Category: 13: Missing In Action
By Jaimenacho
A long time ago Paco, Pecos, maybe Eduardo, and I, and I’m not sure who else saw a man at the Red, White, and Brew pub playing keyboards, and singing. He was a good performer, and we drank our beers and thought not too much of it. I saw the same man several months later performing at another bar. He had a female singer with him. I ended up dating the singer for a period of time, and got to know that keyboard player…Armando pretty well. (Armando isn’t his Mexican code name either)
Armando was like a larger Danny DeVito. He was immensely talented. He could learn to play ANY song and program it into his keyboard, to have available at his discretion. His knowledge of music in general was mind-blowing. He knew years, performers, songs, albums, you name it. He had a son, who was shaping up to be sort of like him, other worldly smart, and goofy. Towards the end of my relationship with his female singer, He had said he was going to move to Vegas, and sing there. The guy was so talented he could get a gig anywhere I’m sure. He was a total nut, and smoked too much weed, but I always wondered what the heck happened to him.
You could literally say,
“Armando…can you play Jesse’s girl, by Rick Springfield?”
And he’d start right up with it…He could do it for any song…it was astonishing. If by some off chance he didn’t know a song, he could learn it in a matter of a hours…all the parts…drums, bass, guitar, etc.
Armando was the ultimate lounge singer.
By Eduardo
Quite possibly the ultimate example of a missing former friend is the infamous Todd. The reasons for my lack of contact with him are not entirely unintentional, but he’s an appopriate subject for this topic.
The interesting part about this is that Todd was more or less an honorary Amigo Loco for several years. He was a roommate to both myself and Jaimenacho, and I spent a lot of time hanging out with him when I lived in Sacramento.
Todd had a pretty bad upringing – which was kind of weird to learn, given the fact that he was generally very polite, good-natured, and hilarious in many ways. He was a lot of fun to hang out with, and was a perfect example of someone who didn’t really care much about anything (yet still managed to be a nice guy). His number one hobby was sleeping, which took priority over just about everything else. He was like a character in a movie, always providing unintentional comic relief. A typical school day usually involved me trying to convince him to get up, which I never once succeeded at.
“Hey, aren’t you going to go to class today?”
“Nah… I’m sleepin’.”
“I thought you said you had a midterm or something.”
“So what?”
“Man, you’re going to fail that class.”
“Shut up, bitch.”
We had many fun times hanging out, playing pool, going on egg runs, and such. I would even go so far as to say that he was a pretty good friend. After I moved away to attend Sonoma State with Paco, he went to live with Jaimenacho in a house he was sharing near Sac State. They had many adventures of their own, some of which can be read about in other entries here. Jaime got to know Todd as well as I did, and he pretty much became an official member of the ‘gang’.
However, Todd had a dark and very creepy side to him that few people knew about. I won’t get into the details here, but let’s just say that it was substance-related. We really didn’t know about it, or the extent to which it had progressed, until it was too late. This ‘problem’ that he’d successfully kept hidden for so long eventually caused him to do things that severely damaged his ties to the Amigos Locos (me in particular). It’s a long story that doesn’t really need to be told, but the end result is that he moved back to southern California after Jaime moved again, leaving him without a roommate or a place to live. We decided that it would be better if we didn’t try to keep in touch with him, and that’s worked out pretty well.
He apparently returned to Sacramento a couple of times, in an attempt to reclaim his “stuff” from the house where he and Jaime had lived, which had some pretty funny results… but I’ll let Jaime tell that story.
None of us have any idea where he is nowadays, given that we’ve had zero contact with him for almost a decade. We’ve feared that maybe he’s dead by now, or possibly in jail or something. I sincerely hope that the opposite is true; that he’s managed to turn himself around and live a respectable life. Perhaps we’ll never know what happened to Todd, and I’m not even sure that I want to.
…But wherever he is, it’s a pretty safe bet that he is asleep right now.
By Paco
When I move to Sonoma State for my first semester, as I said earlier, I decided to start off by living in the dorms. I didn’t know anyone, or have much money, so I went for the cheap route for a semester, and then I was going to see what happened from there.
