Bakersfield: The Early Return

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 28, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Before Dawn

We left Tucson before dawn.

We always left early when driving long distances. It was cooler and quieter. This time it was my mother driving, my sisters Geri and Lauren, me, a small square fish tank with guppies, and a cat whose name I no longer remember. My father was not with us. That tells me he was still working on Kwajalein.

The fish container was more reinforced bowl than aquarium. It sat in Geri’s lap. Somewhere between Tucson and Los Angeles, the rising sun poured through the car window. The water heated gradually. By the time we realized what was happening, the guppies were dead.

I remember the sunrise more than the fish.

Desert Light

I was four, not yet five, and I saw a desert sunrise unlike any I have seen since. Reds and oranges across a flat horizon. Silence and scale at the same time. It remains one of the clearest visual memories of my early childhood.

The cat became carsick and vomited in my lap. I reacted in kind. Somewhere inside that remarkable sunrise was a miserable cat, a crying boy, and a station wagon heading west.

That was our return to California.

A Project Family

We were not a family that planted roots.

We moved where contracts required — Tucson, Kwajalein, Bakersfield. Stability was provisional. Addresses changed.

My father was gone for extended stretches. Kwajalein Atoll. Defense work. Important work, as it was described. To a small child, the description did not matter. He was simply absent.

When he returned from one of those stretches in Bakersfield, I made a smart remark. I do not remember what I said. I remember being taken into a bedroom and beaten with a belt.

That was discipline as it functioned then. There was no discussion. You obeyed.

Years later, when I had children of my own, I repeated what I had been shown.

Patterns pass forward unless someone interrupts them.

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Tucson: Lessons in Independence

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 21, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Too Young for Baseball

There was a city-run youth program of some kind — crafts, games, structured activity without the formal label of school. I was four, perhaps four and a half. Not enrolled in school. No preschool. My mother was not present that day.

I remember the announcement clearly:

“Time for baseball.”

The older children gathered. Two teenage camp leaders conferred briefly, then delivered their decision.

“You’re too young to learn baseball. You should go home.”

There was no modified role, no escort, no accommodation. Simply a dismissal.

I was apparently too young to learn baseball — but not too young to walk home alone across blocks and intersections.

So I walked.

I arrived safely. I never learned childhood baseball in Tucson. Years later, in Chicago, I would play 16-inch clincher softball through Awana — gloves unnecessary, the ball large and soft. It was enjoyable, but it was not the same beginning.

My father favored individual sports such as golf and auto racing. He disliked the way team sports credited one player for collective effort. Baseball never became central in our household.

It remained peripheral — and later, personal.

The BB Rifle

The early 1960s are often described as safer years. My experience complicates that narrative.

One afternoon, Geri and I walked to a small soft-serve stand on a main street. On the way back, we passed a pair of older boys. They watched us. We continued walking.

A sharp impact struck the back of my head.

One of them had fired a pump-action BB rifle.

I do not recall whether I dropped the ice cream cone. I remember crying as we walked home. My mother cleaned the welt and then went, with Geri, to the boy’s house.

His father was a county sheriff.

The conversation was direct. The rifle was taken away. Discipline followed. In that moment, authority functioned as intended.

The early 1960s were not without danger. They were simply managed differently.

The Apricot Tree

Across the street lived an older woman who guarded her apricot trees with vigilance. Pie tins hung in the branches as improvised alarms. She sat nearby with an air-pump BB rifle. When birds descended, she struck a tin with precise aim, and the metallic snap scattered them.

She allowed me to shoot as well.

I was too young for baseball, but apparently old enough to handle a BB rifle under supervision. That contradiction did not occur to me at the time.

Old Tucson

Old Tucson was a movie set converted into a tourist attraction. One ride simulated a haunted gold mine: rail cars, flashing lights, staged explosions. I was unprepared for it.

During the ride I panicked completely. When we emerged into daylight, I declared through tears that I had known God would save me. My sisters laughed.

Later that day I reached for my mother’s hand while crossing a street and grasped the hand of a stranger instead. Realizing the mistake, I ran forward until I found her.

We ended the outing in a saloon-style establishment where I first heard the word “sarsaparilla.” It meant root beer.

The Collapsed Lawn

One afternoon my mother set up a metal sprinkler near the carport and we went inside for a nap. When we returned outside, a large section of lawn had collapsed into a cavity beneath it.

Before city sewage, the house had used a septic tank. When the system was removed, the pit had not been properly filled. Boards had been laid across the opening and sod placed over them. The sprinkler softened the ground, the boards failed, and the lawn gave way.

The situation was repaired, but our time in Tucson was already nearing its end.

My father secured work with General Electric on Kwajalein Atoll, installing generating equipment for the missile test range. He departed first. Not long after, we packed and left Tucson by car, returning to Bakersfield.

The desert chapter concluded as the others had — with departure.

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Movement as Routine

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — April 16, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

The Toolbox

When a project ended, the family packed. The largest and most important object was my father’s steel toolbox — nearly the size of a steamer trunk. He could lift it as if it weighed far less than it did. It contained the tools that kept the machines running.

When the toolbox moved, we moved.

Early Geography

I do not remember San Rafael. My early life is reconstructed from sequence rather than memory. Bakersfield, California. Tucson, Arizona. Then back to Bakersfield by the time I reached kindergarten.

Bakersfield became the first stable reference point — oil fields, truck yards, construction crews, heat, and dust. It was not glamorous, but it was functional.

Sound and Environment

My infancy unfolded in the background noise of construction: engines idling, hydraulics hissing, steel against earth. Entire sections of the state were being cut, graded, and reshaped. My father’s work placed us inside that process.

The landscape was not sentimental. It was under development.

Record Over Memory

If memory fails, documentation remains. According to Catholic records, I was baptized on the Feast of St. Blaise. Two crossed candles were held at my throat during the blessing. Tradition remained steady even when location did not.

Family called me Clifford. Others called me Cliff. The name carried no decoration.

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