Month: October 1986

Note: My short-lived attendance at Ricks College in the small town of Rexburg, Idaho twenty years ago was a defining stage of my life. Mostly for unpleasant reasons. Taking an extremely impulsive anarchist skate punk from California and putting them in the Rexburg of 1986, what can you expect? My being an 18-year-old with the maturity of a 9-year-old didn’t help, either. But it was in Rexburg that I fell in love with photography and abandoned my academic career to follow my passion.

These entries are written from the journals I kept when I was 18. Of course, at 38 today, I do not advocate any of the illegal activity discussed here. -Trent

Sunday, October 26:

Today we had to go back to Idaho. A seventeen hour drive. Mom told me to call her when we’d made it so she’d know we were safe. We picked up Ted and started driving. At the Benecia toll bridge, we gave the attendant 40 pennies (the correct amount for the toll) and drove away quickly as if we were short-changing him. His response: “Hey! HEY!!!” We kept going.

We stopped at the Nut Tree (a mistake, wasting precious time).

We stopped at Circus Circus in Reno and played Gauntlet for two hours (a terrible mistake).

Drake got a ticket in the middle of Nevada and the highway patrol acted too suspiciously about it. They were screwing us over.

We stopped for dinner at the Red Lion in Elko.

We got to Ted’s at 1am, mainly on the adrenaline gained from listening to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.” It was horrible. We still had five hours of driving to go, and I had a class at 8am.

I called home and told Mom that we were back safely (we weren’t, but I didn’t want her to worry).

Drake drove the rest of the way while I slept but he took a wrong turn that cost us another hour. We were home at 7am, Monday, just in time for me to go to class. Instead, I went to sleep until 12:30 or so, missing four classes!

The whole drive I wondered why I was going back. I knew I had to, and couldn’t have stayed if I had wanted to, but my heart ached at the prospect of not seeing Naomi. I’m writing this Tuesday night, and the aching hasn’t stopped.

And worse, Mom was worried sick when I called early to tell her we were home. We would have had to drive 100mph to make it home when I called, so that was a big screw-up. By trying to have her not worry, I made her terrified.

Note: My short-lived attendance at Ricks College in the small town of Rexburg, Idaho twenty years ago was a defining stage of my life. Mostly for unpleasant reasons. Taking an extremely impulsive anarchist skate punk from California and putting them in the Rexburg of 1986, what can you expect? My being an 18-year-old with the maturity of a 9-year-old didn’t help, either. But it was in Rexburg that I fell in love with photography and abandoned my academic career to follow my passion.

These entries are written from the journals I kept when I was 18. Of course, at 38 today, I do not advocate any of the illegal activity discussed here. -Trent

Got a letter from L. She wrote some things she remembered. Thought it was interesting. Here it is:

Read each one of these… before you read the next one think about the one you just read for a minute:

– remember when we used to ride double all around on your board?

– remember your first flannel? Remember how, much later, I ripped it to shreds while we were talking?

– remember your smart pep talks to me that always helped me realize what I needed to realize?

– remember my Arnold Schwarzenegger haircut?

– remember your green phlegm shirt? the cemetery, the watertower? fair? Great America? egging? vegetabling? potatoing?

– remember skating at school, at the bank, at the pipe, and skate tag?

– remember our great stimulating and fun conversations before we started worrying about ‘what is a relationship’ and ‘how close we should be and what should we be doing’ and just worrying?

– remember when you used to want to be a forest ranger and when you used to want to join the Marines?

– remember how stupidly upset I used to get at the idea of you joining the Marines or getting a mohawk? Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything to you by now but I wish I could apologize for being so stupid and not accepting all of you like I should have.

– remember your tablecloth shirt?

– I remember when I came home that first nite and I had had so much fun I was disoriented and I put my dishes in the garbage and was tripping and putting the milk in the freezer, etc.

– remember seeing my therapist?

– remember when you were bald and I used to slap you on the head?

-remember our first kiss? Joni said you kiss different than any other guy she’s ever kissed and I think so too but the funny thing is I like it the best. I have never hardly been able to stand anyone else!

Note: My short-lived attendance at Ricks College in the small town of Rexburg, Idaho twenty years ago was a defining stage of my life. Mostly for unpleasant reasons. Taking an extremely impulsive anarchist skate punk from California and putting them in the Rexburg of 1986, what can you expect? My being an 18-year-old with the maturity of a 9-year-old didn’t help, either. But it was in Rexburg that I fell in love with photography and abandoned my academic career to follow my passion.

These entries are written from the journals I kept when I was 18. Of course, at 38 today, I do not advocate any of the illegal activity discussed here. -Trent

Friday, October 10, 1986

Today was President Christianson’s innauguration. All classes after noon were canceled. Obviously, my last class was at 11:00. I went sleepily to Composition and then came back to #20. I missed Psychology though. Newswriting was uneventful, but Erin told me about the “water bottle leaning on the door” trick. Of course, water is a little plain. I’m thinking we need to fill the bottle with something a little more extreme. So during our D&D sessions, eating pizza and guzzling cokes and mountain dew, we’ve been “filling” a Gatorade bottle. Look out, R.A.
I ate a quick lunch and came back to #20. We played D&D until 5:30. Then I went up to eat after dropping Ray and Tom off at “Vid-wich”. You know, you couldn’t make up some of the names of the small businesses here that try to cater to the college kids here. Der Pizza Bomb is another one. It’s only a matter of time before they’re out of business.
When I went back to pick up Ray and Tom, they weren’t there. I went to look at Adventureland, the arcade we’re always hanging out at. They weren’t there either. I played a few games of “Jailbreak” and “Pack Rat” and came back to #20. It was cloudy and windy today.
Ray’s apartment was going to have a video party but no one came so after watching the “A-Team”, we played D&D again. I took a break halfway through and got a pizza at “Circle K.” Then I went back to DM’ing the Temple of Elemental Evil. At about 12am we heard a whole bunch of sirens going. We followed a cop out to the bark factory but didn’t see anything good. Then we played D&D until about 2am.