

Part 92: That Time I Changed My First Name
My friend Dorrit texted me the photograph above with a question: "Porterville 1920s?" She'd sent another photo with the KKK marching down this street. The Klan was still active in Porterville in the 1980s, can you believe that shit? A writer for the Porterville Recorder noted that in 1985, a man contacted the paper to drum up some publicity about a demonstration the Klan was having on South Main Street. The reporter, Rick Elkins, told the man that he would not give them publi


Part 91: A Radical Departure
Our landlord said he wanted to sell the house, so we had to move, at least that’s what Riley said. I didn’t fully understand why our lives were so chaotic, but I was beginning to see that a lot of what went wrong was Riley's fault. No one was in the driver's seat. This was our fourth move in four years, over a dozen since I was born. I’d been excited about leaving the horrible house we were in, until I laid eyes on the place we were moving into. The new address was near the r


Part 90: Dream On
They told their mother in Spanish "we brought home a stray dog." I didn't speak Spanish, but much later, the sisters told me...