The Towns I Live In

An ongoing series of personal pieces that follow the many towns I moved between growing up.

4-2: The Knight Club

One of the constants throughout most of my moves was a church called LACPC that I'd attended since I was a wee babby.
I'm no longer religious, but i do miss the familiarity of it like i just belonged there. It anchored me enough that I never felt like I lacked a homebase despite all the moving. Regardless, me and the other kids would still get up to no good when we weren't singing praise, doing bible study, or practicing church plays

The church sat at the top of a big hill, and at the bottom was a giant field that stretched the entire length of the (very large) church grounds. The grass was always yellow but never seemed to die. At one end was a bamboo forest that looked ginormous to me as a child. Maybe it's grown into the sky by now? Why was it there in a random patch in LA? It was perfectly contained so somebody must've been taking care of it. I never stepped foot inside of it for more than a few seconds because I'd watch the BigKids dare each other to go in and scream about snakes.

Back at the top of the hill was a big inconspicuous bush, about 35ft wide and 15ft tall. One day my brother found an opening and went inside to find that the entire thing was hollow. Obviously he made a thing of it and invented "The Knight Club" appointing himself the king👶 It was friends-only and we had to keep our base a secret. We met every Sunday in there and what was our mission? Watching Troy on my brother's DVD player of course.
Did we have any other DVDs?
No.
Did we have seats?
We had one tree stump.
Were we allowed to sit on it?
Also no🙄
Sometimes we'd have people stand guard outside to protect the club, and let me tell you I was SO good at doing my rounds💅. There was always construction going on in the Field so there was no shortage of rusty rebar swords. We took it so seriously it's embarassing, but no one took it as seriously as me lol. I wanted to feel important and intimidating. I'd pester my brother to do "Knight training" until he came to the field with me just for us to clang rebar against each other for 5 minutes. Why was I so desperate to feel like a big soldier?

4: Gomo's Old House

I was exploring my new neighborhood with my brother and our new friend who lived just down the street. His name was Roman and his mom made really good quesadillas for us to share one time.
We rode up the big hill and saw a dog behind someone's fence, so I went home and came back with tortilla chips stuffed into my pockets.
By that time it's owner was there but she couldn't seem to hear us..

The chalk is accurate to what I remember us writing, minus the dragon 🐉

3-2: The Townhouse

This was around the time my mom started work as a tooth sculptor(?). I guess it was before porcelain crowns were common? I thought it was fascinating! She seemed frustrated with it, understandably, but I'd zone in watching her carve those tiny indents and curves. Sometimes I'd give it a try but I always gave up.
She kept her tools in a green toolbox that I'd rifle through all the time as if I'd find something new and discover what it was that gave her the patience to do it.

3: The Townhouse

One day while I was doing my rounds of the new domicile(it was just a single long hall of townhomes) I saw a sad man sitting on the stairs. He was probably a teen but at my age everybody older than me was basically an adult.
I decided to make him feel better and offered a round of my ✨handheld Neopets gaming console✨. I think it was the game where you catch the falling bags?
I cheered him on until he lost, and then said aww too bad and snatched it back to continue my rounds😭I guess I figured I'd done enough lmao

2-6: The Brown House

I didn't care enough at the time to remember all the places my mom would take me with her to for errands. It was nice just letting her take the reigns and getting in the car for who knows what. Grownups always knew exactly what to do, how to do it, and where to go.
But there was a vivid atmosphere in all the dank discount stores, nondescript Korean shops tucked away in odd floors, and thrift stores where I'd hide in the clothing racks. I still recall the feeling of it, and an oddly specific memory among them

2-5: The Brown House

Its not like it was a typical thing for us to run around in the sprinklers until fully drenched, but for some reason I felt a pressure to perform being a kid having kid-fun in front of the stranger blowing leaves on our lawn

2-4: Cyber Field

My parents owned a PC cafe around ~2002 in Van Nuys for a while called Cyber Field(I constantly misremember it as "Cyber Space" because of how much I happened to love watching the animated TV show "Cyber Chase" at the time)
Occasionally my parents would watch us while working and I'd feel so cool walking in and using the PCs for free just to play games on the Scholastic Kids or Cartoon Network website while everybody else played Counter Strike, Starcraft, or Diablo.
I also remember being at my grandparent's house wondering why my parents were working so late one night. It turned out they were robbed at gunpoint over some computers?? All that for 8 whole gigabytes

It ended up going bankrupt when another PC cafe opened across the street with newer tech

There was a specific framed "electric photo" of a moving river rapid we had in the entrance. I always stared at it trying to figure it out but I never understood how it worked.

After hunting down info about the place online, I found a single post on flickr where a guy uploaded the old membership card he had! I wonder if we were ever there at the same time

2-3: The Brown House

I went through a phase when I was around 5 where I'd sneak my breakfast fried egg into the corner of our playroom's closet. Idk what it was but I had such an overwhelming compulsion to do it, even after getting smacked every morning I did it! One time my mom even pretended to leave the house just to wait for me to run to the closet and catch me in the act.
I don't remember what made me finally stop

2-2: The Brown House

When I played Jazz Jackrabbit, I always got stuck on this one level where you were supposed to use the parrot to get to a specific spot you can't reach. But for me the whole point of the level was to get to ride that bird around for 30 seconds

When my brother and I weren't sleepy yet at bedtime, we'd play "MindCraft." It was a 1 to 1 port of Warcraft into our imaginations, but with whatever made up clans we wanted. We took turns describing what we were building and doing in our base until we fell asleep. Like a less physical version of Calvinball if you will

2-1: The Brown House

We didn't actually use padding, we just smashed into the door at the bottom

1: The One I Don't Remember

All I know is there's a photo of me eating rice by the handfuls straight out of the rice cooker