Conflicted love letters to home
Dear Phoenix,
I have spent more than half my life living within your boundaries but I haven't felt at home in ages. When I was eight I was thrust into what has thus far been one of the biggest culture shocks of my life. Rural, and I'm talking RURAL, North Carolina to Phoenix. (Look at it with the Satellite view and it makes a bit more sense. Past what looks like the end of Commissioner Rd by the GA/NC border) We lived on a road where you'd pass apple orchards, green cow pastures, and little red farms with out houses in the back. You'd cross over a creek on a rickety old bridge that was probably built around the same time those farms were, and then climb up a windy gravel road that always reminded me of going through a cave because of the thick canopy of trees. Eventually you'd see it. Not from satellite though. Hell no. We were tucked far back into the densest of woods in the Appalachian Mountains. We didn't have cable, not even network television. Just a plethora of VHS that no one else at school had ever even heard of. We'd go on hikes through the mountains and up to moss covered rocks and waterfalls. We'd make home movies with plots (sort of...), we'd play for hours in what may have been the most magnificent play ground in the world. We'd entertain ourselves. All of us together, my brother too. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be that happy again.
I think it's too late.
Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Miami. Each with billboards tall as buildings screaming what they have to offer. They've each left their own mark on me. But not like you have, Phoenix. They say that you're supposed to have a conflicted relationship with the place you grew up. Conflicted is an understatement. The "good years" were spent in North Carolina. Back when Kathleen and I would scream and point to the sky whenever a plane would fly by because it was such a rarity. That innocence is gone and lost forever. But I suppose I can't blame you for that. That's just part of growing up. I remember being so anxious about the move out west. On our drive cross country to our new home I would close my eyes and in vision what was to come. At that point, I had few things to reference to the west. I mostly expected it to be like this old Peco's Bill cartoon that Disney put out ages ago (that was apparently banned? Like I said, lots of weird VHS in the Lakey house) But between that, Back to the Future 3 and some old Wile E. Coyote vs Roadrunner cartoons, I still had an unclear idea of what to expect. Now my apple orchards have been replaced by a QT gas staion, the farm houses by track homes and the lush forests with crappy half assed desert landscaping (THERE, I SAID IT!)
People always rag on the south but there is something to be said for southern hospitality. People just seemed nicer there. When I say I'm from North Carolina it's like people are so impressed that I'm not some sort of backwards inbred hick. Keep in mind I came from a school with kids who thought 'shut up' was a "bad word" and that as long as they were good Jesus (or Santa) would answer all their prayers. A school where only a few years prior to when I attended it (though just in time for my older brother) they were still punishing "bad children" with a swift pink-pong paddle to the ass or forcing them to sit inside an old refrigerator box outside for hours to "Think about what they just gone up and did!". Are you starting to see why people always rag on the south? I guess that and the whole Civil War thing but GEEZE people, get over it, that's like so 1865! Anyway, flash forward two years to a school bus on it's way to Sonoran Sky Elementary in Phoenix/Scottsdale. My best friend, (only friend) tells me that we should try to have sex before we get our first period so that way we can't get pregnant.
Brilliant!
Skip forward another year, it's 5th grade and I already know kids who have smoked pot, preformed oral sex on each other and one boy came to school tripping on acid and had to be sent home. I was picked on for having an accent the second I started school in Scottsdale so I dropped it instantly and decided to mimic my best friend,(only friend) as to blend in. I still talk like her sometimes. I was tortured for being fat when I never was, it seemed like I was constantly the only target in dodge ball, girls AND boys alike seemed to not have any problem with hitting me, and I was referred to as "Flakey Lakey" (sometimes Shake n' Bakey Lakey. Kids can be so cruel!). In sixth grade after Columbine my teacher and guidance counselor called me into her office acknowledging that I had been picked on. They explained to me what a scapegoat was, metaphorically. They wanted to make sure I wasn't going to do anything brash like, oh I don't know, gun down the students and faculty? It's funny how they only seemed concerned with the fact that I was being tortured when they thought I may actually do something that directly affects THEM. I wasn't the only one they talked to. They called on all the losers who had been picked on and gave them all the "scapegoat" speech which still doesn't make sense to me. I should go and release a REAL goat in the school as the ultimate brash move! Didn't expect that, huh bitches??
