somtimes i get nostalgic...

Growing up on cheesy spaghetti westerns staring Sam Elliot and Robert Duvall made me relish the thought of moving to the mountains. In no time I’d master a sawed-off, settle on my favorite brothel and procure a tolerance for warm whiskey poured by a man whose been hearing my drunken woes since before the war, but upon arriving in Burrough Valley and realizing that it wasn’t quite Dodge City, I had to make due with what I had.

By the summer of ‘00 I was an ardent Kenny Chesney fan whose only dream was to someday find a girl who would appreciate me for my tractor. I began riding horses with a group of old men up and down an array of back trails that run through the mountains like veins. We talked about our ex-wives and our failing immune systems, and I was almost to the point of full posse member when my horse ran me into a branch on one of our excursions and I fell off. I felt like a badass, despite the tears, but never again mounted up, and horses have since gone on my long list of irrational yet explicit fears (ranking after midgets but before antique furniture).

Although discouraged and humiliated that I couldn’t live up to the mantra of ‘Get back up on that horse’, there were other cowboy stereotypes to be fulfilled that wouldn’t cause me pain. The rest of the summer i sported a cowboy hat, armed myself with a wrist rocket and began to spit alot. One of my football coaches was a direct descendant of Wyatt Earp, i felt surrounded by authenticity. Unfortunetly it was all in my own head, the result of isolation i suppose. I was forced to stop shooting shit with old men and start on summer school assignments.

Sierra Elementary, my fourth school since kindergarten, brought the real world crashing down. Kids my own age were a lot less anxious to befriend me than senior citizens and it wasn’t long before I broke down and put away the Nascar outer ware. A blink 182 shirt proved to be more effective than a giant belt buckle when it came to advertising myself as one to be befriended. I shed myself of any redneck paraphernalia on the double. I considered it a waste, throwing away somebody that I spent the last three months building, although not all of it was completely discarded, for instance I still don’t consider women equal. At the time it felt like selling out; unadulterated conformity, but with that many schools under my belt I knew things had to be sacrificed.

I don’t regret it. It wasn’t until a little while later that I learned that this was to be my final school, and that these friends were to actually last and not be asked to keep in touch after I moved away. 5th grade was the first time anyone ever perceived me as sarcastic, a title I grow weary of hearing now but was fascinated with back then. Ive also come away with a different view of the mountain life, one of fun, freedom and disorderly conduct. No one parties like a mountain kid, and who else can say that they’ve actually passed a pipe with a real Indian?