Lore Drop: 1991-1997
I was born on April 28, 1991. Thanks to the proliferation of horrendous javascript date pickers, I’m continually reminded that this was a Sunday. During that time, my family lived in The Woodlands, Texas. I’m told that is a very nice and ritzy area to live, but I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember it at all. At that time, my father was working for Exxon as an internal auditor. At least, that’s what I think he was doing based on conversations I had with him before he died. I have one older brother who’s a few years my senior and based on video evidence (home movies), he was the only person who could make me laugh. Frankly, he still makes me laugh harder than about anyone.
Sometime after I was born, my father enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law. I have seen pictures and videos of being a young toddler while living with my family in married student housing. I remember my mom telling me once that our apartment had hard, unpadded carpeting and I fell off the bed many times and hit my head very hard. I don’t know why that feels significant, but it might explain at least a thing or two about why I am the way I am. I don’t have many memories of this time. One of my earliest childhood memories was when I was camping with my family. I took a stick and put it in the fire, as kids do (I mean I still do this). Admiring the glowing end of the stick, I decided I’d see what would happen if it touched someone. However, instead of burning myself, I instead walked up to my brother and poked him in the belly. He immediately started crying and screaming. I remember my father patiently asking me “But why did you do that?” Honestly, I didn’t know what else would happen. I was learning, I guess. Sorry Michael! I don’t think I ever intentionally burned anyone ever again, so you can say I learned my lesson. I also have a vague memory of my Dad swinging me around in a circle by my arms, at my request. I remember feeling like I was flying and that I might actually take off into the sky. I also remember my parents arguing about something. These are very vague and I’m not entirely sure if they are real. I remember our house being very dark.
Once my Dad finished law school, he took a job in a rural town in south-central Utah called Delta. Delta (population 3,000) apparently was too much of a budding metropolis for my Mom, so we opted to move to a nearby small pioneer town called Oak City (population 600, on a good day). We lived in three homes in Oak City. The first home we lived in was kind of a split-level deal, with an upstairs. I don’t remember very much about it. I remember wandering through the tall grass behind our house into a neighboring farmer’s yard. He spotted me, and gave me a few chicken eggs to take home to my mom. Instead, I just threw them on the ground and I remember him being a little disappointed I’d broken them. I’m not sure why I threw them but I don’t think anyone had ever handed me an egg before. I didn’t know what would happen. I remember our house had a large staircase leading to the upstairs bedroom, but I don’t remember what was up there. I mostly remember the lowered family room and kitchen that were all kind of joined together. I remember later my mom told me that house was just kind of “weird”. When I asked her for details, she said that the walls were crooked, it just wasn’t built very well.
After some time, we moved into a single story home in a cul-de-sac. I’m not sure how long we lived in this house. I remember I had a problem sucking on my thumb as a kid, and my mom would coat my thumb in some kind of liquid that made it incredibly bitter. If you’ve ever tasted a Nintendo Switch cartridge, I think they’re coated in the same stuff. I remember just sucking through the bitter and it didn’t really last that long. I remember I loved to eat cheese and one time I asked my Mom if I could have some cheese and she had me call my dad who was at work in Delta. I don’t think I got the cheese. Around Christmas time, there was a large box in our living room, I presume it was the box for our fake tree. I remember my brother and I agreeing that we’d work together to save up all the boogers we picked out of our noses and we’d fill the entire box. I think we only made it about 4 boogers before we gave up. I had a tricycle with a nice open box on the back that I could fill with things to carry. One time, my friend had caught a fish so we filled it up with water and put the fish in. Poor fish.
This house is a bit infamous in my family. The story I was told is that my Dad was the leader of the local 12 year old scouts group and organized a campout nearby. Some of the kids brought .22 rifles and my Dad took them away and refused to allow them to use them. In retaliation, some of the kids attacked our house with paintball guns in the middle of the night. We were terrified, they were shooting at our windows and it was very loud, waking us all up and wondering what level of attack we were under. I remember my Dad also told me they put dog poop on the door handles of his Toyota Pickup and might have also spray painted on our house. The story I was told is that the kid’s parents defended them and refused to allow them to take responsibility. I remember the Police being involved. Before he died, my Dad recounted the experience to me and I recall how defeated it made my family feel. We were new to the area and it was a small town and to be rejected so explicitly was incredibly discouraging. My Dad told me at least one of the kids later reached out to him and apologized, several years later when he was an early adult, and how much that had meant to him, even all those years later.
My Mom is allergic to raw nuts and beans. I actually think she deals with moderate allergic anaphylaxis which is throat swelling and blocking the airway due to allergic reaction. One night as my family was hanging out, she took a gamble on some fresh green beans and started having a reaction. I remember my Dad taking her to the hospital emergency room about 20 minutes away in Delta. It must have been quite frightening for me.
Eventually, we purchased a home in another part of town on an unpaved “red rock road”. It was gravel made of red volcanic lava rock. As a kid, possibly due to my thumb sucking, I dealt with a moderate case of rhotacism - I couldn’t properly pronounce my R’s. So I grew up on a street that I could only pronounce as the “wed wock woad”. My brother’s friends thought that was pretty funny but it really hurt my feelings. It was a nice street to live on, just four houses and a dead end. Our house was a split-level with a cellar on the bottom floor that had a large crawl space in it. That area scared the crap out of me, I never went down it. My brother told me a monster lived in there and I believed him.