What ended up happening was I ended up living in the “Real World – Rohnert Park”. Sonoma State doesn’t really have “traditional dorms”. What they have are these little townhouse looking buildings spread all about campus. Inside is a living room downstairs, along with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. And upstairs, there were 3 bedrooms, and I believe 1 bathroom… maybe 2. So what they did was put 5 girls upstairs, and 4 guys downstairs and we were all to share the “living room”.
If nothing else, the semester was interesting. There was a constant parade of guys going upstairs to one particular girl’s bedroom. Needless to say she had a busy semester… Everyone that lived there was pretty nice in general. A couple of the girls kind of kept to themselves, there was one that had an attitude at times, an older girl that looked too old to even be in a dorm, and the girl that ran the brothel in her room. Downstairs was Brooks, he was this guy that was drunk or stoned EVERY night. All he really seemed to do besides that was play lacrosse, because he rarely went to class. And his roommate was a Rastafarian of Asian descent. You can imagine what he smoked on occasion.
When I got my info about my dorms, it showed who I was going to be dorming with, and his contact info. I remember his name was “Matt” and he lived only about 20 miles away from Sonoma State. My first thought was why is he paying the money to live in the dorms?
Anyways… when I moved in, I quickly realized that Matt was the coolest person in the dorm. I was very thankful that I was dorming with him. Like I said, the other two guys where nice enough, but I wouldn’t have been too happy living in a cloud of smoke every night. Matt was pretty similar to me, he actually was GOING to class, but still liked to have fun when the time was right. It was cool; being from the area, Matt already knew a few people that were going to Sonoma, so I met some people through Matt. Most of our spare time was spent doing one of the following, playing Madden on the Genesis. We would have pretty epic games with me being 1978 Steelers playing Matt who was the 1988 49ers. The final score was always something like 88 – 81. That was also the first time I really consumed any large amount of alcohol… Matt and I would regularly “borrow” some of Brook’s beers, which were usually Pabst Genuine Draft, or Keystone Light. I remember one guy Matt knew was bold and would buy beer for us at the local Hindu market, and when we were feeling wealthy, we would “splurge” and buy Weinhardt’s. The other common past time was going to the local pizza joint to watch Warriors games. I recall one night watching Manute Bol sink a couple of key 3 pointers towards the end of the game, that was classic.
About my only complaint with Matt was his taste of music, he was always listening to gangstah rap. But, I am sure Matt had an equal dislike for my “strange” musical tastes. So it was never really an issue, we just keep our music down or wore headphones.
All in all, Matt was a very cool guy, and definitely helped me keep my sanity during that first semester. After the semester ended, I moved in with Eduardo, I still kept in touch with Matt, and hung out with him a few times. It was too bad, that I didn’t keep in touch with him after I left Sonoma, and I don’t even recall last name, so it would be nearly impossible to get a hold of him.
By Jaimenacho
Tim was the kid in first grade who had the goat, and the indoor farm we visited on the walking field trip. He was a dirty child, whith no common sense. His older brother was fairly normal by most accounts. This led to a debate whether Tim was retarded, or if his mom had done drugs prior to his birth. Young Tim struggled mightily with his school work, settling for D’s and F’s.
Tim was good a some things however. He knew every curse word in the world, and how to put them in creative sentences that would greatly offend you. He knew how to get lice, and he knew how to fight, with kids, and with teachers…which was frightening to witness. The fights with teachers usually involved him throwing several obscene comments, a book and/or a desk at the teacher then being drug out of the classroom in a crying slobbering mess. It was never pretty. In fact it usually frightend all the kids in the class.
I don’t recall him liking anyone. I assume some people tried to be nice to him, but because of his ill temper he managed to offend everyone who knew him in some fashion. After 5th or 6th grade he disappeared. Rumors circulated that he’d gone to jail, or Live Oak (school for troubled kids) and wouldn’t be returning.
One day Paco, Pecos, and I had gone to a nearby creek to go fishing, exploring, or something like that. We saw a kid about our age, which was about 13 or 14. He was “training” his black lab how to retrieve birds.
From where we were located we could hear him, and kind of see him. It was Tim! It became quickly apparent that he had no idea how to train a dog, nor was he very nice to his dog.
“PICK IT UUUUUUUUP!!!! DEAD M*****F****** BIRD! I SAID PICK IT UUUUUUP!!!!!! DEAD BIRD!!! PICK IT UP YOU PIECE OF S*** DOG!!!”
