January 2023 - PLANETARY STATUS REPORT!

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When …

When I was a kid …

We could go to the 7/11 store and buy switchblades … you could even buy the ones where if you pressed a button the knife blade SHOT OUT at your enemies. You could just point the knife at your friend, and the blade would shoot into them. They ended up making those knives illegal, but for a time we were innocent and happy with our knives …

When I was a kid?

We’d spend out summer days hunting apple pigeon near the old orchard, living off of grizzle grease and old dead squirrel. Our parents were getting drunk at the Knotty Pine Tavern, while the kids were making shit-houses by the irrigation ditch and eating scrob.

During those halcyon days of youth? – we sought after firework power and smelly screeg juice. We’d buy worms from Little Mountain Store, and then go down to the pond to catch rainbows. If some kid fell into the pond and drowned? – we felt bad about it, then we played Donkey Kong.

Back in school our teachers used rods and yardsticks and belts and cheese paddles, to teach us a lesson. If we acted up, they tied us to logs and rolled us down the concrete steps in front of the school. We would spend hours in the basement, with the festering rodents and mold.

In high school, the kids mocked me and chased me. I lived in the shadows, even the “Tree People” shunned me. I was an outcast, living off of crack cocaine and pop rocks and Pepsi. I took my orders from an alley cat and carried a lead pipe, and my face was covered in rooster gravy and bear piss.

As kids we raised different kinds of animals and kept them in jars and cages. We’d watch MUTUAL of OMAHA’s WILD KINGDOM, and pretend we could steal the hearts of nature and clamp down on the natural splendor. We’d eat the faerie-grapes and whistle songs of dormant hyenas, cats.

When we were kids, our parents could buy hippo and elephant at the butcher shoppe. We would eat the ripe heart of the world, as we watched the Gong Show and supported our favorite freak. Our songs were the songs of sky rockets and afternoon delights and magic nasty rendezvous.

I can remember old Andy who lived near the abandoned puppy factory. He had a small hovel, covered in moss and dead birds. He’d invite the kids in for “cough syrup and cheese”, and some kids never came back. The parents burnt down old Andy’s home, and dumped his body in the river.

My sister’s would talk about the “black man” that lived in the woods. He was black, and would sneak into the house at night and steal babies. They would spin these yarns of semi-racial bare chested violence, as they imagined their Nubian king taking them away from their Catholic doldrums and forbidden jungle delights. Is that racist? – I don’t know …

In the mornings when we got up, our parents would make us breakfast – we’d have TANG and VELVEETA and re-liquefied parrot stool. My friend Skangus spent his days training mice and drinking KOOLAID. He stayed after school so Father Jim would teach him special lessons. We would find Skangus, trapped in the sacristy at the Church, and he didn’t want to talk about it, and his altar boy uniform was stained with blood.

My dad would take us to SAMBO’S. It wasn’t Sambo’s for that many years, the name changed. It was themed on some little black kid being chased by tigers, and the story line about how his family ate bush meat, and sometimes ate people. Little Sambo would run shirtless through the European settlements, impregnating white girls and stealing big screen TV sets … is that racist? I dunno …

We would play with buckets of gasoline, tossing flames at each other and melting garbage bags. If some kid got burned, we mocked the kid for it … it was there fault, and then needed to pay. We gave the kid raspberries and ripped up his underwear. If he went home crying, we laughed. Maybe that kid didn’t make it, maybe he set himself on fire to prove a point.

We would hunt for the freaks on Little Mountain, firing our BB guns at any the dared cross us … they lived up there in the woods, covering themselves in slug-oil and tooglin-blood. We’d round them up and put them behind a fence. We’d toss old cheese burgers and soup at them, and they would cry out their great pain to a world more interested in Fantasy Island and the Love Boat.

We would go smelt jigging, in La Conner, and take those damn slimy things and use them for crabbing … that sea protein was prized among the JOOBLIN-VOLK and they used the paste to clean their pixie pipe and massage their woman’s boovula and skleeviz. They would win awards, handed out by the old chief, and then take their winnings and play video games. Nobody joked about Asteroids, nobody took fun in Pacman or MS Pacman. It was all about the stinky dead things, and the old people dying of consumption.

We had games you could buy: Captain Kill-doh, The Furious Claw, House Trap, Cat’s Whisper and the Broken Glass Puzzle Fun Box … Kids would eat pieces, small magnets, their insides would get all fucked up. We would dare each other to eat bits of plastic or shove asbestos covered french fries up our noses. We ate raw DDT and lived like monkey fiends and our homes were caves and our time was empty.

But …

We made it out alive. Being kids.