So there I was this afternoon, minding my own business and trying to think of ways to re-energize this here old blog. I still post regularly to it, but they're cross posts of the playlists from my radio show Stuck In Thee Garage and from my podcast Completely Conspicuous. But I'd gotten away from doing any original writing here on a regular basis, so I'm hoping this will get things going again. The idea for Found Object is for me to take one of the many pieces of detritus I've accumulated over the years and write a short essay about it: Could be related to music, sports, school or anything, really.
The first item is from a turbulent time in my life. It's my school ID card from grade 10, when I was starting my first full year at Hanford High School in Richland, Wash.:
I look pretty psyched for my sophomore year, huh? This was the fall of 1982. A year earlier, we had moved from Pickering, Ontario to Richland, following my dad, who had taken a new job there and moved in June 1981. For whatever reason, my mom, me and my brother stayed in Pickering for another five months before moving to the U.S. It was a strange time, because even though the move was inevitable, I think I was somewhat in denial, maybe hoping that my dad would come back and tell us it didn't work out and we wouldn't have to leave. So I started my freshman year at Pickering High School, moved at the end of November and started at a junior high in Richland for a month before we moved across town to a house we rented. The second half of freshman year was at Hanford High, which was a bigger and nicer school than the junior high.
Fast forward to September 1982. When this picture was taken, despite my dour expression, things were actually better than the previous year. I was starting to make some friends and was getting used to the strange city in the desert we had moved to. Richland is located in the southeastern part of the state, about three hours from Seattle and part of an area called the Tri-Cities, along with Kennewick and Pasco; all three around situated around the Columbia and Yakima rivers. Unlike the northern part of the state, the Tri-Cities are bone dry, getting very little precipitation every year and occasionally getting sand storms whipped up Chinook winds that blow down from Canada.
Richland is also home to the Hanford nuclear site, where testing was done during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. My dad worked at the Hanford nuke plant, which has since been decommissioned. But at the time, it seemed everybody in town worked there. We even were sent home early from school one day when there was a pro-nuclear power march through Richland. The Hanford reservation is now the most contaminated site in the U.S.
As for me, I was not thrilled about those glasses I was wearing. They were my first glasses and as you can see, they took up most of my face. Plus I was a dork and only had a few friends at the time and zero prospects in terms of girlfriends. All that moving doesn't exactly help you make inroads in that department.
In general, living in Richland was a big adjustment after growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, one of the biggest cities in North America. My big interests were sports and music and there was little coverage of either, at least the stuff I was into. I went from being able to watch every Leafs game and many Jays games to not being to see them much, if at all. Our cable system got the Vancouver CTV station, which occasionally aired Canucks games, but I never got to see Jays games. At least we got ESPN so I could watch highlights.
As for music, all we had for radio was a crappy top 40 station. I read Rolling Stone, Circus and Hit Parader regularly, so I kept as up to date on hard rock as I could. We didn't get MTV, which had launched in August 1981 but wasn't on a lot of cable systems yet. Still, there were outlets for my interests. I remember early in September '82 riding my bike to the local record store in town to pick up Rush's new album Signals on its release day. I was also big into comics and made regular visits to the local comic shop to get my favorite titles.
The school year itself went pretty well. But in typical fashion, just as I got settled into life in Richland, my dad's job was transferred to New Hampshire and he moved out there in early 1983. My mom and us moved into a condo right across from Hanford, which was great for the morning commute, but it highlighted the transient nature of our existence. And indeed, the day after the school year ended in June '83, we were on a plane to New Hampshire (well, Boston); I spent the entire trip holding the new vinyl copy of Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind, which came out just before we left.
There was actually a fair amount of discussion in early '83 about the three of us moving back to Toronto; my mother had gone as far as talking to a high school in Scarborough, when we lived before we moved to Pickering (it's since been swallowed up as part of Toronto). I remember perusing a school handbook and thinking this might actually happen. But in the end, she decided we should all be together in NH. Ultimately, things worked out great, but at the time, I was pretty pissed about the whole situation. When my dad picked us up at Logan and drove us to our new home in Kingston, NH, it was a little shocking. It was situated on Route 125 on a three-acre plot, with a mud driveway. I thought my mom was going to cry; maybe she did. This was pre-Internet, so we had no idea what the place looked like; apparently, my dad got a good deal on it, but it was like moving to the boonies. We had a few months of summer to acclimate ourselves before school started; my new school was so small there was apparently no need for ID cards. But that's a story for another day and another found object.
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