In Jefferson, Oregon my dad owns a salvage yard with piles of tin from roofs and industrial fencing, discarded washers, dryers, bikes, piles of copper tubing, and rows of ancient Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs either given or purchased. Surrounding this junk yard is a cold Oregon river on one side with a 10 foot tall embankment grown wild with blackberries and an endless plain of green mint, that when cut in the late summer, becomes a stench as thick as the humid, floral in a funeral home.

In this profession, an axe can be a very useful tool. I can allow you to cut through the plastic of a refrigerator interior, split large panels of metal quickly without using a blow torch, break through hinges, shatter glass.

One idle summer day, at the age of 14, when no one was around, I took an axe to the windows and windshields of several of those cracked leather upholstered vehicles. I don't know why I thought it would be okay to do but the crumple of glass beneath that axe head unleashed several days’ worth of pent up, lonely, frustration.

Some days later, my dad tells me that someone broke into his yard and broke out the windows on several of those vehicles. And someone had seen me walking away from the scene of the crime with an axe in hand.

I confessed.