1st TAKE/2nd LOOK: #23

Preparing for my 40th Reunion, and going back in time.

Not tri-colored but I’ll settle for bi. I wrote the post below on the 13th, describing my first car. Then I see this minty-pinty today. God loves cars.

What do you pack when you go back in time? Looks like I’ll be figuring that out next month when I take a solo road trip back to Farmington New Mexico. As explained in my story below, I didn’t actually graduate from Farmington Hi but do consider it my alma mater.

I cannot remember how many times I made this trip. Searching for salvation as a child. Reaching for redemption as a so-called grown-up. Check out the Land of Enchantment.

Driving a highway that seems like an old familiar friend, I stop and think it was 1986 when I left. I’ve only returned twice. Both by plane. I’m going “back home” solo in a car. That’s a trip!

The piece below is something I posted on the 1982 Scorpions Reunion Page a couple of days ago. I will be posting from the road on a schedule TBD. Look for my digital postcards from the road.

Let’s ride,

Ric

What Farmington High School means to me.

I lived a nomadic childhood, every school year between the 4th and 11th grades started in a different city. For once in my life, the first day of school was in the same place my 11th and 12th grades. It wouldn’t last, however, as I left Farmington in March of 1982 in the dead of night. Due to a bitter divorce, my parents shuttled us three kids back and forth between California and New Mexico.

I ended up graduating from the fourth high school I attended. The last one was just three months. I have one friend from that school I still am friends with. My two best friends from childhood and Farmington are now dead. Richard Karst died way back in 1984 and Mark Hogan passed recently due to Covid complications. Richard, Mark, and I spent every day together from the second semester of my sophomore year until I moved. RIP fellas.

The three of us worked at Big Cheese Pizza together. I worked at Hacienda Lumber Company and met Paul Lopez. Paul would become my best friend and roommate, and moved to California with us in 1982. I’m looking forward to connecting with long-lost friends and making some new ones.

I had a tri-colored Ford Pinto (for conflicting eye-witness reports) with an 8-track hooked up to house speakers, and a bong in the glove box. We spent a lot of Saturdays at the record shop. And nights cruising from Big-O to Sonic. We partied at The Wash and Farmington Lake. Mr. Hunter’s English class was the worst experience of my school life. Crazy nutbag Fero? Enough said there.

Farmington means memories that are over 50 years old now. I lived in the area on and off roughly between the years 1972 and 1986. I’ve returned twice for reunions. Once in 1992 and again in 2007. This trip I’m returning solo for the first time, as my divorce was final this summer.

Farmington and Farmington High School mean many things to me, at many different times in my life. I remember feeling, moving back after spending 9th grade in San Clemente Ca three blocks from the beach, suffocated and trapped. Farmington was slow and small. And nowhere near the beach.

I remember the first time it snowed overnight when I was 8 years old. It was three feet high! No school that day! What beautiful paradise was this land of enchantment? Fast forward a few years and the engine block freezes because you forgot to plug in the engine warmer or the black ice causes a spin-out wreck. F&^%#$@ snow.

So Farmington has all of these complex and conflicting memories and moments, both joy and pain. Love and hurt. My first real romance was there, as was my first broken heart. I learned to drive there. Shoot guns and ride bulls. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. In small-town Farmingville.

Farmington taught me more than a set of skills. Farmington instilled in me a way of life. Of rugged reliability. I didn’t know a lot of quitters in Farmington. My work ethic was shaped and formed there. My dad was an alcoholic asshole, so what I remember most about growing up in that area is the sense of responsibility parents had for all kids.

If I f#%$#@ up at a friend’s house, his dad would kick my ass. Then he’d call my dad so I got my ass kicked again at home. I couldn’t wreck a car there without my dad finding out. Richard’s dad would make us work for weed money. Mark’s dad would trade out Mark’s weed with oregano. My dad never found weed on me.

I came back in 1984 after a busted relationship left me broke and broken in Albuquerque, just passing through. Leaving Nebraska and returning to a bunch of I told you so’s in Cali was a hard no. So Farmington then became a homecoming of sorts for me. Those were some great times and some of the best years of my life.

I lived for a time on a 5-acre farm in Flora Vista, between 5th and 7th grades. We would come to Farmington, the BIG city, once a week for “supplies”. Sounds like we lived there in the 1800s, right? I had a couple of friends who were brothers there in Flora Vista. I left the farm in 1980. In 2007, I went to visit the old place.

Old Man Haley, the brother's dad, was standing in his front yard, leaning on a shovel and shootin the shit with another old cowboy. I got out of the car. He stopped talking and squinted at me. He spat a tobacco stream out and said “G*ddamn Ric, you're still an ugly old son of a b***h.”

That’s what Farmington New Mexico means to me. It gave me my internal voice. I’m a genuine human being because of Farmington. I have authenticity because of my childhood and adolescent experiences in small-town America. Growing up in Farmington created in me a basement floor, a solid bottom that I cannot fall through.

I write about Gen-X and how we are a completely unique generation alive today. Our analog childhood and digital adulthood make us unlike any other before or yet to come. I’ve discovered many of us lived through chaotic childhoods and have come out the other side, scarred but still kicking.

I’m inviting all of my 1982 Scorpion classmates to share what Farmington and Farmington High School mean to you. I want to post these essays and share them with my community (with permission). I am fascinated by the stories of who stayed and who left. And who came back? And what connection can still hold so many of us together over all of these years?

I will be chronicling this trip on my Substack platform, Compass Star Wordsmith. Please subscribe to ride along and get dispatches from the road straight to your inbox.

I’m traveling down I-40, a familiar path. Now a new journey. Ride along with me,

Ric