Life of Brian
1996
Twenty-one years old. Isn't 21 an interesting time in our lives. We can legally consume alcohol. We can also legally gamble. You know what you can't do without paying a lot of extra money... Rent a car! So absurd isn't it! I just found out recently that there isn't any law stating you have to be 25 to rent a car. However, car rental companies do not like renting cars out to anyone under that age. They can do so, but normally this incurs quite a larger rental fee than if you were 25 or older. Makes sense, I guess. Most male's prefrontal cortexes aren't fully formed until the age of 25. Decision making and logical thinking are two areas the prefrontal cortex controls. Makes complete sense then why the military likes to draft 18-year-olds into our military. Knowing that my prefrontal cortex had not completely formed by the age of 21 now explains why I got married at this very young age! lol, only kidding. Heck, my wife doesn't read this blog anyways, so I'm safe!
Yes, In June of 1996 I would marry my girlfriend that I had been dating since my senior year of high school. She had graduated in 1994 and was attending UOP in central California. She started taking trips during the day with a guy on campus who had a gun rack in his pickup, so I figured it was now or never. I couldn't compete with a pickup AND a gun rack. Many a weekend was spent up in Stockton prior to the proposal. She lived in the dorms, so I would rent a hotel room for the weekend and go up and see her. The drive was a fairly decent one and many times I would leave directly after getting off of work at iti. It took me roughly six hours to drive there from Ojai. I'd take Hwy 33 all the way up to Hwy 41 where I'd come out on Interstate 5 at Kettleman City. The rest of the trip was on I-5. It was a boring drive for the most part, but I was young, so I never got too tired while driving. We were engaged for one year. The proposal took place in June of 95. Nothing outlandish like you see on social media these days. Just a simple dinner out and the question was popped. She mistakenly said yes, and we are still married to this day. I vividly remember driving home one particular weekend from Stockton. I was on hwy 33 southbound. It had been raining quite a bit and was raining as I drove. Hwy 33 is a series of dips up in that region and everywhere the road dipped, a small lake would form. I was a fairly cautious driver and knew to slow down while traversing these lakes. While slowing down for one particular scenario, a sedan, possibly a Buick, went flashing and splashing by me at a crazy rate of speed. The driver of this car must have known the trick was to just blast through these lakes because I watched as it got further and further away, every now and then sending up a huge splash of water. Soon the vehicle was no longer in my sight, and I never saw it off in a ditch anywhere, so I imagine they made it safely to wherever it was they were going. I thought surely, I would see them in a field down the road after hydroplaning off one of those lakes.
Our wedding took place in Ojai on maybe the hottest day in June of 96. I remember a brush fire started that day somewhere out towards Fillmore. We could see the smoke from the wedding venue. One of the groomsmen had a cold and the heat was just about all he could manage being slightly sick. He claims that while we were saying our vows he was teetering back and forth trying not to pass out. My wife insisted that we have the wedding right in the hottest part of the day too, so we tied the knot in a frying pan. Our venue didn't allow alcohol on-site. Little did I know that my relatives from out of state overcame this rule by hiding their own bar in the trunk of their vehicle! Something I'd practice years later at a different wedding. Our honeymoon was spent on a cruise ship in the Bahamas. We visited the island of Nassau, Freeport, and one of Royal Caribbeans own islands where we could snorkel and relax on a pristine beach. Of course they offered overly expensive drinks on that island as well. Although I was not 21 at the time, I believe I was able to order a pina colada or two. Every minute was a fun experience on that ship until the trip home. We both developed a cold and were quite miserable sailing back to Florida. On the very first night, the seas were so rough that while standing around waiting to be seated at our dinner table, we had to brace ourselves. The water in our glasses once seated would teeter back and forth with the swaying ship! Pretty impressive when you think about the size of these massive cruise ships. Our room was one deck above the lowest possible deck on the ship. This meant we had a porthole for a window and could see the ocean water. I recall thinking to myself during the muster drills that if there was a problem with the ship, and we had to evacuate up to the deck with the lifeboats, we were screwed! My prefrontal cortex must have been somewhat formed to be thinking in this way, but it was so true! The hallways were soo narrow and if the power had been knocked out it would have been pandemonium down there. I just shoved it to the bottom of my concerns, didn't think about it at all while onboard. The very next month after getting married, we'd go to Laughlin around my 21'st birthday. Sarah was not old enough to gamble yet, she probably doesn't have a very good review of this trip. I on the other hand was very lucky playing blackjack. On the first night there I'd win $700.00 on a dollar slot machine. I saved this money and bought a camper shell for our truck. It was a fun weekend.
