to. The bathroom door is open, and she sits on the toilet crying. I realize she has asked me to stand here because she has no one else to tell this to and she must tell someone. Despite plummeting over a cliff with two friends in his Jeep, I learn that my brother’s body has very little trauma, just a small discoloration on the side of his head. I do not know what to say or do for her. I only graduated high school the day before, and adulthood hangs loose about me like borrowed robes. So I say and do nothing but watch her cry.
People close to me recognized my growing self destructive behavior that summer after high school. My girlfriend asked me to get help. Pat’s mother also counseled me about talking to someone. I couldn’t talk to my mother, who was absorbed by her own demons. I went to the county health department once and talked to a therapist who explained some TM techniques of limited utility. However, I figured I was a smart kid and could deal with this on my own. I swallowed things down and went to college. I did not know that this wound continued to fester beneath the surface and was slowly spreading poison throughout my entire system.