There is something about the summer that tends to evoke memories of summers past. For me, these summers were riddled with basketball camps, children’s retreats, and riding bicycles in the hot sun to the cornerstore ice-cream shop. But more importantly, my summers spoke of friendships.
One summer in particular, my last summer in California before I moved to Arizona to become closer to the sun and farther from my memories, shares a crystal ring in my memory. Perhaps because it was my last summer in California or because it was the only trip my dad and I went on together.
My dad must have heard of other fathers taking their children to far away places during the summer to engage in acts of mutual admiration. Some dads could camp with their sons, hike all day and ride mountain bikes at night. Some dads would build soapbox derby racers with their sons and race them to the botton of steep hills. My dad didn’t seem to care for this nonsense.
Instead, my dad decided, much without my permission, but also without my hesitance, that we would voyage to Paradise, California, just north of Sacramento, roughly an hour and a half’s flight from suburban Orange County.
Paradise is a small forest town where Paul Bunyan-esque characters would seek refuge from the cruel world. Land was abundant, filled with trees and lakes and ditches and hills, but mostly trees. The stores in Paradise were all self-owned and self-run mom and pop operations. A single franchise, McDonald’s, lay on a lonely street corner. Everything else; from video rental stores to gas stations, were owned by one person a piece. Their names were things like Ted or Bob or Steve or Gordy and their store’s name was simply their first name along with the name of what the store did, e.g. Ted’s Bait Shop. Bob’s Backhouse Beef Store, Steve’s Video Rentals, or Gordy’s Gas. Gordy’s Gas probably had a sign that said, "Pump it yourself you lazy bastard" below the price list. If there even was a price list.
Of course, my dad didn’t just pick Paradise out of a hat. His old college drinking buddy, Jeff, made his home there teaching eighth grade history. My dad wanted to visit Jeff, so he thought he’d take me along for the ride, killing both the reminisce the good ol’ days bird and the bond with your kid bird with a single, seemingly boring stone. I was also coincidentally grateful that Jeff had two boys, one going into his senior year of high school and the other going into the ninth grade. I was going into the eighth grade so these older boys seemed to fill me with wonder and worry simultaneously.
So my dad and I packed our bags and headed north to Paradise. Upon arrival, Jeff took us home in his convertible car; a car he wanted to show off to my dad by driving up to paradise from the Sacramento airport at roughly 80 miles an hour for two hours with the top down. My head was about to cave in by the time we made it back to his house.
But this story isn’t about my head caving in from 80 mile and hour, convertible top winds pressing directly against my skull for two hours, nor is it about my dad’s failed relationship with me or even about Jeff and my dad’s dual drinking problems. It isn’t about Jeff’s wife, Sybil, who wasn’t around at all during the first half of my stay at Paradise, owning to the fact that she had been a member on the grand jury that indicted Ted Kazynski, the unibomber, a luddite woodsman from Michigan who bombed people. I’ve always found it odd that a group of luddite woodsmen from Paradise indicted him. Nor is this story about the gaping scrape I had received across my face a few days prior to the voyage from falling off my skateboard. It’s not about those towns where all the kids are on drugs all day because they simply have nothing better to do. This story, as I said, is about friendships and about childhood. It’s about those moments that force you to continue. Those tiny experiences that, when everything else goes away, you’ll still carry with you. You know the ones I’m talking about. And this is the clearest one I have.
I met Ken, the older boy, first. He seemed extremely nice, and perhaps a little overbearing. But I hadn’t paid Ken much thought. I had spent my entire airplane time wondering what Mike was like. Does he skateboard like I do? Does he do the same drugs as me? Will we even get along?
When I met Mike, I breathed a tiny sigh of relief. He stood average height with chin length hair. Everyone had chin length hair back then. That or spiked hair. Don’t ask.
As we got to talking it turned out he did skateboard like me and he did do the same drugs as me. What’s more, he liked getting in trouble, telling jokes, and laughing almost as much as I did. He enjoyed watching Quentin Tarantino movies as much as I did, although I must confess—I had never seen one until he showed me one, Pulp Fiction. I fell in love with it immediately. And Mike and I became friends immediately. We would eat Honey Comb cerial and answer the trivia questions on the back of the box. "Egyptian Money," he would say, knowing that the correct answer was "food." The question must have been "What is Honey Comb’s most frequent usage?"
And he introduced me to all his friends. Actually, he only introduced me to one friend, Jake, but he told me about all his other friends.
Jake was an amazing skateboarder and a down-to-eart, doesn’t say much kind of kid. His taciturnity only made him nicer in my eyes, and we spent most of the days that week, the three of us, walking around town and discussing bands like Goldfinger, Face to Face, and Screeching Weasel. Or we would argue over who knew more about Star Wars. In fact, I knew I was way over my head, but it was probably that week more than anything else, that made me go back through my old Star Wars comic books and magazines, catalysting the obsession I am cursed with today.
But one day, in the middle of the week, Mike and Jake told me of something they liked to do when they felt particularly risky. They liked to go into someone else’s yard and swim in their pool. Being from Suburban Orange County, this idea seemed absurd. They could pull out a gun and shoot us all instantly, I rationalized. But they persisted, citing that having a gun pulled on us was just part of the risk that made it worth while. Their confidence made me realize how small of a town it was and how unlikely the prospect of getting a gun pulled on us was.
So that night, at around midnight, when David Letterman ended, we walked over, them in their bathing suits and me, not having brought a bathing suit, in my boxer shorts. We all wore flipflops and I must have looked like a half naked match stick walking through the dark forest. In retrospect, the darkness was on my side.
And when we came to the pool, we slowly and quietly climbed in, underneathe that huge midnight Paradise moon, lighting the sky above and the water below. We didn’t ever actually swim around, rather we just waded there for about 30 seconds and ran home, dripping wet, with clanking flipflops. Interestingly, while in the pool, when one of us would make even the slightest move or noise, we would simultaneously laugh, as silent as possible, but very visibly, which made us laugh more. By the time we exited the pool and got out of hearing distance, we laughed and bragged the whole way home.
Our fathers, though drunk, still heard us but chose not to say anything to us that night and I thank them silently every time I think of this act because it allowed us to pretend we had gotten away with it, if for only one night.
By the morning our parents, though expressionless, were not upset at all. Perhaps they were jealous of our moment, amused at our antics, or even just astonished with our youthfulness. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the memory.
And I never saw Mike or Jake again, though I think about them often. It’s for the best though. They have stayed golden through this absurd yet prolific memory in my mind’s eye. If for nothing else, I have that much. That vision of the Paradise midnight moon illuminating the sky and the water or those lazy days of walking around and talking without a care in the world. These visions grow with me. They refurbish with my growing thoughts. They stay with me always, embodying the beauty and magic of summer, reminding my constant world of the simplicity of life. And they change me—forever.