Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I sat in the flickering light of a box television
in was nineteen sixty one
I was seeing the future on a bug eye
I was being babysat by that space age box
there was no bomb shelter in the back yard
but there was a back yard, a railroad track
behind the wooden fence, I spent many days
playing on the tracks, behind the tracks
was a small farm with a barn, i played in the
barn with the kid that lived on that farm
one day I was playing on the rafters
that had ropes on them, and I almost hung myself
the little farm kid yanked the ropes, and I fell
in the hay stack, I never played with the kid again
I ate cabbage growing in the field, I put a penny
on the tracks, all this happened in a tracked home
five miles away from Disneyland, in Anaheim
California, in Orange county, I had orange trees
in my back yard, and there were orange groves
near my neighborhood, I played marbles on
my street, and made fun of the girl across the street
but those days were over now, I was eleven now, and
had stopped making fun of her, before I turned ten
I liked Saturdays, because I got to sit up with my mom
and dad, and watch the late movie show, but this
night I was all alone, because my mom and dad
were out

L.A. is about thirty miles away, my dad moved from Anaheim when I was 12
to another city in orange county, Tustin. I was a teenager in the late 60's in
Tustin.Orange county is a scary place.Nice beaches when I was growing up.

was there in 63 at 10 years old....my folks were california dreamin'....car blew engine in 29 palms, we were stuck there a week watchin drive in movies every night in a 51 ford....hottest place ive ever been....

my dad took me and my mom to the desert when I was a kid
it was a around a two hour drive from Anaheim on roads through
cities and towns, I loved running around in the desert, I live here
now, now you take a freeway all the way. it's a about a fifteen minute
drive from Joshua Tree to 29 Palms. Sometimes I think the poet in me
started in my walks in nature in the desert. It's hotter in the low
desert, Palm Springs, ect. in the summer, about ten degrees difference.
It gets cold here in the high desert in the winter. At least for me,
somebody that has lived their whole life in California.