Both Sarah and I are very thankful for all the help we received from our families before and after our wedding. It was a memorable event. Now that Sarah and I were married, I decided to move up to Stockton and find work while she attended school. This would have been the following September after our wedding. This also meant quitting iti. We rented a small apartment thanks to some help from her mom and dad. One of my first jobs after I moved up there was working for a drain patrol company. I was trained by a guy by the name of Eddie. I would drive to the company headquarters and then jump in his truck, then we'd go out and take care of sh*t, literally. One of my very first calls was a toilet clog. When we arrived at the apartment, we discovered that one of the toilets was indeed clogged. This is when Eddie told me, "This is where the job gets messy". He took the toilet off of the wax ring and began chiseling a massive turd out of the bottom of this toilet with a putty knife! Like spreading butter on your cracker's kind of. It was disgusting, and the smell was not nice in any way, but it did not discourage me. I needed the money! Soon, I'd be driving my own truck and servicing my own calls by myself. One particular afternoon I received a call about a backed-up toilet. Upon inspecting the problem, I discovered that the toilet was leaking and suggested that the Vietnamese landlord buy a replacement. She agreed and I went out and purchased a toilet for her and began to put it back on. The floor in that apartment was not level. This was a problem I had not really been trained on. So, once I got the toilet back on the new wax ring, it was very wobbly. I had already been there a very long time, and the landlord was very impatient. She was basically screaming at me that I didn't know what I was doing and that I had better get somebody else there to fix her dam toilet! It wasn't too long after this call that I decided to get a better duty! (Nacho Libre impression). That's when I applied at Viking Freight.
Viking Freight was a fairly good-sized loading dock. There were over a hundred bays where Viking trucks would come in and offload merchandise, and load merchandise. I got hired on to the night shift. Stockton was not a very safe city in the least. In fact, there were more murders than days the first nine days of us moving to the city! You'd hear constant sirens running about on a daily basis. Viking Freight was in a bad part of the city, or just on the outskirts of. I was very glad that my truck was fairly new and in good running shape. Graveyard shifts at Viking were really quite terrible. I was not forklift trained so everything I did; I did by hand. One particular night this included offloading 92 boxes of dog bones from one trailer, and re-loading them onto another trailer in the same shift. Each box was easily fifty pounds. I was dead tired after this. My time at Viking Freight was not very long. Luckily, Sarah worked at a pharmacy in Westlake Village over the summer and discovered she did not like anything to do with that profession. We'd end up leaving Stockton and moving back to Ojai. Lucky for me, iti was willing to hire me back at my same pay. I will never forget my time in Stockton. I have some good stories to tell from that time in my life. I'll save a couple of them for the next post.
Prices on commodities in 96 were fairly decent. The cost of almost everything was certainly going up even in the last ten years, but at a fairly slow rate. Interestingly, a prediction was made in 96 by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. They boldly predicted that in "Thirty years, a burger and fries would cost consumers $16.00". Also, that "A basic car would cost you $65,000.00". Their bold predictions turned out to be pretty spot on and the article back then is going viral for its accuracy. In reality, they just calculated how much inflation would rise the cost of these items over that time span. In 96, you could buy a car for the average price of $18,777.00. 2024 pricing is on average $48,401.00. That is actually a 3.1% decrease from the averages just two years ago in 2022. The average cost of a new home was $232,798.00. Gasoline per gallon was on average $1.29 in the United States. Food items increased by 3.3 % in 96. This was the highest increase since 1990 when it increased by a whopping 6%! The average cost of a gallon of milk was $2.62. I found an interesting chart made public by the USDA/Economic Research Services. This chart was released in 1994. The chart depicts consumer use of beverages. 52.2 percent of the public was drinking carbonated soft drinks! I was absolutely one of those people! Next on the chart was a surprising choice of drink. 24.7 percent were drinking milk! Who'd have thought? And the third most consumed beverage is an easy guess, beer. Only 10.5 percent of the population were drinking bottled water!
Highest grossing movies of 96 were Independence Day, Twister, Mission Impossible, and The Rock. Independence Day grossed $306,156,090.00. Another movie released in 96 was the movie Fargo. I think everyone here knows the chipper scene from that movie!
Top ten songs of 96 were "Always Be My Baby" by Mariah Carey. "Because You Loved Me" by Celine Dion. "California Love" by Dr. Dre. "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette. "Macarena" by Los Del Rio. "I Love You Always Forever" by Donna Lewis. "Killing Me Softly With His Song" by Fugees. "The Crossroads" by Bone Thugs. "You're Making Me High" by Tony Braxton. And "Give Me One Reason" by Tracy Chapman. I listened to some of those songs if they were played on the local radio station. Otherwise, I either listened to country, or my Pearl Jam CD's.
Nineteen ninety-six was a monumental year in my history. Marriage is a big deal. Sadly, over fifty percent of marriages fail in the United States. I moved out of my parents' home. The day I left I think I got off of work at iti, came home, put my stuff in my truck, said "I'll see ya later" to my sister Angela, and then drove off. It hit me as I was driving, and I became a bit sad. I regretted not saying goodbye to my parents and my other sister. I would see them again, wasn't like I was moving across the country or anything, but I should have waited around to say goodbye. The next five years kind of become a blur so I will be mentioning things possibly out of order. I would be responsible for a tiny human in less than six years!
"In particular, I challenge the fathers of this country to love and care for their children. If your family has separated, you must pay your child support. We're doing more than ever to make sure you do. A check will not substitute for a parent's love and guidance. Only you can make the decision to help raise your children. It is the most basic human duty of every American to do that job to the best of his or her ability."
- Bill Clinton 1996 State of the Union Address