There were some good families on the street that we’d play with all the time. One of the families had older kids and also a lot of video games in addition to parents who were happy to ignore us in the basement as we played countless hours of Super Nintendo. As the last on the pecking order, I got to watch them play a lot more than anything but I didn’t care. I remember watching the movie My Neighbor Totoro in their basement and I honestly thought I’d hallucinated the whole thing until I was later reintroduced to Studio Ghibli in middle school. My kids have seem pretty much all the Ghibli movies. I distinctly remember Satsuki asking Mei if she wanted a caramel in the opening sequence when they’re riding hidden in the moving truck.
This was all before the age of Kindergarten, so I must have only been about 3 or 5. I mostly remember having complete free reign of the small town. Oak City is only a few city blocks, with a nice city park in the central location. I would walk to the park to play on the playground, look at the irrigation ditches, and explore. We would make miniature adobe mud huts out of sticks and clay in an empty lot. Across the street was a crazy old lady who kept a bunch of noisy geese. I stayed away from her. There was a certain brand of shirts called “Iguana Don” that are incredibly mid-90’s but I loved them. They were always my favorite shirts to wear. As I recall them now, it’s no wonder most of my wardrobe now consists of brightly colored tie dye shirts for my favorite band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
Oak City has a town festival each August called “Oak City Days”. There are games for kids, dunking machines, card tournaments for the adults, and it’s capped off with a big Hawaiian style pit pork barbecue. I remember them pulling the pig up out of the ground after it had been cooking for a day or so. I always looked forward to Oak City Days. I remember doing t-ball and soccer there at the same city park everything else was at but I wasn’t a huge fan, personally.
Eventually I grew old enough to go to Pre-School. There was a lady in town who lived in a log cabin and she ran a preschool. I have some memories of that, but not much. I don’t think I particularly enjoyed it, but it wasn’t bad. I remember for my birthday or Christmas I decided to get a “super scope” for our Super Nintendo, with a copy of Yoshi’s Island. I remember my mom picking me up after school and I the long, narrow box was incredibly exciting. Unfortunately the game and accessory had little replay value, but having a freaking bazooka to shoot at my TV was pretty thrilling for me.
There are actually no stores or really any way to spend money in the town of Oak City. Not even a gas station, if I recall correctly. For anything, we had to go into Delta. Delta had a McDonalds, a hospital, and a grocery store. McDonalds trips were the best. They had a ball pit. If we were really, really lucky my mom would let us rent a game from the grocery store. For the young players, in the 90’s there were not only video rental stores, but most grocery stores had one. And in the 90’s most video rental places also rented games. I can remember renting Donkey Kong Country 2.
I remember one time at the grocery store, I saw a truck from the railroad company. Delta mostly exists because there is a coal-firing power plant that generates most of the electricity for Los Angeles county. Yes, they burn coal in Utah and send the electricity to L.A. With coal comes rail roads. All this to say, most of the people around worked or were affiliated with the power plant. I knew the truck was from the rail road because it was equipped with the railroad conversion wheels. Some trucks have little legs that can be extended down and be driven on the railroad. That absolutely blew my mind, it seemed like such a good idea! I still think they’re pretty neat. I also remember one time seeing a dude with a legit captain hook style hook arm. Not like a little medical prosthetic but an actual big hook. He had it in a sling that appeared to made of duct tape. Apparently, that’s just a thing that exists in Delta.
Another thing Delta did was a “demolition derby”. This is where people gather at the fair grounds and people will drive an old beat up car and smash into each other until the last man standing won. It’s pretty “hillbilly” but as a young kid, it was really the highlight of my life. After the derby they would light off big airborne fireworks but I usually hid in the minivan. Delta also had a roller skating rink, where I either had or attended at least a few birthday parties at. They had an arcade machine of the original Donkey Kong and I liked watching people play it. My brother had a Game Boy and a copy of what is known as “Donkey Kong ‘94”, so I was familiar with the concept but there’s nothing quite like the experience of the true arcade game. Totally unique audio-visual experience! Delta also had a swimming pool where I took swimming lessons. I remember my Dad describing the lifeguards as “yahtzees” which I didn’t understand then, but do now.
Eventually I needed to go to Kindergarten in Delta. The bus would come each morning and take us all the way into town. I don’t remember a lot about Kindergarten. I remember I had an assignment that was to write the numbers from 1 to 20. I didn’t know them. I just didn’t. I sat puzzled and confused trying to finish the assignment as all the other kids finished and played. Eventually I looked up at the clock on the wall an realized it had the numbers in order and written out! That worked really well, until I got to 12 and then I realized I didn’t know the rest. I didn’t finish the assignment. One kid in the class had a lot of really cool Star Wars toys he’d bring in some times. I remember he had a sand speeder toy with Luke and C-3PO. My house had some pirated VHS tapes of Star Wars, and I think this was about the time of the 90’s theatrical re-releases in anticipation of Episode I coming out. My brother and I liked watching A New Hope.
