Ya know, I said this whole "turning 40" thing wasn't tripping me, and it's really not, but it has made me a bit introspective. I've been thinking a bit lately about life, what I've done with it, and where I should go from here.
I was born at 6:50 am on May 6th, 1964 at Arcade Hospital at Del Paso Blvd & Arcade Blvd in Sacramento. My mom remembers what time because the doctor told her to hurry up and push me out, because he had a surgery scheduled for 7am. The hospital is no longer there. My parents lived in a house at 28th & C streets, across from Stanford Park (yes, by the city dump). That house is no longer there. One of my earlierst memories is standing in a play-pen in front of the window looking out at the park and hearing trains on the tracks behind the baseball field. (I believe the world was still in black & white at the time, or so my memories tell me. It's a psychological oddity that i don't have any "color" memories until we got a color TV in the house where my parents live now, about 1970 or so.)
1964 was 5 years before Apollo eleven landed on the moon. Ten years before Nixon resigned. Eleven years before the end of the Vietnam War. I think about those historical events and think, 'they were a long time ago." But ya know, the oddest comparison that really wigs me out is that I was born only 19 years after the end of World War II. Just 19 years. That's that same time span as 1985 to now. WWII is freakin' ancient history, and I was born just 19 years after it ended! WWII was still "current events" to many people living when I was born. I'm officially Old.
Oh, and my sister sent me my first true "you're getting pretty damn old" birthday card today. No, I mean it. That was the caption inside the card. "You're getting pretty damn old." Hehehe... I had to laugh.
Oh, well, to celebrate my pre-birthday day, I took a drive up Hwy 65 toward Camp Far West lake. I hadn't driven up Hwy 65 in over 15 years, and now I remember why. It's dismal up there. Lincoln is growing like crazy, but outside of that, it's crappy farm and ranchland that's as depressing as pictures of the old Dustbowl towns in depression era Oklahoma. No wonder the Indians that run Thunder Valley got the land they did. No one else wanted it. Ugh....
Camp Far West was thoroughly depressing, too. I usually love lakes and rivers. In fact, I DID like the lake itself. But the campgrounds were, like.... I dunno... Dustbowl comes to mind again. If you like dismal, dreary camping in a place that is bound to be just as hot as Sacramento in the summertime, this is your lake. Plenty of trash cans to hold the empty beer bottles from the drunken boaters.
I did find a $5 bill in one of the trash cans, though. I threw my sandwich wrapper away, and there was a nice, crisp, new $5 bill at the bottom. Naturally, I dove in after it, and worried about my dignity later. Hey, it bought me a milkshake on the way home.
Anyway, having completed my 40th year on this planet, I seem to like it more and more. I think I'll stay and explore it a little bit more. Just not Lincoln....
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