They couldn't believe I am 20....
8:41 p.m. | 2003-04-14
I hadn�t been there in almost ten years. Once I got there I knew I wouldn�t want to come home. It took all of myself to not stay there for good. It would be easy too, since there isn�t anything here that is holding me back. I could transfer schools with a problem. And if I wanted to I could even transfer to one of the BBV stores up here and work. If not, I have so many relatives that could get me a job in no time.
Last time I was in Modesto was in 93 when my grandmother died of cancer. After she passed away, I guess I never looked at that place the same anymore. My grandpa was still alive but I was never as close to him as I was to my grandmother. I have an extremely large family on my father�s side. My great grandmother Angie is 101 years old and still feisty and lively as ever. She�s happy and healthy and only suffers from hearing loss, which leaves everyone who visits her to have no other choice but to scream at the top of their lungs. She uses no cane, wheel chair, or walker. And she moves almost as fast as I do. She�s incredible. When I went to visit her I peeked through her front window, which her rocking chair faces. She saw me through the glass and jumped out of the chair like her butt was on fire. �Krystle, my baby! Give me some sugar honey!� She said in her deep southern accent. The she offered me some fruitcake.
My whole family is from Mississippi. Grandma Angie had 10 kids. One died at birth, the other nine lived. Aunt Cooter is the oldest. But we call her Chris. Then it�s my Grandpa Toxie. Barbara is next, and then it�s Uncle Sonny, Lil, Kitten, Jerry, Louie, and Don.
I�ve never got to meet Jerry because he shot himself in the leg before I was born and bled to death. He was a druggie. Uncle Louie I think I might have met once when I was very young. He�s been in and out of Prison his whole life. Mainly for drugs, counterfeiting, and theft. He�s the type of guy who prefers to be in jail rather then out in the world. Many times he stole or kept drugs on him so he could purposely go back to jail. He�s in his late 60�s now and I think he�s clean and living somewhere in Sacramento.
Aunt Lil is a nutball. She lives with Grandma Angie and does nothing all day but smoke and drink and suck oxygen from her tank. She doesn�t have any kids, and I think she was married once for two weeks. Turns out she didn�t really like the guy and got the marriage annulled. She nice and all but she smells funny and her cats are mean.
There is nothing much to say about Aunt Kitten. She�s semi normal, or as normal as you can be for being named Kitten. Uncle Don is okay too. He�s kind of flaky, but very artistic. I think that�s where I get a lot of my art skills. And maybe even my flakiness�
Aunt Chris and Uncle Sonny are my favorites. Chris is funny as hell and is usually the only one that can distinguish me from my sister. Her and my grandmother were close, so I usually saw her the most when I was little and spent my summers up there. My uncle Sonny and his wife Darlene are two of the nicest people in the whole world. They are the ones that let me stay with them this last week. The love to travel and just recently purchased an RV that�s bigger than my whole house. They live in it when they travel to Nevada to work on their gold mine. Oh yeah. That�s right. The have a real gold mine out there that they tend to as a hobby. Nice huh?
Lets see�whom am I missing�
Oh yea, Aunt Barbara. She�s okay too. Kind of weird but who in my family isn�t. She�s corky and was always the one who made me a bunny shaped cake every year for Easter. Complete with licorice whiskers and jellybean eyes.
Then there is my Grandpa Toxie. He�s a good man but was never the type to understand women or what they stood for. I never understood his sense of humor or why he insisted on polishing off a bottle of scotch with milk everyday. Ewe.
Anyway, The whole family moved out here from Mississippi in the early 1930�s. All of them got married and had kids then got divorced and remarried and had more kids and those kids grew up and had kids and got divorced and remarried and had more kids and basically I have over 300 cousins, most of which I can�t remember the names of.
Did I mention we are all also part Native American? Yeah, my great grandma Angie is Choctaw Indian. My great grandfather Emmett was part Cherokee too. But yeah, that�s basically my family and that is whom I went to visit this last week. It was great and I�m going back this summer to visit again and go fishing and horseback riding and all kinds of stuff�I can�t wait�
So basically in short, my trip was great. It was four days that I spent not thinking about anything down here in L.A.
Or anyone�
I�m going to go watch TV now