Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:26 pm
Peeling carrots. My grandmother owned a restaurant in Fernley, NV called the Mill House. The building's still there, though it's gone by many other names since. I even worked there as a teenager washing dishes when it was under the name of Buffalo Bill's. But the satisfaction of minimum wage was nothing like being given the important task of peeling the carrots. I loved the fact that I could eat prime rib, my favorite food, just about every night, even after I choked on a piece of fat (to this day, I can't stand a piece of fat on my meat). The au jus was the best part.
Some mornings or afternoons I'd spend the day with Les Sarasola, an old cowboy and friend of the family that lived in the house behind my grandmother's. We'd drive out in the mornings to feed hay to the horses. He always had saltwater taffy. I remember he liked to drink buttermilk, and trying it once, I had no idea why. Sometimes we'd play a game of horseshoes out front, and sometimes we'd read cowboy poetry.
My dog Willie, part golden lab and part golden shepherd, and I would go on long walks through empty fields. I remember being lost and not really caring because I knew I'd find my way back if I just walked long enough. After Willie had to be put down because his arthritis was so bad, I'd spend about half an hour a lot of days just talking to him at his grave in the backyard, then another half hour or so talking to the lizard that would come out and sun himself on the brick that ran around the house.
There was also a garden back there. Tomatoes, radishes, and a lot of corn. It was hard waiting until they were ripe to pick them. I remember being pretty mad that an early frost took it out one year, but the tomato fight my cousins and I had might have been worth it.
There was a huge yard in the front and another in the back. The old riding lawn-mower my grandfather used to mow it with and which I vaguely remember my Uncle Dan using a few times sat mostly unused in the garage. The grass grew long and green, which is an accomplishment in that climate (as was proven by the bare dirt that sat in its place years later when we moved back). We had well water, so we watered the lawn by pumping water out of the ditch which ran through the front of the property. The pump was an old diesel beast in a small shack. Each time we watered the lawn (irrigated would be more accurate) we had to hook up these long aluminum pipes that fit together to run the whole length of the yard. Man, they were fun to play in.
So was that ditch. When it was running, my brother and I would throw sticks or whatever we could find into and race along it as far as possible. One time I took a soda can and tied a long piece of yarn to the tab and tossed it in at the upstream end of the culvert. I called my brother over and convinced him I caught a fish, pulling on the can near the surface to make it look like a struggle. When we were a little older, we'd wade around in it, though the irrigation water wasn't exactly clean. And one time I found an abandoned piece of insulation and floated a good quarter of a mile or so. Probably would've made it farther if I hadn't tried standing up and surfing, cracking the insulation down the middle. When there wasn't any water in it, the culvert was a nice, cool place to hang out in the summer. In the fall, my uncle would break out the weed burner and clear out the tumbleweeds. I can still remember the smell.
Resting my head on the tabletop Donkey Kong, the glass cool on the outside where my arms were, warm above the screen. I didn't know they were pixels then, but they sure looked cool with your eyes shoved up right against them.
Some days after school I'd walk about a quarter mile to the Gold Nugget, a bar that my grandmother helped manage and spent a fair amount of time at. I probably went through about two dollars in quarters most afternoons at the video games in the Country Store or Firehouse Pizza. Report card day was the best, since I got a dollar for every A and a quarter for every B. When I wasn't playing video games, I was drinking coke and grenadine or 7-Up and grenadine (with maraschino cherries, of course) or annoying the old people in the bar with my choices from the juke box.
I had a sled, and I couldn't wait for winter, even though the chance of getting a decent amount of snow in the winter in northern Nevada is about 50/50. There was a big dirt hill whose back slope led into an abandoned irrigation canal.
Outside of winter, the place was pretty fun as well. Kind of like kids going online today to play video games against random opponents, my friends and I would show up to see who we were facing off against in dirt clod battles. There was also a big, old cottonwood to one side of the hill, and man were you cool if you were the kid who climbed the highest on it (I was never that kid. Always sucked at climbing trees).
I was just back there at the end of the summer for my grandmother's funeral. The fields are gone. Housing tracts everywhere. My grandmother sold the house and property a few years after I graduated high school, and though the house was still there, it was so dingy and untended that it looked awful. My mom, brother, and I stopped there one last time to see it, since we knew there were plans to move the house and build on the property. It was almost as sad of a moment as my grandmother's funeral.