How do I always get so off topic?
I need to get out of you, Phoenix. I know what you're thinking. "Just pack your bags and fucking go already. You keep saying you're going to leave so leave already! Everything you own is in a box to the left!"
But I'm afraid it's not that simple, my love. I am in a perpetual cycle of driving to work to pay for the car that I only own to drive to work. I wish I could quit them both. I've been storing money aside so that one day I may go elsewhere. Anywhere else at this point. I just want something different. I'm sick of the beautiful sunsets now because I know they're caused by our thick level of grade A shit in our air. I'm sick of the construction and I don't particularly want to live in the fastest growing city. Fuck no. I long for the sound of crickets chirping at night to lull me to sleep. Now I try to sleep maybe 2 miles away from the same airport they trained for 9/11 at. Every night I hear one after another after another fly over my room. I can hear them in my dreams.
Phoenix, for the next year I plan to stay here. Even if you don't want me. Save up as much money as I can. Sell anything worth any value, throw away everything that's not worth anything, consolidate my life. Until then, please take it easy on me. I remember living in Scottsdale back when it was all horse ranches, fireworks being set off at the faux Ghost Town that has since been demolished, swimming in the warm glowing cyan pool at night, Mexican style homes with wild plants growing all around that smelled like rain even when there wasn't any, coyotes running though the desert between the houses and howling like crazy while they bred in the night. But now it's all paved over with higher end homes, (each one EXACTLY like the fucking last), parkways to freeways to highways to SUPER highways, all natural wild life practically gone in sad attempts to cross Scottsdale Rd.
Hummer dealerships, night clubs that appeal to the old and saggy real estate agents. So desperate to be "hip" that they sport that new orange tan that seems to be so in right now. They look like leather and sometimes I fantasize about skinning them to make a pair of bitchin' pants.
ANYWAY, the point is, I need to leave and this is why.
I'm not saying it for anyones benefit but my own.
I don't know how much longer I can last before the dam breaks and I go crazy and start releasing goats in elementary schools and skinning my clientèle.
Hurry, good fortune!
I have spent more than half my life living within your boundaries but I haven't felt at home in ages. When I was eight I was thrust into what has thus far been one of the biggest culture shocks of my life. Rural, and I'm talking RURAL, North Carolina to Phoenix. (Look at it with the Satellite view and it makes a bit more sense. Past what looks like the end of Commissioner Rd by the GA/NC border) We lived on a road where you'd pass apple orchards, green cow pastures, and little red farms with out houses in the back. You'd cross over a creek on a rickety old bridge that was probably built around the same time those farms were, and then climb up a windy gravel road that always reminded me of going through a cave because of the thick canopy of trees. Eventually you'd see it. Not from satellite though. Hell no. We were tucked far back into the densest of woods in the Appalachian Mountains. We didn't have cable, not even network television. Just a plethora of VHS that no one else at school had ever even heard of. We'd go on hikes through the mountains and up to moss covered rocks and waterfalls. We'd make home movies with plots (sort of...), we'd play for hours in what may have been the most magnificent play ground in the world. We'd entertain ourselves. All of us together, my brother too. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be that happy again.
I think it's too late.
Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Miami. Each with billboards tall as buildings screaming what they have to offer. They've each left their own mark on me. But not like you have, Phoenix. They say that you're supposed to have a conflicted relationship with the place you grew up. Conflicted is an understatement. The "good years" were spent in North Carolina. Back when Kathleen and I would scream and point to the sky whenever a plane would fly by because it was such a rarity. That innocence is gone and lost forever. But I suppose I can't blame you for that. That's just part of growing up. I remember being so anxious about the move out west. On our drive cross country to our new home I would close my eyes and in vision what was to come. At that point, I had few things to reference to the west. I mostly expected it to be like this old Peco's Bill cartoon that Disney put out ages ago (that was apparently banned? Like I said, lots of weird VHS in the Lakey house) But between that, Back to the Future 3 and some old Wile E. Coyote vs Roadrunner cartoons, I still had an unclear idea of what to expect. Now my apple orchards have been replaced by a QT gas staion, the farm houses by track homes and the lush forests with crappy half assed desert landscaping (THERE, I SAID IT!)
