A Walk into the Past

Where do you really start this? This journey to the past is really just a matter of picking a story and writing. Right? I like the present but you have to know the past to really understand the choices that are made today.

Lets start in 1999. We'll see where it goes from there.

February 2, 1999

I had just celebrated my birthday at my home with my family and some friends. My parents told me we would be moving in the summer. I asked them if they could at least let me graduate the 6th grade. Where they wanted to take me, 6th grade was middle school not elementary. I really wanted to see myself in the whole ceremony. I just wanted to finish one school with all my friends. They told me no. That when my oldest brother graduated in June that we were leaving. We were going to the farm, 200 miles away.

I loved the farm but, I just really didn't want to LIVE there. I didn't know anyone and the old house was gone.

A few years before we had got a call in the middle of the night. It was a close friend of my mom's. "The house is on fire." Mom looked around like she was crazy. She told her it was okay we were in it. She said it again, "The farm, the old farm house is on fire.... it almost gone." I could see my mom's heart was ripped out she screamed and dropped the phone. She was in panic. I was sitting in the rocking chair a little confused. She ran out to the garage where my dad was screaming and crying. He couldn't understand the words coming out of her mouth. He for the first time in his life had to smack her to get her to breathe and talk to him. They had come back in before this happened. She told him what was said. We called back and found out that the 100 year old home built by my family was arsoned. My grandmother was born in that house, raised in that house and it was 200 miles away. It was in an area where no one would know till it got bad. We knew that it was gone. The city didn't have but a Volunteer Fire Department and they weren't reliable. She looked at me and cried more. There was a trunk from her great grandmother filled with my and my oldest brother's baby clothes. Everything in the house was antique. The house had newspaper for insulation, it was very nice. I thought about my room, upstairs. It faced the pond, the sun would rise on one side and set on the other it was the best view the house had. But I knew by then ... it was gone. I started to cry thinking about the times we would go down there and spend time. We went almost every weekend to spend time. And now ... the house was gone. We had 100 acres with no shelter just some old tool sheds. Little did I know what was going to happen later on.

So now about two years later my family is telling me we are moving to the farm. I asked them, "What are we going to live in?" I should have known. The biggest tool shed. I told them no, that the house we were in now was great I loved having a room and heat, I enjoyed the phone, the Internet ... all of it. I didn't want to go live in a shed that had a temporary electric pole attached to it, no phone and no heat. How would we live? Where would we get water. The pump from the well to the house was burnt up and no lines had been ran anyway. They were set on going. I told all my friends what was going to happen. They didn't believe it. We thought my parents would come to their senses. Living in the country, in a shed ... no electricity or water ... that wasn't right.

June 13, 2007

This was our second attempt to leave for the farm. The first time the trailer tires got punctured and couldn't make it over 15 miles. It was two days later, the tires were replaced. My mom and I headed out for the farm. Dad decided to come later. He needed to sell our house, and get some money together. The whole way there I had a Siamese meowing his heart out in my ear. There was 4 cats in the car. A Manx, 2 mutts, and a Siamese ... So you heard MEEEERROWWW, and MAH MAH coming from the back of a little Pontiac Horizon. The other 2 loved car rides and slept in a make shift cage. They were actually in a box trap together because we only had two carriers. They slept the whole way there. How I don't know. I WISH I could have.

We made it there, barely. The little car was on its last leg. We unpacked and got the shed ready. It had been emptied out when we went down there in the spring. The first night was weird. I had both mutts with me. Trouble and Duchess. Trouble slept like he always did, down my stomach. Duchess was on my feet. I heard the crickets louder than ever. I cried that night... I couldn't believe I wasn't going back. The roof had holes in it, well really it didn't even have a roof on one section. We expanded it to make "rooms" with no doors. It was in progress. That section was my room... I had slept in it once when a freak snow storm in March came though. That was a night to remember. I had a golden lab under the blanket cuddling with me. But, this night I just felt bare and almost extraterrestrial.

That summer was a bad year. It was a drought. And mom wanted to have her garden of course so we had to haul water to the garden in 5 gallon buckets. The cats learned to accept the farm. Trouble and Duchess had been their before. The other two were house cats their entire lives, Seldom and Slinky. They wondered outside and ended up loving playing in the fields and the outside. They didn't roam much. They stayed on the farm for the most part.

All summer I just wanted to go home. A friend of mine came down and visited for a while. But it wasn't the same. I wanted to be in the city. I wanted to see cars, I wanted to see people, I felt like I was some lab rat. Like I was being held in a variable-less jar to see something. I got depressed when I moved. I hated life at that point. I would have done anything if I could go to sleep and not wake up. But I woke up every morning. I spent time in the woods trying to understand why life was never going my way. It never became apparent to me. It took a long time for me to understand. I started gaining weight. I left and was 98 pounds and very athletic, by August I was 170+ pounds. My mom didn't seem to notice. School started in early August, I hated it. All they did was review. It seemed like they were only interested in learning about how to roll joints and get high. These people were beyond my comprehension. I started losing weight again. I used to to go a school where they pushed us to learn as much as possible and if you finished early you went ahead. These people complained at learning what had to be taught. They had such accents. The teacher one day taught that the way they spoke was wrong then immediatly started talking the SAME way. I told her about it infront of the class. I told her, "It seems that you do not lead by example. You teach this class not to say "yall" and other words yet the moment the lesson ends you ask if, "Yall ready to go on to the next part?" ... How do you expect to change or help a speach pattern when the mentor we listen to talks the same if not worse than us?" ... She hated me from that day forward. She tried to tell me to stop but I interupted her. At this point I could read at a college level. I was quick to learn and I had a good understanding of teaching methods. I felt like it was her telling me not to eat chocolate then picking up a Hershey's Kiss and tossing it her mouth without trying to hide it. Like it was saying yes while shaking your head no. No wonder these students were like that. They weren't dumb at all they were taught wrong. I got sent to the office the next day, they gave me a test I didn't understand it really.

A few weeks later they told me that they wanted to talk to my parents about the results. They wanted to put me in the 8th grade. I was estatic. I told mom when I got home. I could finally be challenged again and I had the chance to jump start my life. Maybe this new place wasn't SO bad. But no ... I wasn't going to move grades because those "kids are way more mature than you.. they are a bad influence on younger kids ... I told them no." I flipped out. I was excited then I was pissed off. I couldn't believe she was so dumb. I know she is a High School drop out but what the f***.

OK .. I have had this blog at this spot for a while and just haven't been blogging a lot. I am going to leave this one where I am at and come back to it later.