Some mornings or afternoons I'd spend the day with Les Sarasola, an old cowboy and friend of the family that lived in the house behind my grandmother's. We'd drive out in the mornings to feed hay to the horses. He always had saltwater taffy. I remember he liked to drink buttermilk, and trying it once, I had no idea why. Sometimes we'd play a game of horseshoes out front, and sometimes we'd read cowboy poetry.
My dog Willie, part golden lab and part golden shepherd, and I would go on long walks through empty fields. I remember being lost and not really caring because I knew I'd find my way back if I just walked long enough. After Willie had to be put down because his arthritis was so bad, I'd spend about half an hour a lot of days just talking to him at his grave in the backyard, then another half hour or so talking to the lizard that would come out and sun himself on the brick that ran around the house.
There was also a garden back there. Tomatoes, radishes, and a lot of corn. It was hard waiting until they were ripe to pick them. I remember being pretty mad that an early frost took it out one year, but the tomato fight my cousins and I had might have been worth it.
There was a huge yard in the front and another in the back. The old riding lawn-mower my grandfather used to mow it with and which I vaguely remember my Uncle Dan using a few times sat mostly unused in the garage. The grass grew long and green, which is an accomplishment in that climate (as was proven by the bare dirt that sat in its place years later when we moved back). We had well water, so we watered the lawn by pumping water out of the ditch which ran through the front of the property. The pump was an old diesel beast in a small shack. Each time we watered the lawn (irrigated would be more accurate) we had to hook up these long aluminum pipes that fit together to run the whole length of the yard. Man, they were fun to play in.
So was that ditch. When it was running, my brother and I would throw sticks or whatever we could find into and race along it as far as possible. One time I took a soda can and tied a long piece of yarn to the tab and tossed it in at the upstream end of the culvert. I called my brother over and convinced him I caught a fish, pulling on the can near the surface to make it look like a struggle. When we were a little older, we'd wade around in it, though the irrigation water wasn't exactly clean. And one time I found an abandoned piece of insulation and floated a good quarter of a mile or so. Probably would've made it farther if I hadn't tried standing up and surfing, cracking the insulation down the middle. When there wasn't any water in it, the culvert was a nice, cool place to hang out in the summer. In the fall, my uncle would break out the weed burner and clear out the tumbleweeds. I can still remember the smell.
Resting my head on the tabletop Donkey Kong, the glass cool on the outside where my arms were, warm above the screen. I didn't know they were pixels then, but they sure looked cool with your eyes shoved up right against them.
Some days after school I'd walk about a quarter mile to the Gold Nugget, a bar that my grandmother helped manage and spent a fair amount of time at. I probably went through about two dollars in quarters most afternoons at the video games in the Country Store or Firehouse Pizza. Report card day was the best, since I got a dollar for every A and a quarter for every B. When I wasn't playing video games, I was drinking coke and grenadine or 7-Up and grenadine (with maraschino cherries, of course) or annoying the old people in the bar with my choices from the juke box.
I had a sled, and I couldn't wait for winter, even though the chance of getting a decent amount of snow in the winter in northern Nevada is about 50/50. There was a big dirt hill whose back slope led into an abandoned irrigation canal.
Outside of winter, the place was pretty fun as well. Kind of like kids going online today to play video games against random opponents, my friends and I would show up to see who we were facing off against in dirt clod battles. There was also a big, old cottonwood to one side of the hill, and man were you cool if you were the kid who climbed the highest on it (I was never that kid. Always sucked at climbing trees).
I was just back there at the end of the summer for my grandmother's funeral. The fields are gone. Housing tracts everywhere. My grandmother sold the house and property a few years after I graduated high school, and though the house was still there, it was so dingy and untended that it looked awful. My mom, brother, and I stopped there one last time to see it, since we knew there were plans to move the house and build on the property. It was almost as sad of a moment as my grandmother's funeral.
man what i wouldn't give for one of those wake up calls now. dad drank coffee like air. so i could smell the coffee in the kitchen. dad sat at the table in the dark with a coffee and a cigarette. and sometimes i would sit with him and just talk.
All of these childhood memories are awesome, but that one gave me a pretty big chuckle. 