People always rag on the south but there is something to be said for southern hospitality. People just seemed nicer there. When I say I'm from North Carolina it's like people are so impressed that I'm not some sort of backwards inbred hick. Keep in mind I came from a school with kids who thought 'shut up' was a "bad word" and that as long as they were good Jesus (or Santa) would answer all their prayers. A school where only a few years prior to when I attended it (though just in time for my older brother) they were still punishing "bad children" with a swift pink-pong paddle to the ass or forcing them to sit inside an old refrigerator box outside for hours to "Think about what they just gone up and did!". Are you starting to see why people always rag on the south? I guess that and the whole Civil War thing but GEEZE people, get over it, that's like so 1865! Anyway, flash forward two years to a school bus on it's way to Sonoran Sky Elementary in Phoenix/Scottsdale. My best friend, (only friend) tells me that we should try to have sex before we get our first period so that way we can't get pregnant.
Brilliant!
Skip forward another year, it's 5th grade and I already know kids who have smoked pot, preformed oral sex on each other and one boy came to school tripping on acid and had to be sent home. I was picked on for having an accent the second I started school in Scottsdale so I dropped it instantly and decided to mimic my best friend,(only friend) as to blend in. I still talk like her sometimes. I was tortured for being fat when I never was, it seemed like I was constantly the only target in dodge ball, girls AND boys alike seemed to not have any problem with hitting me, and I was referred to as "Flakey Lakey" (sometimes Shake n' Bakey Lakey. Kids can be so cruel!). In sixth grade after Columbine my teacher and guidance counselor called me into her office acknowledging that I had been picked on. They explained to me what a scapegoat was, metaphorically. They wanted to make sure I wasn't going to do anything brash like, oh I don't know, gun down the students and faculty? It's funny how they only seemed concerned with the fact that I was being tortured when they thought I may actually do something that directly affects THEM. I wasn't the only one they talked to. They called on all the losers who had been picked on and gave them all the "scapegoat" speech which still doesn't make sense to me. I should go and release a REAL goat in the school as the ultimate brash move! Didn't expect that, huh bitches??
How do I always get so off topic?
I need to get out of you, Phoenix. I know what you're thinking. "Just pack your bags and fucking go already. You keep saying you're going to leave so leave already! Everything you own is in a box to the left!"
But I'm afraid it's not that simple, my love. I am in a perpetual cycle of driving to work to pay for the car that I only own to drive to work. I wish I could quit them both. I've been storing money aside so that one day I may go elsewhere. Anywhere else at this point. I just want something different. I'm sick of the beautiful sunsets now because I know they're caused by our thick level of grade A shit in our air. I'm sick of the construction and I don't particularly want to live in the fastest growing city. Fuck no. I long for the sound of crickets chirping at night to lull me to sleep. Now I try to sleep maybe 2 miles away from the same airport they trained for 9/11 at. Every night I hear one after another after another fly over my room. I can hear them in my dreams.
Phoenix, for the next year I plan to stay here. Even if you don't want me. Save up as much money as I can. Sell anything worth any value, throw away everything that's not worth anything, consolidate my life. Until then, please take it easy on me. I remember living in Scottsdale back when it was all horse ranches, fireworks being set off at the faux Ghost Town that has since been demolished, swimming in the warm glowing cyan pool at night, Mexican style homes with wild plants growing all around that smelled like rain even when there wasn't any, coyotes running though the desert between the houses and howling like crazy while they bred in the night. But now it's all paved over with higher end homes, (each one EXACTLY like the fucking last), parkways to freeways to highways to SUPER highways, all natural wild life practically gone in sad attempts to cross Scottsdale Rd.
Hummer dealerships, night clubs that appeal to the old and saggy real estate agents. So desperate to be "hip" that they sport that new orange tan that seems to be so in right now. They look like leather and sometimes I fantasize about skinning them to make a pair of bitchin' pants.
ANYWAY, the point is, I need to leave and this is why.
I'm not saying it for anyones benefit but my own.
I don't know how much longer I can last before the dam breaks and I go crazy and start releasing goats in elementary schools and skinning my clientèle.
Hurry, good fortune!