This went on for several minutes. Most “commands” were roughly the same tone, and had the same vocabulary.
Occssionaly he’d whap his dog for no good reason.
“F****** DOG! PICK UP THAT M*****F***** BIRD… DEAD M*****F****** BIRD!”
Someone in our group started saying “SUUUUUUCK IT!!! SUCK TIM D***” really quietly, like it was a logical command he’d give his dog. This caused a wave of laughter to roll over the three of us that was going to give our location away…so we left to pursue other activities.
This was the last time I saw Tim. I think Pecos knew his brother, and asked him what Tim was doing. If I recall correctly, jail was involved.
I saw Tim the other day. I’m 90% sure it was him. He reminded me of Lenny from ‘Of Mice and Men.’ He was really big, looked really lost, and was squeezing the life out of a puppy. OK I made that last part up. I was in the grocery store with my son, and I noticed him in the dairy aisle I wasn’t really ever a fan of his, so I declined talking with him to be absolutely sure. I did think about shouting from the top of my lungs;
“PICK IT UUUUUUUUUP JUG OF M*****F****** MIIIIIIILLLLK!!!”
By Paco
I met this kid in the 6th grade named Jacob. He had moved here from some random place… I think it was Bishop, but I don’t recall. Anyways, he was a cool kid, liked baseball A LOT, and was pretty fun to hang out with. We became great friends that year.
Jacob’s parents were nice folks, but slightly odd. His father was a meteorologist who was never happy with his job. He had worked at a dozen or so different places by the time I met him. This seemed pretty wack, because it meant that Jacob and his family had picked up and moved their stuff every 2 years or so to all different parts of US, Florida, Arizona, Utah, Ohio, Washington, etc…. Jacob’s mom was a teacher, and a good one. I eventually had her class for English and enjoyed it immensely.
There was one particular weird quirk that I later found out about Jacob’s parents. I think I found out from one of the Amigos Locos, either Jaime or Guillermo. It turned out that Jacob’s parents really dug being nude. Now, to my knowledge they weren’t nudists or anything, but I guess often they just cruised around the house in the buck. One of the stories I heard was about how they would often vacuum in the nude. I remember asking Jacob about it once, and he confirmed that it was true. Thank god I don’t think any of us actually witnessed the nudity, but we knew that it went on.
Anyways, after 7th grade Jacob moved AGAIN. I was pretty bummed out, turns out his dad was angry about something at his job, so he was packing up the family and moving to another job in Pennsylvania.
I thought for sure that Jacob had slipped into the obscurity of another MIA person… and while I did keep some contact with him, I really didn’t talk to him very often.
It wasn’t until 2 years later that I got word from Jacob that he was moving BACK to Redding! Man… his dad really was a flake! Anyways, I was pretty stoked to hear that, and a couple of months later Jacob returned to Redding.
We started our sophomore year at Shasta, and everything seemed to be just like it was a couple years earlier when Jacob lived here before. Jacob was actually almost an official member of the Amigos Locos at the time; he already knew myself and Guillermo, and later met Jaime and Pecos. He even got involved with one of the infamous incidents with Eduardo, and the man with the Wagoneer.
After my Sophomore yearr, I wasn’t all that surprised when Jacob informed me that he was moving… AGAIN! The only good thing about this move, was that it wasn’t across the country, it was only to Eureka.
I managed to keep contact with Jacob again, and actually went to visit him over there a couple of times, and he made the trip over here fairly regularly. After high school, we even had Jacob move in with us so he could go to college here in town. This actually turned to be not the greatest thing in the world. Jacob and I kind of stopped hanging out, he got into baseball pretty hard and heavy, and eventually got into a girlfriend pretty seriously too. It wasn’t that we were mad at each other, or anything like that, we just pretty much stopped hanging out. A year or so later Jacob left to Texas, he got a baseball scholarship at some little school there. I wished him the best, and off he went.
Jacob’s parents were now someplace random like Yuma Arizona. In fact, if I remember correctly, they had both quit there jobs, and were doing something “earthy” there. But, they still kept in touch with us, and sent us info about how Jacob was doing with school and baseball.
