my human geography
Roller coasters zoom past you going speeds you can only imagine, and drinks spill and glasses smash inside one of the many themed restaurants inside the happiest place on earth. My father more than likely is flipping bottles behind his back and sweet talking the customers to give him tips. It smells like maraschino cherries and stale skunky beer that’s been ruminating on the floor since the place was built. He would finally escape that place and bring all those smells home to 511 East Waldo street, Groveland, Florida. The muggy nature of the critically acclaimed armpit of the US only amplified his want to go home and bask in the air conditioning. His number one priority though was his two bright eyed children and his stay-at-home wife. Two kids sun kissed by the many beach days they’ve had that year, and his Cajun wife who has just cooked jambalaya, the Tony Chachere’s almost making you cough as you walk in. The walls of this house kept all the smells and so many memories. It was an older brick house, so naturally it slooped and drooped to the side, and the roof did tend to leak from time to time. I mean truly, who decided a flat roof was good to stand in the wettest, rainiest state. It gave the house character, to put it nicely. We lived within bike-riding distance to my sister and I’s middle school. Even better, we only had to cross one street to get there. We rode through as much shade as we could get on the way there, under the giant old oak trees. We also got to ride past our huge backyard, bigger than about three of our houses combined. The dirt started to build up along the fence, as our dog Sparkles would always chase us as we rode along the fence and bark us a goodbye, as well as a good luck at our first years at school. Right as the leaking roof got to be too much and our plane to high and dry Colorado lifted off the tarmac, a sink hole opened up in front of old 511 East Waldo. I like to say I’m surprised, but we all saw it coming. It was the only part of the street that was made from brick. It’s almost like the pavers were pointing out that very spot to the universe to give us our short-awaited goodbye message. I only lived in Florida for about 8 years of my life, then we pulled into a white picket fence neighborhood in Lafayette. My not so nuclear family lived in the nuclear neighborhood for about a year. We even lived again in walking or biking distance again to my next elementary school, which was again right down the street. You have to give it to my parents, amazing planning on their part. Another brick building housed my education once again. Apparently, it was too same-old same-old, so we decided to move away once again. We decided that it just wasn’t dry and dirty and dusty enough. We took ourselves almost as far south as we could go in Colorado, and moved to Walsenburg. Some people say that Greeley is the opposite of Hawaii, I would like to argue its actually Walsenburg. We slaved away on my aunts Earthship all summer long. We stood in the hot Colorado sun, pounding sandy dirt into blazing hot tires until the day finally cooled off. Mixing concrete, pouring concrete, repeat. I ate my daily lunch sandwich which was definitely made by unwashed working hands. We would all drag ourselves back to our dusty old seventies’ trailers and sardine ourselves for the night and soak in our sweat. We bumped and jumped down a long road every morning to school. Once again, I walked into another brick schoolhouse I now had to call home for a few months. I never made very many good friends, I think they saw it on my face that I was onto bigger and better things. Well, whether they saw it or not, I was. We packed up our tiny trailer and stuffed it into a slightly bigger house nestled in Colorado City. The word ‘city’ is a very strong word for a town that doesn’t even make it on the weather broadcast’s map. Also, don’t get me wrong, this double wide was hardly bigger than our trailer that we rightfully left behind out in the boonies. Our family finally found the perfect place to settle down for a long while. The tired old buildings that encased the whole town gave it a special, homey feel. You’ll see businesses come and go from the local hotel. They like to move in, break even between their sales and their rent, and move onto the next place with their tails tucked between their legs, hoping for better. I mean, don’t move your expensive California business to frugal impoverished Colorado City. The valley does have two kids, and one is the hot older sibling named Rye, which was about 15 minutes up the mountain. There was where all the upper lower-class people lived. They could afford a real house, rather than one either picked out of a catalog or picked up off the back of a huge eighteen-wheeler meant to move trailer homes. Throughout Rye there was about a church for every person, but the morale of the town was far from Sunday best. Out in the sticks, you wouldn’t believe it, but there’s nothing to do. Kids would all peek their mom’s car out onto highway 165 and slither up the dark mountain to meet up and drink. Some took up smoking, or even better, gave themselves a reason to drop out of high school once their stomach starts getting suspiciously big. The best thing in town to do was go to the loaf and jug. Which, most recently has been scalped and rebranded as a shell gas station. It’s terrifying how much that affected me, a silly rebranded gas station shouldn’t rip my heart out, but it did. The loaf and jug was really in the center of the town, the heart if you will. Right next door there still lies a sad Family Dollar. Somehow, everyone that has signed their life away to the Family Dollar came in with bad expectations and even worse work ethic. They begrudgingly drag themselves to the counter and shoot you a look that says “Set the store on fire so I can go home.” When I learned to drive in my mom’s old Pontiac vibe, I knew every route before I even sat behind the wheel. I knew shortcuts, the fast way, the long way, the way to avoid the cops that would sometimes be lurking around the corners when you least expect it. Or most expect it if you’ve been around. The entire town lies across the aforementioned highway 165, the way you get anywhere. Really, I’ve been spoiled my driving years, I-25 to get pretty much anywhere I need to go in Colorado, then highway 165 to get anywhere I need to go around town. The most frequent place to stop for me on I-25 was Pueblo. The grand ol’ steel city. Most violent crime per capita in Colorado. Honestly, one of my favorite cities ever. Granted, I haven’t seen a lot, but I think Pueblo will always have a special place in my heart. I also know a lot of Pueblo like the back of my hand, not as much as the people that were born there though. They could take you from the old steel mill on the east side, all the way to Pueblo West, walking backwards, with a blindfold on. No, that’s not an exaggeration. It was a rude awakening for me when I realized not every city has I-25 running straight through it. Like when I packed my brain in a trunk and shipped myself off to college. Greeley is a lot like Pueblo, like a scary amount. I’m not entirely sure, but I feel like they were founded in about the same years. They have all the same infrastructure and detailing on the houses. Some of them look like they could definitely be 100 years old. The same demographic of people, the same highway placement, everything. First, I lived in a tiny dorm room. I picked the second floor because I feared someone crawling through my window. Especially if I picked the basement, I was going to definitely be a victim of breaking and entering. After I survived my freshman year, I moved about 500 yards away to an apartment. A basement apartment. I truly don’t know what I was thinking, but it’s not as bad as I was expecting it to be. I still live within walking distance to campus, and I only fear getting broken into when my neighbors are a few feet away from my window talking to each other. I still sleep with my window open every night though, so I must not be that scared. I cannot believe even with all those twists and turns I still ended up in the happiest place on earth. Living with three girls I absolutely love, and doing college like its riding a bike.