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El Cajon leads region in tweaked, white trash gentrification

By Brian Swarthmore

July 10, 2006

San Diego--Growing up in San Diego, there was always a feeling that the sanitation folks only took some of the garbage to the dumps but took the white trash straight to El Cajon.

That’s because “The Box,” which is what the words “El Cajon” supposedly mean in Spanish, has always had a layer of scum on its surface, thanks to an alternative form of religion I used to call “Tweaked Christianity.”

By that, I mean Christianity as seen through the eyes of a tweaker.

One time we were on a date and the car wouldn’t start so we needed a jump. Her Mom drove up with her mullet-wearing brother with jumper cables (and a few stolen cable boxes in the back.

The Mom had to head over to the casino and left “Toothless Joe,” who practically demanded we drive him over to a friend’s house so he could buy some Crystal Meth and then drop him off at a friend’s house.

As we drove off, he yelled to me, “Hey, first poke for me, man.”

Still, you can’t say they didn’t have values. The father, Deacon, never liked to pay a bill in his life but he would always tell the bill collectors, “God bless you,” before making up a bullshit excuse why he wasn’t going to pay. If the conversation was going well, he’d sometimes ask if they wanted to buy an old cable box.

I went to “Toothless Joe’s” wedding with Cheri and I must admit it was a sight. A true heavy metal Christian wedding: Lots of teased hair, cold cuts instead of real food at the reception, a fire-and-brimstone speech by a pastor and, of course, lots of original songs about the occasion.

What makes a heavy metal Christian wedding song a true heavy metal Christian song? Lots of references about Jesus dying on the cross, particularly references to how the blood from his wrists oozed down his arms.

Sample lyrics:

“And the blood from the cross/ Reminds us of his loss/ Christ died so we could have our wedding day. And the nails in his wrists/ Brought us to our first kiss/ Christ died so we could have our wedding day.” (At this point, it is appropriate to wave hands above the head in jubilation, or, if you prefer, do a devil sign).

I remember leaving the wedding in order to go smoke some weed (and so Cheri could freshen up her tweak high) and the bride looked at us with smiles and told her new sister-in-law, “First poke for me.”

I didn’t date Cherie much longer after that. I just couldn’t see giving my first pokes to anyone else, much less a member of her family.

But I didn’t leave El Cajon. I just went looking for a better class of people and I found them at Unarius, a UFO cult, with its world headquarters at 145 So. Magnolia Avenue. I’ve always felt that crazy and stupid people were better at sex than others, so I figured, who’s crazier and dumber than someone who believes 33 spaceships are going to land in Jamul – one on top of the other?

I went to a few meetings, but I was young and, frankly, didn’t get into it too much. The organization focuses on past lives, and I figured everyone would be talking about how they hooked up at Roman orgies 2000 years ago. Instead, it was all about, ugh, personal development.

Plus, they would get in these hypnotic states and “transceive” a message from other planets with names straight from a pharmaceutical company’s branding department: Vixall, Myton, Thorazine, Gynelotrimen.

It was very boring. The “space brothers” were all into energy but they would never answer what I thought were pertinent questions to understanding E.T.s from other worlds:

“How do you go to the bathroom?”

“Do you have French fries. If so, do you put ketchup on them?”

“When your friend is about to have sex with someone, do you tell them, ‘First poke for me?’”

But while El Cajon has long been ground zero for San Diego’s white trash population, things have changed in the last few years.

Hiram’s Guns and Liquor (immortalized in the Rugburns’ song “Suburbia”) is no longer there.

Not only have the Mexicans come to bring their hard-working ways to this once white trash mecca, but the city now has a large Chaldean population.

These hard working Christian Iraqis make a vital contribution to San Diego County by running many of the neighborhood liquor stores.

Think about it: If you’ve ever bought an overpriced six-pack of Corona and suddenly got a hankering to buy a phone card that will allow you to call Mexico, along with some herbal sex supplement, two packs of Gummi Worms for a dollar, and a 25-cent Little Debbie peanut butter bar, you owe the Chaldeans some gratitude.

Thanks to the Chaldean influence, the once white trash community of El Cajon now is chock full of kebab places right next to Army surplus stores.

No wonder I falafel.

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