Life kept going, and eventually I was back in Redding doing the RT thing, and pursuing my bachelor’s degree. It was now about 3 years since Jacob left, it was around Christmas time, and one night I was milling about Round Table near the end of my shift. One of my co-workers walk up to me…
“There is somebody hear to see you Paco.”
I was blown away.
“Hey Paco!”
“Jacob?! What are you doing here?!”
“Just visiting the family.” (Jacob’s aunt lived in Redding)
“Right on!”
“When do you get off work? Do you want to go out and have a beer?”
“Sure, I get off in an hour, just come on back here.”
So Jacob and I went out and hit the town, we ended up closing down the bars in town. It was really cool, we just drank some beers, and caught up on what was going on in our lives. I told Jacob when he left to not be a stranger, and to fly on out to Redding sometime. (he had gotten his pilots license)
Well… life changed pretty dramatically about a year later for Jacob. Turns out that he got a girl pregnant, and in turn, decided to get married to her. I guess the father wasn’t too pleased, (what a shock) and told them that they had to stay in Texas. A month of so later I got an invite to the wedding, as did Guillermo. Guillermo and I TRIED our best to get to Houston to see the wedding. But we were poor college kids, and we decided there was no way that we could cough up the $400 for a ticket, and driving was out of the question.
Unfortunately, that was the last time I heard from Jacob. Hopefully he is happily married somewhere in Texas. I tried to search for him online before, but his last name is so common that it never worked.
By Paco
One of my earliest friends who fell of the face of the earth was Juan M. Juan was a year younger than me, and I met him during my 5th grade year at the local Catholic School I was attending. He was a fun kid to hang out with, we had a lot of similar interests so we spent a lot of time hanging out together doing stuff that kids do when they are 13 years old.
A couple of things about Juan, he was an only child, and had a bit of a temper. Also, Juan was always a little bit ahead of the curve as far as physical maturity was concerned. I swear he could grow a beard when he was 15. Another benefit of having Juan as a friend was a lot like having a body guard from bullies and other crappy kids.
There are many funny memories from my days spent with Juan; one in particular sticks out in my mind.
GEOMETRIC JIMMY
There was a kid that lived down the street from me named Jimmy. Jimmy was a nerdy kid, who one day decided he was going to be cool and become a skater. It was a funny transformation, from dorky bowl cut to complete skater wedge cut. The wedge was so awful looking, it looked more like a trapezoid stuck to his forehead, so we coined the nickname, “Geometric Jimmy.” The fact that he had become “cool” in his eyes didn’t sway the opinion of many other kids that included me, Jaime, Pecos, and Juan in particular.
We still tormented Jimmy any time we ran into him. One particular time gave me quite a chuckle.
It was a typical summer day; we were playing whiffleball with Juan and Raul out in front of my house. I was pitching, Raul was in the outfield and Juan was hitting.
Sometime early we had talked about who Jimmy had won something on the local radio station, B94. I don’t recall exactly what it was, tickets to see Quiet Riot or something. Anyways… guess who eventually comes cruising back on his bike? You guessed it, GEOMETRIC JIMMY!
Juan yelled something to the effect of…
“Hey!!! Geometric Jimmy!!!”
And bolted from the lawn with yellow plastic whiffleball bat in hand, heading right for Jimmy. I was kind of dumbfounded, and a little concerned by Juan’s actions, but I just stood there and watched, figuring if nothing else, this could be comical.
Jimmy just kept riding, and yelled something back and Juan…
Then Juan yelled at Jimmy,
“I WANT THOSE QUIET RIOT TICKETS!!!!”
And then he started to beat on Jimmy with the whiffleball bat, all the while screaming at the top of his lungs…
“I WANT IT! I WANT IT! I WANT IT!!!”
I was almost crying I was laughing so hard.
Jimmy had a look of terror in his eyes, it wasn’t that Juan was hurting him with the bat, it would be difficult to hurt anyone with a whiffleball bat anyways, plus, Juan wasn’t hitting him very hard. I think Jimmy was just terrified by the oddness of Juan’s attack.
Eventually Jimmy was riding fast enough that Juan couldn’t keep up… and he retreated back to the whiffleball game, where we proceeded to pee our pants from the laughter of the moment.
