752 Words for July 15th

The past is a mother fucker. I have been thinking about my life, growing up, a lot lately. I think that it is more than likely tied to my impending fatherhood. My little girl will be coming in about a month, people. The less odd part that I have been daydreaming about is my tie to my father. There will be more on that later. Some other things have been considerably less normal thought patterns, for me.

In some of my more normal thought patterns, I have been remembering odd instances of my upbringing. Things such as growing up in a one-horse town (who's horse was shot a hundred years prior), and the existence therein. Knight's Landing, California is a very small (possibly eight or nine hundred people) community in northern Yolo County. It's size and history are really quite meaningless in this short story.

One of my memories bring me back to somewhere around nineteen eighty-six or seven. I believe it was one of those "El Nino years." We got an ass load of rain that winter, so much so that the Sacramento River flooded it's banks just east of the draw bridge at County Road 102. I vaguely remember (I was five or six years old) riding in my mom's car to Woodland California to stay with my grandmother. This is just a minuscule flicker that I get on occasion. The part that gets me is, though I can't remember my childhood, I know the event happened. I just question whether or not my memory of the event is correct.

Throughout my later childhood, I always craved my father's pride. I was always mechanically-inclined. I was notorious for disassembling and reassembling toys and (household appliances) to figure out their inner workings. My father's chosen profession was an automotive mechanic. While growing up, it seemed as though "following in his footsteps" was the only way to gain his favor. The junior high school that I attended had no true automotive department to speak of. The Wood shop had a one week small engines section, but I could rebuild two-stroke weed-eaters, lawn mowers, and other small engines in my sleep. The only other real option I had was in the agriculture department, I would just hav to broaden my horizons. Tractors and pump motors weren't really what I was looking for as a profession.

My biggest project in that class was a nineteen thirty-nine Allis-Chalmers tractor. It was a complete fucking rebuild. It included cleaning off decades of neglect, rust, and dirt build up, scrubbing the drivetrain for weeks, prepping this fucking thing for primer and eventual paint. In reality that was nothing. That was the little bitch shit that I probably could have delegated to one of the underlings that I had accumulated at the time. The bitch of it all was the engine. It was locked, and not in some bullshit vapor lock, or even a rusted-to-shit cylinder way that my prize 383 Chrysler was (I'll get to that later). This was a mule dick sort of lock, that really would have been easier to recycle.

In so many ways, I wish I would have put more of my limited concentration resources into that project. Instead, like so many other things, I got drunk, stoned, and fucked it off. In hindsight, my entire high school carrer ended up that way. Thinking back on it, though, I don't believe the drugs and alcohol had that much effect on it. If anything, sometimes the drugs assisted in my work.

A quote I heard years ago (and it rings true) is that if you use LSD once, it changes your life, every other time is purely recreational. There is a lot of truth in that. The one that makes less sense is the old wive's tale that if you take LSD more than 70 times (or whatever number) you are legally insane. Though I believe that if you "burn yourself out" that there is some kind of irreversible damage that can be done, if the number really is seventy, I have been locked in a padded cell long ago. I left all of that behind me long ago, and I honestly don't believe I have any irreparable damage done to my mind or psyche. The only things that might be completely fucked are my lungs and liver. And, maybe my kidneys, as well.

As for anything else I may have promised in writing this short story, I will undoubtedly get to another time.