14,15,16 in Monte Vista

The later summers I spent in Colorado got to be pretty lonely, now that I think back. I mean as an early teen, and not when the relatives from Oregon and Texas came booming in, but after they left and I was shipped back to Monte Vista. There it is beautiful, silent and rugged terrain, everything someone would need as a vacation from the noise in his/her head, and although it was great it didn't always suit me well. I spent my days painting shitty paintings and trying to tame the latest baby horse in the pasture, staying up late to watch chilling Discovery Channel programs about lesser-known serial killers in places just as random as Monte Vista and then I'd sleep in til well past sun-up.
I ate a lot of Ramen noodles and sometimes would gather a whole box of empty Shasta Cola cans and carry my little .22 rifle 5 minutes down the dusty road to the Sheriffs' range for target practice. I often sat in the gazebo and watched giant mosquitoes helplessly trying to get through the screen from the inside, so occupied with trying to escape they didn't smell me, and I would gaze out at the horse pasture and put my feet up and listen to CDs, write short stories that have long since been tossed (for the better anyway). I didn't put on a swimsuit and jump into the ice-cold water hole unless Dave or Seth or Brian was there for a visit. I used to go with Sammy to Alco which was just outside of downtown Monte Vista and buy notebooks that I could fill with my 14-15-16-yr old insights for real cheap, or random movies like "Dawn of the Dead." That one cost $8, I remember very vividly actually. It was fun riding in the passenger seat of Sammy's massive truck used to pull horsetrailers down Highway 160, my arm tanning against the window and the mirages on the road over and again appearing and going away.
Every week I would glean the San Luis Valley local paper to find out what big movie would be playing at the drive-in theatre 2 miles down the road. It would always be movies like "Doctor Doolittle 2," which Dave and I went to see when he came to visit once. There was also a very small theatre in the town that I enjoyed going to as often as possible. My mom took me there quite a bit, and it made some evenings so much more exciting. Otherwise, Monte Vista did not offer much, and even less so Del Norte, the closest down going the other direction. I spent several hours late into the night at the hospital in Del Norte suffering from some brief flu-like ailment. It was never quite defined and was so excruciating they injected my butt with such a powerful opiate I slept through a whole day of my life.
I have better stories to tell about Colorado of course since it is practically a second home for me, but these were the ones I was thinking of: many aimless days I spent living in my head and often wondering what my friends were doing all summer back in Illinois, missing Alexei whether he was helping the cause to prevent wildfires in Durango or hanging around Boulder, and Julian who was always elsewhere, the summer I'm thinking of he was living in Pilsen in the Southside of Chicago with Joe Hake in that seemingly ill-fated apartment. It wasn't all bad though, I got used to being alone, had time to read books and stuff... I had much opportunity to just think and reflect and that was probably more valuable than I'm willing to give credit.