My hometown

A recent post by Tshsmom called "SME's friends" brought something back to me about my hometown.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in a little refinery town called Martinez. This town is right on the Carquinez Strait and is known for being the birthplace of the martini, John Muir (the father of the American environmental preservation movement and a huge influence on the life of Teddy Roosevelt), and Joe DiMaggio.

Recently I took a job in the San Francisco area and I'm renting a room during the week not too far from Martinez. My buddy I'm renting from is also from Martinez as are some other friends I went to high school with.

This Sunday, I went out to eat with him and one of my best friends from high school who now lives close enough to the refineries that their last accident last year got crap on his car. We went to an authentic Mexican restaurant which had wonderful food served by a gorgeous Mexican waitress. I forgot what the food was called, but it was a breakfast soup that started with "ch." It was hot and cleared my sinuses for the next twenty-four hours. Very nice.

Before we entered the restaurant, we got to see two tweekers standing outside doing nothing. When we left, they had gone and we joked about tweekers being like cockroaches, you turn on the lights and they scatter.

The other day I had to pick up some supplies for my Giada marinara sauce and since there was only one cashier, we had to wait for some stupid tweekers to pay with a bad check for ten minutes. The manager should have just kicked them out of the store, but he was probably scared of tweekers because they're unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.

My real estate agent the other day made an offer on a fixer-upper in that town. He drove by it and there was a tweeker doing nothing standing outside the house. I asked him if the house came with the tweeker. He said he hoped not. Someone offered higher and won the house, which is too bad because he would have given me some construction work on the side to help him fix it up.

In Chico, a friend from high school and I got together and watched the Packers game with my wife at my favorite sports club. We talked about old high school acquintances and one of our mutual acquintances became a cop and got shot and killed by some stupid drug addict. He left behind a pregnant wife.

This town has become tweeker central. It sucks, because I hate tweekers. Of all the drug addicts, meth addicts are the worst. They're at best extremely annoying and at worst dangerous. When a meth lab moves, it costs a million in yours and my taxpayer money to clean up the environmental hazard.

For me, it's sad because this was my hometown. I used to miss it and now I'm glad I left.

Yeah, I know this had little to do with Tshsmom's article about her daughter's high school friends, but thinking of high school friends reminded me of my hometown. Well, I'll just be sure to visit Martinez less so the tweekers don't overwrite my fond memories of the town. It's sad though. I'd much rather prefer my memories of my hometown to be fond.