Forty Years Of Where I Was For Key Moments of Californian American History

Earthquakes, Rodney King riots, Trump elected president and more

This is the best idea I’ve stolen this year. Thank you Melissa R. Mendelson. This should be a prompt.

1986 Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion

They wheeled a TV into my Second grade classroom because it was the first teacher in space. We all counted down.

Three… Two… One… Blastoff!!!

After about 40 seconds I remember watching the jet flame consuming the main tank. When the craft split apart I was the first kid to say, “The space shuttle blew up!”

Then everyone started crying. They turned off the TV but the damage was done. I remember the teachers debating to send us home. I was like, “Yes! Send me home! I am traumatized!”

Really I didn’t give a shit. I realized I was going to die when I was three and had another four years to process it. Dying in a space shuttle explosion is a noble death.

I’m not sure if this really happened or if it was a Punky Brewster episode. I’ve done a lot of drugs.

1991 Persian Gulf War

It was announced on the radio that the war had begun while my mom was driving me to a pee-wee basketball game.

By the time we got back into the car after my game the war was about over. The coalition had destroyed 80% of their military resources and the official cease fire came three days later. We kicked their asses and Wolf Blitzer became a household name.

1992 Rodney King Riots

About an hour after the verdict acquitting the cops of almost all charges, my afternoon cartoons were interrupted by live footage of the beginning of the riot on Florance and Normandy. My father and I watched Regniald Denny get dragged out of his truck, then get his skull caved in with a brick.

Thinking things looked pretty grim for us white folk at that moment in time, my dad ran upstairs and came back down with an armload of guns.

Everyone was running everywhere with armloads of guns in California in the 90's.

“To the roof, son!” as he tossed me a shotgun. “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes! I don’t have much ammo.”

I thought he was being overdramatic, but I sat on the roof to humor him for three hours. We lived in the suburbs about 30 miles from the nearest civil unrest.

1994 Northridge Earthquake

To be more specific we lived in Granada Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles. The next town over was Northridge.

It started as a typical California medium sized earthquake when suddenly it shifted gears to The Big One. It was 4:21 in the morning and I was thrown three feet in the air while lying on my bed. The streetlight outside was on as I was thrown up and had gone out on my way down. When I landed the component stereo I had on the top of my book case headboard nailed me in the head, busting me open.

I ran downstairs barefoot over shattered glass without cutting them. My dad wasn’t so lucky. Possibly because of his armload of guns.

The earthquake had blown open our front doors. I ran outside and slipped on something and went sliding into the grass. A few hours later all my neighbors were outside listening to a radio. One of them says, “Did somebody step in shit?”

When the doors blew open my dog ran out and took a shit as she did. I had slipped and slid on it. It was all over me. My Mom ran inside to get me a change of clothes. There was no running water or electricity for a week.

The earthquake happened in January and I didn’t go back to school until late April. The school was completely destroyed and our classes were in bungalows for the next 3 years. Our house was yellow tagged and we had to move out for two years while they fixed it.

A week after the earthquake, my friend Josh Spry and I rode our bikes down a closed section of the 118 and looked over the edge of a bridge that collapsed. It was a very cool, surreal moment.

1995 OJ Simpson Verdict

When I tell people growing up in Los Angeles in the early 90’s was nuts, I’m not kidding. We all became a little nuts as a result. The product of these conditions were Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and myself. Speaking of Kardashian…

Again, the TV was wheeled into the classroom. This time it was in my honors history class. The teacher announced the history class from across the hall was going to join us for the verdict.

The other class was all the football players. They all brought their chairs and sat behind us.

“Imma start bombing on these fools if OJ is guilty.” One of them announced. The other football players grunted in agreement.

I think OJ did it, but I was very relived he was found not guilty at that moment in time.

2001 World Trade Towers

I woke up at noon that day, Pacific time. I had to work at the pharmacy at four. I turned on the TV and there was a picture of a smoldering pile on the ground with fifty helicopters flying around it. I changed the channel and there was a picture of the pile from a different angle.

Is this on every channel?

It was on every channel and I had cable. What the hell was so important about this smoldering pile?

I called my mom and asked what was going on. She said to turn on CNN. I saw the plane crash into the tower and yelled, “Holy shit!”

Everyone was glued to the set that day as they replayed the plane hitting the tower over and over. They showed the people jumping from the building and splatting. And over and over they showed the tower collapsing. It was awful. Getting on an airplane was never the same.

2016 Trump Wins Election

I was at a gas station outside of Santa Barbara putting gas into my car the day after the election. I was addicted to heroin at the time so the only thing I cared about was heroin. I overheard someone say to someone else, “Can you believe he won?”

My ears perked up the moment I heard the word he.

I didn’t even bother watching the election because it was supposed to be a blowout. Hillary was 10 points up in the polls on election day.

I checked my phone and sure as shit, he won. I was optimistic at the beginning but after seeing what he did in his first two weeks in office, I had seen enough.

2020 COVID-19 Lockdown

I thought I was ready for the apocalypse, but nothing can prepare you for seeing a grocery store with no food. Especially in Santa Barbara. Never in my life have I seen anything like it. Everyone was shell shocked. That was probably the last time I was out in public without a mask on.

Trader Joe’s was completely out of everything except wine and candy. So I stockpiled wine and candy. I regret nothing.

In May I flew to Pennsylvania to work on a project with Leon Brennan. I had a layover Atlanta where I wandered through an eerily deserted airport. There was one restaurant in one terminal that was open. I sat at the bar of the only open Buffalo Wild Wings in the United States and had the bartender take this picture.

I seen some shit, man.