In my hometown, Huntington Beach, during the 1920’s, train was the dominant source of transportation for both industrial needs as well as personal travel. These train tracks went everywhere in town, and stayed prevalent until the late 1960’s when the southern portion of the tracks disappeared. Today a singular strip of rails still exists and runs parallel to Beach Blvd. going on for miles until they split and go in two directions in the city of Stanton. However, the most southern parts in Huntington are rarely used, mainly because their only purpose is to supply a lumber yard that only takes deliveries once a month. Big parts of these tracks are overrun with homeless camps, which were heavily policed for about a year in 2003 before the city decided to look the other way. But ever since I was a kid and lived within a proximity, this place has been somewhat of an oasis. And it has served as the birthplace of some of the best memories I’ve ever had and one of the best lessons I’ve ever had the privilege of learning.

As a kid, me and my friends would look to this place for some kind of sense of independence, something that belonged to us and only us. I specifically remember one instance in which one of my oldest friends made us all take a pact that we would never tell anyone outside the group that place existed. I probably became one of many to break this pact, considering I’ve seen many of the original group with others a many times since then. Yet, we all become very agitated whenever we run into someone we don’t want to. Nevertheless, the stories went on from their, but what was funny to me is the sense of adventure we got as kids simply by going to a place we weren’t supposed to, and getting that same sense even returning to that place today. The area we would hang around was right next to Slater Avenue, and so it was dubbed; Slater and Cross. Shortly after, when my parents announced we were moving away, I was crushed. But I would later return to this place many times later in my life.

Years in the future when I was in my freshman year, a late friend of mine invited me to walk to a nearby mall to meet his then girlfriend and her brother. Little did I know that his method of getting their would be the tracks that I played on as a kid. However this time I got to see this place in it’s whole light without any filter. While I got a nice walk down memory lane, I was finally forced to see the river of poverty and drug addiction that pushed so many people to the homeless camps. I’ve never been asked for more cigarettes in my life. I did however notice something I hadn’t before, the presence of graffiti. Not the kind of immature drawing on a wall that you’d find underneath some run down freeway, but the kind that looks really expensive. As we walked down the tracks it almost felt like I was flipping through a magazine or a picture book, seeing some kind of theme connecting all of these unrelating artworks. It was nice to see the place I remembered hadn’t changed at all after close to 8 years. Mind you, these tracks spread 4 miles across our town, and the  place I had played as a kid was right in the midway point of this 4 mile stretch. At this time me and my friend had already passed through the homeless camps, however we were heading straight for gang territory. I was nervous, but calm enough about the idea of proceeding on. We moved through without any trouble. Yet, 3 hours later as we began to walk back home, the sun fell and we were walking through the roughest part of town in the dark of night. My heart started beating out of my chest, but as time went on and nothing happened it went from scary to exciting. Once again, in a different time in my life, I had found my oasis.

Since then that area became the place I went whenever I was bored, unhappy, or just when I felt like having a walk down memory lane. At this point in time I had been to this area so many times I began to memorize the order in which the graffiti came in. This brings us to Halloween night my sophomore year. But in order to fully understand the trouble I had to go through to make that night happen, I have to backtrack a little bit. When I came to highschool I auditioned for a program called MMET (Music and Media Entertainment Technology), specifically the video production part of it. Every year the program would put on three mainstage shows, and the first of which, the Beatles show, fell right on the week of Halloween. This meant we had rehearsals on the night of Halloween that would often stretch until 9pm. At the same time during highschool I was working at a restaurant which I’m still working at today. Thank god I wasn’t working on the Tuesday night of Halloween that year. Thanks to that the only thing standing in the way was my rehearsals, which I was able to get out of by taking jobs that wouldn’t require me on Halloween. My friends had talked about going to the movies that night, and I was completely for that, mainly because the movie theater was right along the train tracks. I was excited that day at school, as soon as the bell rang I jumped out of my history seat. After a quick pit stop to our gym we began to walk towards the tracks, which started about 2 miles away from our school.

As we progressed I began to wonder whether or not we would encounter trouble this time. I mentioned it, but as a group we didn’t care. We began to move more and more towards the movie theaters, but it took longer than usual on account of my friends being absolutely mesmerized. You have to understand that we lived in Huntington Beach, we knew cool places like this existed but we didn’t ever think they were that close to home. It almost felt we were part of the movie of Stand By Me. Four friends set of on an adventure and only told what direction they were to go in, minus the broke and hungry part. About halfway through the sun began to set, which we were very happy about. It was a bit spooky this time on account of it being Halloween, but that only upped the thrill. After reaching the end of the tracks we proceeded to see the movie, after which we realized we had no ride home, so we walked home the same way we came.

This was definitely one of the dumbest decisions we ever made, it was close to 10 at night and we were walking right through gang territory. Sure enough we had to walk right through a couple of shady characters. Today me and my friends refer to them as “the Unsavory Ones.” One of them proceeded to ask all of us if we had cigarettes, to which we responded no. His friend told him to back off but he then began to follow us claiming that we were lying, we continued to tell him he was wrong. After catching up with us, he grabbed my shoulder and yelled something gibberish in my ear. This is the point where my heart dropped, because I turned around just in time to see my friend strike this man in the face. The three of us immediately started bolting, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think this man tried to follow us. He must have either stayed their or gone in a different direction because we never saw him again. But as we were running you could hear him screaming and yelling. I thanked my friend for doing that and then asked him what the hell he was thinking. What I didn’t realize, and what was explained to me by my other two friends, is that as this man grabbed my shoulder what he yelled was, “I’ll Kill You.” My heart once again dropped and we proceeded to safely walk home.

To this day part of me still questions his decision to act that way, the other half is completely grateful. But just for the sake of expressing a life lesson we all learned that night, let’s focus on the grateful part. That man threatened to kill me, and a friend of mine decided to do what he saw as necessary to put us all in safety. When I asked him why, he responded in a way that’s stuck with me since then. He said, “Their are good choices and bad choices, and the only way to tell the difference is how they are justified, one day we will all meet our creator, and we need to be ready to answer for every decision we ever made.” Which I later found out he completely stole from Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper.