Life of Brian

1997

In June of 1997 I had been married for one year.  Things were going well. I had been hired back at iti full time.  Sarah started working at our local bank in Ojai in the fall of 97.  We did not have a lot of money as newlyweds.  I remember going into our bank while she worked there and trying to withdrawal five dollars from our checking account.  Sarah took care of the transaction that day and promptly told me we didn't have five dollars to withdrawal!  Her boss Martha came to my aid and said something like, "It's only five bucks!"  We all get a laugh from this today, but I understand where Sarah was coming from.  We basically had no money to our names at the time.  She probably wasn't making much more than four twenty-five and hour.  My job was paying me right around seven dollars an hour.  Heck, for five bucks back then, you could buy four gallons of gas.  Today, you're lucky if five bucks even buys you one gallon of gas.  She and I were living in my parents fifth wheel trailer for some part of 97.  I think we moved into her parents' house after that.  We couldn't afford rent just yet, but we soon would rent a place of our own.  We couldn't afford anything in Ojai, but we did end up finding an apartment in Ventura.  Sarah's dad was a long-haul truck driver at the time which meant he was gone for three weeks at a time and only home for three days in between.  So, it was just Sarah me and her mom most of the time.  All of my family was still around.  My Dad still working for the Forest Service, my mom I think still cleaning houses.  I'm not sure what Angela was up to; she may have been going to a local community college.  Vicki was working, I do not remember where.

Leaving Stockton was not a bad thing.  As I mentioned before, Stockton was a fairly violent city.  And it was the biggest city we'd ever lived in.  The population of Ojai was under ten thousand people.  Ventura might have had seventy thousand people.  Stockton had two hundred and thirty-five thousand people in nineteen ninety-seven.  Sirens wailed what seemed like every thirty minutes.  There were homicides committed within the city quite often, and traffic was something I was not really used to.  There were multi lane freeways and buses and filth.  However, like many cities, Stockton had its good areas, as well as areas where the wealthy lived.  Stockton also had a multitude of sloughs.  If there's one thing I truly loved doing as a young adult, it was fishing.  My training partner at the plumbing company I worked for liked to fish as well.  Eddie was a nice guy.  He wasn't wealthy by any means.  He had only worked at Drain Patrol for maybe six years.  Once he found out I loved to fish, he offered to rent a boat and take us out into the sloughs of Stockton.  He paid for it which I was very appreciative of.  We left early in the morning, he skippered the small boat out to a nice quiet slough, and we started fishing.  It was surprisingly quiet out there in those sloughs.  Eddie decided he had to ask me a question.  The weird part about it was that he stated it just as such.  He said, "Brian, I need to ask you a question."  This of course made me a little uneasy.  After all, we were all by ourselves in a small little boat surrounded by water.  I could have swum for the shore, but how in the heck would I have gotten home!  And more than likely, I would have been murdered before even getting there!  Ended up his question was how I felt about smoking Mary Jane, Jazz lettuce, Whacky Weed, Marijuana.  In all actuality, I was very relieved.  I told him that I didn't care if he smoked it, but I did not touch the stuff and to please not blow the smoke in my direction.  It was actually very nice of him to ask.  He could've just started smoking and not given two cents about what I thought.  I don't think either of us caught any fish that morning.  He must have been more than a casual user of the green plant because his ability to command our 12-foot aluminum skiff never faltered.  I would never see Eddie again after leaving Drain Patrol.  Viking Freight and Drain Patrol were the only two jobs I had in Stockton.  I sat through a training seminar for CutCo knives.  I quickly decided that job was not for me, however.  I was not a salesman.  I also was in the process of applying to Target, but we ended up moving back to Ojai before getting too far in the hiring process.  My days at Drain Patrol were interesting ones.  One particular call out, when I was still training with Eddie, we arrived at a house in Lodi.  The residents claimed they had multiple drains clogged.  Knowing this, we went straight for the main line with our fifty feet of snake cable.  Something caught my eye this time.  We'd cleaned out numerous main lines by this time in my training, yet I never came upon a main line clean-out cap where the sewage was already squeezing its way out of it!  Neither of us really knew what that meant.  With the cap removed, and a small puddle of sewage now at our feet, we sent all fifty feet of cable down that main line, and it did not do a thing.  All drains were still clogged.  That fifty feet of cable that had gone out had to come back in so that we could attach another fifty feet to it and send it back out.  Well, that first fifty feet of line was now covered in sewer water and who knows what else!  As we spun the basket to retrieve it, we were gifted with a nice shower of sewer water with every spin.  It was a bad day to be a drain cleaner!  We attached the extra fifty feet and sent it back down the pipe.  This still, did not touch the blockage.  About this time of the evening, a big city sewer truck pulled up.  They lifted the manhole in the street and confirmed that the entire city streets sewer was backed up!  Our little snake was never going to fix this problem!  We retracted our hundred feet of line, all the while trying to dodge the sprinkler effect of sewage water that we now knew was the entire streets poop and pee.  We collected our ninety dollars from the resident and said our apologies that we were not able to fix it.  The city sewer truck began sending its mega snake down the manhole.  Luckily for us, this was the last call of the day.  We were able to go home and shower instead of working in our soiled uniforms for hours on end.  One thing is for sure.  I will never work as a plumber ever again.

Some headlines around the globe in 1997 were as follows.  Frank Sinatra would be sent back to the hospital with heart problems.  In January, the first Comet of 97 was discovered.  A company by the name of Dow Corning would pay out two hundred ninety-five billion to settle breast implant suits.  Italy's new 1000 lire coin would depict divided Germany on the map.  Atlantis 18 was launched into space.  Bad boy Dennis Rodman would pay $200,00.00 in a settlement for kicking a ref in the groin during a game.  He would end up being suspended indefinitely for this act by the NBA.  On February fourth, O.J. Simpson would be found liable for the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson in a civil court action.  General Hospital would win the Soap Opera Digest award. Boy did I despise watching those shows!  My sisters used to love watching those.  FBI agent Earl Pitts was busted for selling secrets to Russia.

Usually, I list the top movies for a given year.  However, when looking up this list, I do not recall seeing any of the movies listed!  So, I'll skip this topic for this year in time. Same with T.V. shows.  I guess I wasn't watching much T.V. in 97.  Home sales were picking up in 97.  Southern Ca was in a slump supposedly up to mid 95/96 and in 97 home sales were up a whopping 20% than the year prior.  The last four months of home sales in 97 would see the strongest sales pace of the decade.  The median price for a new home within the state was $172,525.00.  Gasoline was stable at $ 1.23 per gallon.  

Ninety-seven was a good time in my life.  Newly married, I was working at a really good job, Sarah was working.  My oldest Sister Angela tied the knot in 97.  She would become responsible for a tiny human just short of a year before Sarah and me.  We would begin saving money and eventually rent our own apartment.  I would play golf with my dad and my U. Raymond.  Everyone was healthy.  We had nothing but the future to look forward to, an exciting time indeed.

"You'll have bad times, but it will always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to".

-Robin Williams Movie - Good Will Hunting