by Chaser, San Quentin State Prison, CA
I don’t know if I have a best family memory but I have a lot of good ones. One memory that I look back on and smile is when we went to the Santa Clara County Fair. We were living in a small one bedroom house near Downtown San Jose. We didn’t have a lot of excess money at the time or even a car. I think my Dad won the tickets to the fair from a contest on the radio, either way, we got the tickets for free.
So we woke up early and we started off walking to the bus stop to get to the fair grounds across town. At that moment I had no idea what kind of day we were going to have. It was me, my Dad, my brother and sister. And we were starting a long, funny, crazy journey.
On the 10 mile journey to the fair we saw bums arguing, a suspected pimp yell at his employee, a O.G. dude get in a cussing match with a bus driver and the bus driver finished the quarrel with “Yo Mama.” We were all in another world. And we were having the time of our lives for a $1.50 bus ticket.
Finally, we made it to the Fair alive and without a “mama” slur thrown at us. It was well over 100° and we had about 10 bucks. We went and saw everything the fair had to offer, rides, farm animals like pigs, cows, goats, chickens. We went to venders looking for free stuff. We came up on t-shirts, frisbees, and we even saw a juggling act with a guy and a jack russell terrier. We even won some free square burger coupons from Wendy’s.
By this time it was getting late and we were all getting hungry. With only enough money to get home on the bus we had to walk all the way across town to the Wendy’s to turn in those coupons and get those square burgers.
We walked hella far and had the time of our lives. I found myself looking a block ahead waiting to see the Wendy logo. The Wendy’s we went to was the world famous finger in the chili Wendy’s. I don’t know if you guys remember that. But we ate the burgers, (didn’t find a finger luckily) and made the trek back home.
By the time we made it home we were dog tired. We all laughed and re-told our favorite events of the day. We had such a good time just me and my siblings and my Dad. We made lasting memories for about $10. And I will always remember this day and it stands as a favorite memory in my mind.