Around this time, my little brother was born. I remember my mom being pregnant with him, snuggling her in bed and feeling him kick around in there and I would try to talk to him. I was really excited to finally be a big brother. He was born in Delta at the hospital. As he became a toddler, I remember one winter day we were out front of our house stomping in water puddles in the Red Rock Road. Shortly after, he caught pneumonia and was hospitalized. I don’t remember much about it, but apparently it was quite the event for our family.
It was in this house that I first remember using a computer. We first had simply MS-DOS with some big 5 1/4” floppies with few unfun games. My Dad also had a small pirated collection of games including Quest For Glory 1 (VGA remake) and Dune II. To this day, those are still two of my all-time favorite games. I have a distinct memory of watching my dad play Dune II. He had a habit of chewing on his tongue and I remember watching him do it, and then I mimicked him. I never stopped. I still chew on my tongue a lot. However, I honestly think it’s kind of a good habit since it promotes saliva production. As such, I’ve only ever had a single minor cavity. Eventually we upgraded to an old computer from his office that had Microsoft Windows 95 on it. The startup sound alone completely blew me away. I remember my family experimenting with early dial-up internet, mostly completely unsuccessfully.
Since Oak City didn’t have a library, maybe once a week the “Bookmobile” would swing into town. It was basically an camper trailer that had been converted to a little library. You could request books from the main branch in Delta, but also you could return books you’d gotten from the library while in town. I liked going to the bookmobile and getting some good books. Another random thing in the 90’s is that some people would accumulate fairly massive VHS tape libraries and rent them out. There was an old lady in town that lived on the way out to the dump that lived in a very strange house. It was just a basement, not top. I don’t know if that was the idea, that you’d just build the basement and then live in it and eventually you’d finish the top or what. But she would rent videos out. She also had a ton of cats, which I liked. One time, she asked if I wanted one and I was pretty upset that my parents didn’t let me take it.
Another infamous Oak City memory for me is the time my brother and I had to pick the cherry tomatoes. We didn’t own a copy of Super Mario World but I really loved that game. On time, our neighbors let us borrow their copy. Excited, I woke up early the next morning to play it only to find my older brother already there. He absolutely would not let me have a turn so I punched him in the nose hard and gave him a bloody nose. He deserved it. But my mom had had enough. We were sentenced to the task of picking every tomato off the cherry tomato bush in the back yard. My memory says that we spent the entire day out there, mostly goofing off and probably only managed to pick about 20 total. When my Dad got home from work that day, he assessed the situation and smartly decided that he should not override my Mom’s authority, so he would help us pick them. He laid down a blanket in the family room in front of the TV and pulled the entire bush out of the ground and set in on the blanket. We then watched TV, ate snacks, and picked all the tomatoes.
There really are too many little memories to write them all out. I remember my neighbors slaughtering some chickens and seeing them run around with no head. I had a friend who’s dad made a swimming pool out of a steel cattle trough. That same friend had a Sega Saturn and I remember seeing Rayman on it and it really blew my mind. It would be several years until I saw something that incredible again. I remember gathering around at a random house in town as one kid finally decided to give Ghosts N’ Goblins a proper play through. I remember him playing it all day, having to die and completely restart several times only to get to the final boss and guess what? It has you play through the entire game again to beat it. If I recall correctly he threw in the towel. We had a sand box in the back yard and one of my favorite activities was to “flood the sand box”. Sometimes my mom let me, other times she was annoyed at how messy I’d get. I remember riding in my Dad’s truck around Christmas time and hearing “Feliz Navidad” on the radio and it really blew my mind.
I think eventually my Dad realized that there wasn’t much of a future for him as an attorney in Delta so we needed to move to a bigger city. I’m not sure how St. George, Utah (population about 50,000 at that time) ended up on the list but it did, so we moved. By that time I was in 1st grade, just partway through the year. I remember being very sad to move and leave my friends behind. St. George felt massive, it might as well have been New York City to me. Things moved a lot faster in St. George. I actually have some papers my Mom kept in my scrap book about the move. I talked about how I cried on my first day at school. I remember my Mom had us say a prayer on my first day at the new school and I prayed that there would be tornado so I wouldn’t have to go to school. I guess I eventually adjusted, or not.
I think I’ll cap this “lore drop” here though, since I’ve gone on long enough. I would say I had a good early childhood. I certainly learned quite a bit and some of those experiences have really shaped who I am today. I mean, I still live in St. George and this is where I’m raising my family. It really is a nice place to live but there’s still very much a little kid inside of me that really misses Oak City. I’ll be honest, I have dreams about moving back some day. That entire area of Utah is so “slept on”. Even people that have grown up in Utah don’t really know about it. If you’re interested in learning more, I would recommend my recent post titled “Three Days in the Wilderness” where I explored the “Great Basin” area surrounding Delta. There is also a young adult thriller novel titled “Lost in the Devil’s Desert” by Gloria Skurzynski that talks about the area. But nobody talks about Oak City and frankly I think most people would keep it that way. It’s a treasure.
