820

Odd that today's date is the same number as today's post. No this isn't my 820th post and no this isn't about August 20th but it does deal with a special number 820.

After leaving the "Girls of Serena (who hate all the boys of Serena)" we had moved to Goleta. Maybe Goleta really is where they put everything they don't want in Santa Barbara. There is some political truth to that, however the city didn't move us out of the way. Circumstance, a nice word for 'life choices', which is just another nice word for, 'someone f'ed up', had us moving from the Riviera of the West Coast to Goleta the Good Land. Although I tell you it didn't feel like it was a good thing.

As much as I loved Serena Road and as much as I loathed Via Rueda and thought we would "stay there forever", I never imagined we would one day live in the house at 820 Puente Drive. Further 'circumstances' would one day have us moving out of 559 Via Rueda and into 820 Puente Drive

I knew this house. I had played in this house. I had run across it's front lawn many times before we ever took up residence there. As we spent our days along the back road and the adventures we found along that path, we one day came to meet the residence of 820 Puente Drive. Steve Cox was the name of our new friend. He was an only child and his father was some musician, recording, producer something or other. I didn't know what Steve was talking about at that time. To this point most of my music was what the parents played (Clancy Brothers and religious works) or what I heard on KIST AM with Casey Kasem  or what I sang in the church choir (Gregorian Chant and lots of Hallelujah Praise Be's). Steve's father apparently had something to do with Woodstock, the album at least.

When we weren't hanging out in the music room, we would be hiking the backroad or butting heads with the two goats the Cox family kept as living lawnmowers. The music room was a bright, wood floored, french doored square, adjacent to the garage, with doors leading out to the front lawn and also to the back, Algerian ivy covered patio, that would double as sort of outdoor swimming pool for mice when ever it rained. It was filled with musical instruments and there was a reel to reel tape deck from which I first heard, "Gimme an F!".

"F!!!!!" came the chant back from the crowd as Country Joe and the Fish lead the rain soaked youth at Woodstock in a chant spelling out FUCK!. Wow this sure isn't the Clancy Brothers. It's a chant but not Gregorian. The rest of that summer I think that was the only word we ever said to each other.

The house itself was situated on over an acre, however it was an odd arrangement. We lived in the house at the front of the property and the back of the property was a landscape company. Hundreds of potted plants and trees and mowers and a small office that was built in the same style of the home we in which we were now living. When I was in 7th and 8th grade either my brother or I would go to the landscape company and borrow a mower (gas powered but still a push mower) and we would work until we had walked back and forth from one end of that huge lawn to the last. We would edge and sweep and rake and water and trip the juniper bushes. Then we would turn on the sprinklers and listen to their ch ch ch ch chchchchchchchchchch as they chopped back and forth. 

Some days when it was hot we would grab the head of the sprinkler and aim it at each other like an H2O machine gun. There was never talk of drought at that time and we would spend hours shooting each other in an attempt to cool off from the stifling summer heat. In fall we would have the pleasure of spending a couple hours raking up the leaves from a huge sycamore tree that grew at the edge of the property. Sometimes we would climb to the top, holding on to a branch no thinker than our forearm and we would survey the land like a lookout on a tall ship surveying the sea. We would hold on as the wind whipped around us and made us sway gently back and forth. Sometime I would climb up there to get away and get some alone time or to think of a certain crush. If that tree is still there, close to the top, carved in the bark is SC + KO 4EVER. Oh dreams of youth.

820 Puente Drive. The music room is inside the french doors on the right.
The faces? Well those are covered because I don't want no hassles.
That's me "acting the jeer" as my mom always said.
My mom is second from right in the back row and next to her is Aunt Sheila, my father's sister.