Caucasion Trash Rememberance #81

The local kids in our neighborhood (we lived exactly on a U shaped street, exactly at the top of the U, which some say is bad Feng Shui) for some reason liked to hang out in front of our house, near the planter where there were some dark green shrubs. They smoked and just hung out there at night, dark figures in the night talking, occasionally laughing. "Hahahahahahaha" went the group. One of these kids names was Sundance. who later we had heard was killed when he fell out of a truck, like a frog exploded on the street. He was red-haired, chubby, sinister.

One night, someone in the group lit our shrubs on fire. My Dad called the cops. Later, a few days maybe, it became clear this was not a good thing to do. Sundance saw me on the street one day as I rode my bike. He ran up to me and held my handle bars and looked at me. "Why did your Dad call the cops on us? That's not right." I though he was going to hit me.

It wasn't long after the burning bush episode that my Dad began looking for a house in the Desert, far away from Rialto and San Bernardino, which is where we lived at the time. Eventually we did move to the Mojave Desert. There were very few houses when we moved there, just a lot of fields with tumble weeds, and definitely no one out side hanging around. Street blocks were around three to four times those in Rialto, and only had around 3 houses on them, if that. There were lots of dogs running around. I was afraid to go out in the Desert exploring, because when you got near a house, big packs of dogs would come out running and barking. Some dogs were wild. I began walking with a big stick.