Bomb City
Cadillac Ranch: photo by Tooley
We moved from Deer Park, a suburb of Houston, to Amarillo, Texas on my 5th birthday. I got accepted to a Southern Baptist school, which I attended from the ages of 4 to 10. It wasn't until I was a decent stride past 40 and on a Netflix documentary binge, that I realized that school was segregated. It's so glaringly obvious now, but in my defense, I was barely more than a toddler and in no way in charge of paperwork or driving. Just being white wasn't enough to get you a pass in that area though; if you aren't also a conservative, fire-and-brimstone, fundamentalist Christian, they don't want your kind ‘round them parts. “You're going straight to hell, woman, so just go on an’ git.”
I'd been accused by The Church that ran The School of being possessed by demons at the age of seven, and by the seventh grade, I'd been sufficiently exiled for what I believe they referred to as “general heathenry.” They even tried an exorcism on me that clearly didn’t stick. I was an unrepentant jezebel for wearing a skirt that showed my knees. I asked too many questions, and questions are considered “back talk.” But if you’re supposed to go to hell for not reading the Bible, what happened to all the people who died before Gutenberg invented the printing press? Nobody got a distribution loophole? What if somebody was never taught how to read? Are they still gonna go to hell if the copy they got isn’t in their language? I don’t understand Latin yet. Who did Jesus put in charge of translations? “Don't you go thinkin’ too much, lil’ lady. Ladies is fer cookin’, breedin’, and if you keep talkin’, it's gonna be hittin’.”
Religion isn't the hill I'm firing shots from today though, but it's right across the valley from Amarillo never much cared for folks mixin’, and they still don't. You can't have that kind of ingrained racism without a heaping helping of classism baked in to boot - that's how the goddamn system was built.
I got one of my first concussions in middle school. I was walking through the park by Amarillo College with a friend of mine, Angie. A girl we went to school with lived up the block and was having a birthday party with about 14 friends. I don't remember why they all came at us… not only was I not yet an avid shit-talker (I didn't even know how to cuss yet - I’d only been in public school for 2 years), I certainly wouldn't have started anything with that many people. Especially since my friend Angie saw them coming and immediately hid behind the nearest tree, which, Fuck You, Angie. I hope you’re blind in one eye and walk with a weird limp now. Next thing I knew, there were 3 people on top of me, a circle of more people surrounding them, the girl we knew was screaming inches from my face, and my head was getting bounced off the sidewalk like a goddamn basketball. I don't remember how I got out of that one, but I bet it was loud.
The part I DO remember is getting grounded for two weeks for not defending myself once mom found out I got jumped. She'd paid good money to send me to Tim Joe's Judo school so this kinda shit wouldn't happen! Which, by the way, is where I got another middle-school-era concussion. There was never anyone my size to spar with - I was the only girl - so I was always getting tossed around by dudes bigger than me, learning how to leverage their own force against them. Until that fat fuck orange belt dude took my knee out, threw me completely off the mats and head-first into the concrete. My neck *still* hurts from that shit, but what I learned from Tim Joe is engrained so deeply it benefits me to this day. Sooo, thanks after all, mom.
About the same time mom showed up to pick me up and ground me, a shit-brown Pinto with the doors barely still hanging on pulled up, and punk rock kids started pouring out like it was a clown-car. Mighta been Jeremy driving since he was smart enough to hot-wire a car from the time he was a toddler, even if he did huff freon in the shed behind his mom's house. I think Henry was there with a couple of the Joshes, maybe Willie, J-Ball, and at least one of the two Deneke brothers. Every single one of them was a friend of mine, and they asked me what was wrong as soon as they saw me. I nutshelled the assault and pointed up the block where the assholes were still wandering up the middle of the street. Heads dove back into the Pinto, and out cascaded a flurry of chains, brass knuckles, and more than one baseball bat. I don't know who had what, and I didn't stick around long enough to see what happened after they all started running up the street, so I can't tell you what “allegedly” transpired, but I will say that not a single one of those people in the park that day ever bothered me again. The Pinto people were my people, and they always had my back.
Boring people with no imagination sometimes refer to the town I grew up in as “Yellow City.” It might even be on a travel brochure with a yellow rose of Texas somewhere in a crooked, swoopy font. But the rest of us felt “Bomb City” in our bones, and not just because we personally wanted it blown off the map. The term was initially minted in reference to Pantex: The primary assembly and disassembly facility of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Big City Folk always talk about when shit hits the fan and Russia (or whothefuckever) starts lobbing sky murder at us, they're gonna hit NYC and L.A. which seems perfectly logical - of course you'd hit the biggest hubs first. But kids who grew up in Amarillo never understood why the head-hancho fascists and/or terrorists (I mean, pick your flavor) with their fingers on the big red button wouldn't think to hit the fucking NUCLEAR STOCKPILE right in the goddamn middle of everything. What the hell did we know though? We were just a bunch of good-for-nothing, never gonna be nothing punk-ass kids.
The Movie Poster
From BombCityFoundation.org :
“Bomb City is a 2017 American crime film directed by Jameson Brooks and co-written by Jameson Brooks and Sheldon R. Chick. The film is based on the death of Brian Deneke, the homicide that revealed the cultural clash between the local jocks and the punk community in Amarillo, Texas, and the result of the subsequent court case sparked debate over injustice in the American judicial system.”
