A bit about me.Follow me if you will to a time not long in the past. Nearly four decades ago, a mere blink in the scale of time, a young boy about twelve years old sits in a tree-fort with his sister and nephew and some of the younger kids from the neighborhood. I didn't know it then, but I was continuing a tradition as old as mankind himself, storytelling. I learned how much I loved telling a story, to see the younger kids captivated by my voice and engaged in the story. I would create adventures putting the children in as warriors fighting off great beasts and saving the kingdom. I only did that a few times, but looking back at it now, I realize it started me on a path. Follow me still further as Time flashes before our eyes. We see me playing baseball with more neighborhood children of the same age, watch as we shoot at each other in some nearby woods with BB guns. We see a time when I was rushed off to the hospital injured by a collision with another boy playing baseball, more afraid of my father's driving, than I was of the gash on my forehead.
|
Follow me now as I start high school, walking the hallways with a sea of strange faces. Responding to my mother's encouragement, I decide to try out for a school play. I sit quietly by myself afraid to come forward until everyone else has auditioned. I get up to leave, but the director sees me and asks me if I wanted to audition. I stop. I don't turn around until he asks me my name. I don't remember how, but somehow I found the courage to step up onto the stage. I had done some acting before in grade school, so once I started reading the lines, I was transformed. I was able to read well enough to land a small part. My confidence started to grow in theatre. I was a different person when I performed, I lived for the applause.
Time advances, a new decade starts with a tragic car accident. The theatre director dies before my senior year. I and a few of my friends drive a few hundred miles for the funeral of our beloved teacher. I convince my parents to let me drive my old pickup truck on a road trip that summer several hundred miles to the town where the funeral would be. I stood alone quietly looking at his body lying there in the coffin. The other students finally step away, but I couldn't move. He was more to me then a teacher. He was the first person to see anything in me. Quiet tears started to drip down my face and after one of my friends noticed me and asked if I was alright, I finally pulled them back and tried to hide the fact I was crying, after all men don't cry right? Follow me some more, as I decide to join the army. My father was in the army and I wanted to serve my country, still today I strongly believe that everyone should serve at least a short term in the military. After the army, I moved back to my hometown and got my first apartment. I was barely of legal drinking age, of course the legal drinking age must have been eighteen in the state where I was stationed in the army because I certainly remember going to taverns then. I had some good times in that first apartment. I managed the building too as part of my job. The front had an ice cream shop I was helping the owner convert into pizza restaurant and I did minor repairs to my apartment and one other on the second floor of the building. Two young Columbian women only a few years older than I, came one day to look at the apartment above mine. I showed them around of course and one of them seemed more interested in me, than the apartment. I remember her asking me what I liked to drink, I told her I liked Jack Daniels. The next day the two of them came back carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels. I ended up spending a lot of time with those two I would later get a roommate who dated one of them and I the other and I thought I was in love even after I she told me she was married. I couldn't understand. She still wanted to see me and claimed she loved me too. I later found out she wasn't married to him, but was just living with him. I wanted her all to myself. Every logical muscle in my body twitched. I knew I should turn around, but I continued to approach the apartment door. She had told me not to come. She had warned me that he had a gun. No one answered. I knew they were home, so I knocked again and after a while I left never seeing her again. I moved on. |
My military haircut was starting to grow out now, as I hitch-hike along a quiet country road, a large pack on my back. After a long quiet peaceful walk, a car eventually drives by and pulls over to give me a ride. I smile and thank the driver, as I get in on the passenger side pushing aside the many beer cans that seem to cover the floor and sit next to the case of beer on the seat beside him. I look and see a young boy in the back seat, as I talk to the man who drives with one hand and drinks a beer with the other, I learn he is a bounty hunter seeking a fugitive, I soon take over driving. I step out of a different car along a highway in the California desert. I walk a short distance into the desert away from the highway and roll out my sleeping bag. The stars are so bright and the air so clear, I drift off to sleep dreaming of a new adventure and hoping no scorpions or other bugs crawl into the sleeping bag with me.
The next morning after walking several miles, I get another ride into the city of Los Angeles. With dreams of becoming an actor I find a job flipping pizzas and stay with my Uncle's family for a couple months before moving on again. With no idea of how to pursue my dream of acting, I soon find a new dream, I start to write. With pen and paper I begin writing what will one day be my first novel. I continue to hitch through to northern California where I get a job as a construction laborer, then decide to get a bus ticket back home. The bus stops for a short time in Reno Nevada and the lure of the casino is too much. I gamble playing blackjack all night long and actually winning a modest amount. The next morning I cash in the remainder of my bus ticket and move in with a woman who worked at the casino. I become a friend to the woman's two beautiful daughters, as I tell them stories and continue to write my novel. Many times I would walk the girls across to the small neighborhood store, the younger I carried on my shoulders. Actually I remember carrying them both, they weren't that heavy and I was a strong man, but I can't remember exactly how. I wasn't romantically involved with their mother, we were just friends and one day she got engaged. The fiancé moved in as well as her older daughter, there wasn't enough room in the small apartment; it was time to move on yet again. I didn't want to. I really loved those two girls as if they were my own sisters. I had a bug in me and still do today. I can't seem to stay anywhere for long. I used to call it "white line fever" after the trucking song my dad used to listen to when I traveled with him in his truck over the road. I left early one morning without saying goodbye. I soon came to regret it and tried calling them to explain, but I was told they didn't want to talk to me. |