Summer of 1983, we lived in Standish California. It was such a small town that if you blinked while you drove through, you’d defiantly miss it. Mostly full of dust and sagebrush, but people had their ranches out there. If you ventured into the town you would see chickens, horses, cattle and maybe goats. For a mere dollar you could buy fresh from the cow’s tit milk in a gallon mayonnaise jar. When my parents bought their property it came with two three bedroom single wide mobile homes sitting on five acres. A horse corral for an invisible horse, a chicken coop, and a scary little stick cabin that a wayside traveler must have put together to keep out of the weather.
All four of us kids kept very busy out at the make believe ranch. It was hotter than the hinges of hell in the summer months, and the old mobile homes would sure heat up. Ours didn’t have one of those fancy swamp coolers or forced air, so we would play in the sprinkler, or find the wheel barrel, fill it up with water and take turns sitting in it. My mom was volunteering at the local BLM office in hope to get hired as a permanent employee. Soon after my mom leaving every morning to go to work, dad would get up and leave too. He wasn’t working so he would go down to the local bar and hang out with his bar friends. That left me, the oldest child to care for my sister and two brothers.
Our days usually started out getting up and turning on the television. My brothers would sit there contently while I would fix them a bowl of cereal. The television watching became boring when cartoons were over and soap operas started to broadcast. That’s when we would become adventurous and find things to do. We drug the horse trough out to the middle of the yard once to use as a swimming pool. Or walking to the edge of the property was always fun but I had to carry my youngest brother who was 9 years younger than I.
Lunch time was always hard to wait for. We were all pretty active kids so hunger came...