Brian Deneke was just six months younger than me; we both hung out with the people in the Pinto from the park. He was always one of the first people to hug me at a show, and more often than not he'd have his meat-head dog in tow so I’d get in some therapy scritches. I'm still friends with his older brother, Jason, and people who were there that night. I remember waiting for the verdict and thinking, “There's no way this guy isn't guilty of murder because that's what the fuck happened.” He didn't just hit him once, and it sure as shit wasn't an “accident.” But he was in the right tax bracket, daddy made the right phone calls, they found the right lawyer, and that piece of shit got PROBATION. ‘Cause they were “Good Christians!” Within a week, he was at a frat party doing keg stands without a care in the world.
The guy who murdered Brian very well could have taken notes from the dudes who got a practice run in on me a few years earlier. They all hung out in the same parking lot at the same high school and played on the same sportsball teams. The patterns would have been obvious, but it doesn't matter when nobody's looking for them. This wasn’t a “new” thing the rich kids were doing to people like us.
It was my sophomore year at Tascosa High, and I was teased relentlessly every goddamn day of it. Brantley W***** was one of my most regular tormentors. He and his jock buddies and their sportsballs occupied the eastern half of the parking lot across from the school, while the west end was a mosh pit of misfit toys, ie: queers, stoners, skater bois, punks, metal-heads, musicians, artists, hippies, goths, and whatever “new wave” was besides too much hairspray and eyeliner. It was basically everyone colorful who ever wore a pair of Doc Martens, and sometimes fishnets.
I don't remember what Brantley had to yell at me that day because eventually, the slurs all kind of blended together, but I remember it was the day I'd finally had enough of his shit. I was wearing my brand new 20 eye Docs (the knee-high version) my big sister had given me for Christmas [*Cues up Nancy Sinatra*: Those boots were made for smashin’, and that's just what they'll do!] and I felt invincible - mainly because I was 15 and still had cartilage in all the important places. Anyway, instead of cowering away that day and trying to hide, I turned around and went toward him. I also don't remember what I said to him as I took that walk to the “wrong” side of the parking lot, but I know he and every single one of his friends heard it because this time HE was the one running away.
He got in the passenger side of Casey W****’s red truck. I probably smacked the window yelling at him because I remember him rolling it up pretty fast, but I certainly hadn't done any structural damage yet. There had to be close to 100 witnesses that day, and the majority of them from the east side were circling around the truck for the show in their uniform letterman jackets with popped-up polo collars and an unsurprisingly strong “Do you know who my father is!?” vibe. Every one of them were used to saying and doing whatever they wanted because there were never any consequences; today, they were at least gonna hear what I thought about that. I said what I had to say, albeit loudly, and started walking away. West, towards the sunset, my people, and my homeland.
Meanwhile, Casey was backing up his truck to get a better starting position and pick up some speed. I don't remember if I heard the engine of the truck, or if my friends in front of me were yelling for me to turn around, but it was likely a combination of both. When I did get myself turned around, Casey's bumper was literally inches from my kneecaps.
I understand how and why most “normal” people might have frozen. It's perfectly natural, and it happens All The Time. That whole “Fight, Flight, or Freeze” shit isn't a quip for no reason. In a snap, time slowed down but the calculations came in lightning quick: “If you freeze, you die; if you run, they'll catch up, you might die a little bit later. There's only one way to go and it's UP.”
The “bouncing soles” on those Docs delivered as advertised. They absorbed the shock of me bouncing from Casey's bumper, up to the hood. When he started swerving to throw me off, I grabbed onto the windshield wipers like a bronc rider. It's hard to tell if I hung on the full 8 seconds, because the ride was over pretty quick. I let go of the wipers once I had my legs tucked back underneath me, and proceeded to run up the windshield. The last step I took was a gravity-defying, Wonder Woman inspired leap. When I re-entered the atmosphere, I landed perfectly in the middle of the roof of that red truck; I still remember the sound of the metal crumpling underneath me. I immediately bounced from there to the ground, landing on both feet, in a puff of dust, without a scratch, like I had pre-choreographed the entire scene.
Of course the cops got called; we had a liaison officer on the grounds who took the first shift. When mom showed up, I think she was more exasperated than she was mad. “What the hell has this child done now?” She was pretty hot when she rattled back the list of damages the cops told her she was financially responsible for, which included a broken passenger side headlight and both front quarter panels getting bashed in. “Mama, they're LYIN on me!!”
I told her I'd claim fucking up the roof, because I did. But between the time I hit the ground, and before the cops got called, Casey and Brantley talked their buddies into helping them decorate the truck on the other side of the school behind the mechanics shop with some equipment from the baseball team.
Guess who the cops believed, y'all. Here's a hint: it wasn't me. I was the only one facing charges. Didn't matter that it was self-defense. I had weird hair, and was therefore clearly the criminal.
That was my introduction to Potter County Juvenile Probation. I was officially in the system. I was on a documented “watch list” at the school, and sent to the family doctor who gave me a mint green piece of paper with 15 questions on it and decided I was depressed. I was insulted and it probably didn't help when I yelled at him, “I'm not depressed, I'm pissed the fuck off!” Turns out I was, in fact, clinically depressed but that had been true since I was seven years old. It wasn't a ‘new’ thing stemming from that incident, but semantics or whatever. “We're gonna be putting you on some Prozac anyway for whatever *gestures vaguely* THIS is.” Hmkay. Cool, cool. At least mom was glad I finally learned how to defend myself.
Little did I know, the Wonder Woman I discovered I was capable of channeling that day would turn up helpful again - almost exactly thirty years later - as I was standing in front of our house, watching a white, unmarked, windowless van driving towards me…