Juan and I continued to have a lot of fun together, in fact another story from the Juan era, can be read at the “Melon Head” entry.
I kind of lost contact with Juan after high school, he ended up going to Cal, and REALLY digging it there. (If you know what I mean) I only ran into him a couple of times after that, in fact the last time I saw him was in about 1996. He was driving behind me in a weird looking car, and flagged me down. He looked like a typical Cal hippie with giant sideburns. We talked for a few minutes, he was still really nice. I remember his car was a crappy Ford Escort with a plate that said the following…
“MFALCON”
I asked him before I left what it meant, he said the car was like the Millennium Falcon, and his buddy was always bent over the engine working on it, much like Chewy was always tinkering with the Millennium Falcon. We had a good laugh, and he drove off, I haven’t seen him since.
I ran into his dad a year or so ago, and he said Juan was now living I believe Scotland, working in a pub… I guess if I am ever in Scotland, I should try to look him up, go have a pint of ale, and relive old times!
By Jaimenacho
During kindergarten and 1st grade there was a kid…Jonathan Olsen. He was a Jehovah’s Witness. I doubt highly he personally ever witnessed Jehovah, but someone in his family had, and convinced him that it was the right thing to do. It forbade him from standing during the flag salute. To a fellow first grader, who knew very little American History, or love of country, that seemed kind of cool. He also didn’t participate in Christmas activities, Halloween activities, Birthday activities, Easter activities, or any other school activities that involved celebration, and usually, cupcakes.
His religious choice was against celebrations of most kinds, but it apparently allowed for watching, and loving The Dukes of Hazzard. He was pretty convinced he was Beau Duke. Maybe it was his blonde hair, or the fact he could make car noises with his mouth, I’m not sure, but he truly thought he was in Hazzard county the entire time he was at school. He wore plaid button up “duke-esque” shirts to school all the time. He’d enter is desk over the top, as if he were sliding into the General Lee. It was kind of crazy.
I was fortunate enough to be Luke Duke, I had blonde hair, but I guess, due to the fact that I was the only one familiar with the show, and the inter workings of
Hazzard county, I was the obvious choice. We usually played live action role playing versions of the TV show. He’d recruit other kids to be the various other characters on the show. It was always difficult to get a Daisy Duke. No girls thought that running around in circles pretending you were driving a car was very cool at all. No guy was (at that time) willing to play the part. The simulation pretty much involved a lot of other people chasing Jon and I around the playground trying to catch us, and Jon and I yelling “Yeeeee-Haaaaaaaaaaaaw.” A lot.
Sometimes Jon would bring matchbox car versions of the TV cars to school, and we’d play with those in the dirt…of course Jon always got the General Lee, and of course, you could never catch him if you were a police officer. It was pretty much an event with a predetermined ending. If you tried to “catch” his car, inevitably there would be a “Yeee-Haaaaw” followed by his car magically jumping your car.
“You can’t do that?” you’d say..” I had you blocked in….”
“Uh-huh, the Dukes can…” he’d say and drive off. I guess it was magic.
Usually I was Uncle Jessie…and drove the truck around, or on occasion Cooter…that was cool, because you got to be on Jonathan’s good side, and do the same magical car jumps to escape capture. Sometimes somebody would get stuck driving Daisy’s jeep, which was a cool looking toy, but it always kind of upset us…nobody wanted to be the girl…so that person usually sat far away and just drove the jeep in circles until lunch was over.
Pecos was almost always Boss Hog if he played with us…and as he put it, “I had no idea what the &*$# a Boss Hog was…” Which was exactly why he got that car.
I remember Jon always used to go home for lunch, because he lived basically right next to the playground. I was always envious of him going home, because he had his choice of food in his house, and we were stuck at school with whatever we were forced to eat. I went home with him once, and we ended up hiding from his mom for a long time, and if I recall correctly, we got back to school late, and got in some pretty decent trouble. I was informed that ‘going home with Jonathan was NOT allowed, without a note.’ I never ended up going back with him….and after first grade he moved away. I’ve kind of wondered what happened to him. I wonder how badly he took it when The Dukes of Hazzard went off the air? Did he ever realize how wack his religion was? I kind of imagine him somewhere with a few other quirky nerds reenacting episodes of the Dukes at a local community theatre.
