I:II

We called our hang out spot Castlevek. “Castle” because one of us thought that would be a cool place to call a hang out spot and “vek” because there was a rumor that some Russian from the Red Terror escaped, was on his way to Mexico, got caught, and was killed somewhere in the nearby area. His name was Viktor Vek. The old man who told us the story seemed pretty convincing, but I can’t help but wonder what a Soviet was doing in the Central Valley.

Castlevek was located a few miles outside of town. We couldn’t hang out there on windy days because it’s located out in what could be called a desert. I wouldn’t call it a desert because I think there is too much vegetation, but there is a lot of sand. If you saw it you would probably call it a desert… I’m getting off topic. Anyway so after WWII the U.S. had a lot of money and all of these nowhere towns started sprouting up. Mortem was one of those towns, and so was whatever town used to be under Castlevek. Mortem is still alive, that’s where we live, but the remains of the town under Castlevek were nothing more that high organized stacks of metal and wood. It was basically a junkyard.

We parked our cars at the end of the road from Mortem and we would walk the rest of the way to Castlevek. We had set up a bunch of couches and stuff and moved some of the old 1950’s cars around a circle. In the middle was a deep black pit in which we held bon fires.

To me it was only fun to be in Castlevek if we were all there. That would explain why Erick and I were sitting in the car. Whoever showed up next would see my car and we would all wait for the next car. If someone came to Castlevek uninvited, we would usher them to the other side of the town which was a lot less safe than our side (and that is really saying something!), and the uninvited person would eventually leave. Police never had a problem with it. Only one group of guys was persistent about trying to get into our spot but I’ll get into them later because the next car is arriving…