Old Fools Journal: Where Are You From?

February 24, 2009 Wednesday
New Orleans from 25 miles south ^

When I'm asked "where are you from?" I am truly at a loss. I don't know if I should tell you where I was born, where I grew up or where I lived last. Maybe I should just take an hour or so and tell you where I am really coming from. I was from Arkansas when I was in high school in Texas, I was from Texas when I was in the Navy and I was from California when I was in Nevada and Hawaii. I was from Hawaii when I was cruising on my boat in California in the '80's and I was from the Estados Unidos when I lived in Mexico. Where the hell am I from?

On the interwebtubespipes I am from North America and am a citizen of the USA. At least everyone knows where that is and has a relative here or wants to kill everyone here. I have lived in the USA, Mexico and spent enough time in the Canadian banana belt to call it my own. I count Hawaii as a foreign country even though in name it is a state.

I was born in 1939 in a house on Park Street in Little Rock, Arkansas and raised to the age of 16 in the pine woods west of that fair city but that place is buried under modern development and aliens now so it no longer exist. So I am from a place that no longer exist? I went to country schools (Brady and Joe T Robinson) until the 10th grade I went to the tenth grade at Central High School in Little Rock the year before it was integrated. (I still can't believe the National Guard had to be called out to get those idiots to to do the right thing.) I have stories about those years that I hope to get to tell and I hope someone cares but don't go looking for where I'm from because you won't find it.

My step dad was a printer and my parents thought the opportunities were a little better in Texas so away we went. I think they were wrong but what the hell it was their life and they were entitled to their own mistakes. They may have been avoiding the coming unrest in Little Rock as well. They new what the right thing was and were definitely in the minority. I don't fault them their decisions.

So I went to high school in Ysleta Texas, became an apprentice printer at the El Paso Times and joined the Navy to get the hell out of there. I had known since I was a preteen that I was going to the Pacific Ocean so it wasn't a surprise to me. It probably was to my family however.

That put me in California and I took to it. It beat the crap out of any other place I had been and by the way it still does. I met a girl and then !@#$%^&&**()_+ and I was happy. One day +_)(*&^%$^_) and I was not. I spent a lot of my life in California and really grew up there if you can call what I am as grown up. It was the 60's you know. Some of us were stunted for life.

I went from there to Nevada, to Hawaii, to Mexico, to Arizona and Louisiana. I lived for some time in all those places and I have visited every state in the union.

So where am I from? I'm from Earth in general and North America specifically. North America is my back yard and whatever is in front of my tent flap is my front yard.

I have spent the day baking bread (yum) and making planter beds for the garden. See what happens when you sniff all that yeast and sawdust. Makes you think weird stuff.

--Some planter beds last year

Plant!