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I moved around alot as a kid.
My parents were divorced before I could crawl and by the time I was twelve I had lived in twelve houses and changed schools at every grade level.
The one constant through all of this disruption was that I would spend summers at my dad’s in Southern Oregon. So, when my mom told me at the end of eighth grade that we would be moving from Tucson to Seattle, I knew that once again I’d be spending the summer at my dad’s before starting high school in a new city come fall.
Yay.
I stepped off the plane at the Medford airport with my walkman over my ears, and a canvas side bag full of cassettes, just like I had done the year before and the year before that.
But when I entered the terminal, there was no sign of my dad.
It wasn’t that big of a deal, my dad was known for always running late.
But when there was still no sign of him forty five minutes after I had picked up my luggage, I was starting to think this was more than just being late.
And when the last car left the tiny airport parking lot and there was only one taxi cab left, it was time to take matters into my own hands.
So I dug into my pockets for some cash that my mom had given me as summer spending money, and told the cab driver to take me not to my dad’s but to my friend's house about twenty minutes away, in the hills between Medford and Ashland.
The cab driver dropped me off at the mail-stop, and I huffed my suitcase down a half mile gravel driveway.
My friend lived on five acres that was split down the middle by a creek. On one side was forest land of Oak and Madrone trees, on the other side was open pasture with small a hill that the house sat on top of, surrounded by bowling ball sculptures.
His dad collected bowling balls from flea markets and then integrated them into the landscape in an ironic commentary of American kitsch.
Scattered throughout the property, all you could see were urethane orbs of every color…stacked in the form of a pyramid, or hung from trees by fishing line, or posted on rebar like giant lollipops…
If Willy Wonka and the Big Lebowski bought a farm this is how it would feel.
I knocked on the door, and my friend who had no idea that I was coming, greeted me like I had just been there the day before.
His mom had me call my mom and we tracked down my dad. As it turned out, my dad - who was a minor league baseball umpire - had a game that day and wasn’t expecting me to arrive until the following day. My mom claimed no knowledge of this.
Obviously there was a difference of opinion between the divorcees, but what matters most is that during this disagreement, nobody told me where to go.
So, I hung up the phone, and I stayed at their house...for the entire summer.
Sure, I saw my dad on weekends when he didn’t have a game, but aside from that it was an entire summer basically doing what I wanted and when I wanted.
When we weren’t playing in the creek, learning to waterski, rafting down the rogue river, we would spend the evening binging the Joshua Tree album, or learning about new bands from his older sister. Sometimes we would go to the mall and hangout, or sneak into the theater to see pivotal movies like Die Hard or Full Metal Jacket.
On Labor Day weekend, his parents hosted their “Bowquet” party: bowling and croquet.
They hired a band, placed high top cocktail tables around the property, and free-spirited friends came over to play a made up game that parodied the high-brow pass-time of the UK.
At the end of the summer, I got on a plane to Seattle, and when I landed I made my mom promise that we wouldn’t move or change schools during high school.
In two thousand twenty, fires swept through the Rogue valley, and destroyed thousands of homes including the home of that family.
I immediately reached out to ask how I could help. They said that everything was replaceable except for photographs. They had lost all documented memories.
As it turned out, I still had many of the holiday photo cards which showed them aging through the years on that very property.
And then I found a picture from that summer, with me, my best friend, and his dad…and I was reminded how grateful I was that at age fourteen, when I needed it the most, I had a second family that gave me perfect mix of freedom, stability, and bowling balls that I needed.