Christal
Cooper
Article 1,423 Words
Guest
Blogger Chad Hankins
My Life of Words
I've
wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Well, technically I wanted
to be a world renowned musician first, but there's a writing element to that
too, so I'm counting it. I've been slugging it out for years, dreaming of
making a life for myself in an industry that's damned hard to make a living in.
Unless I get a best seller out there, I'm chasing a very poor phantom. But you
can't pick what you love I suppose.
Anyway,
I recently started a social and political website called Citizen Roots Magazine, which is dead set on giving journalism it's
teeth back, and connecting those teeth to a backbone. We also love long winded
sarcasm. But that's not where this weird little tale of Chad Hankins begins.
I
was born July 10th, 1986 to a 20 year old mom and a 21 year old dad
in the medium-sized town of Pueblo, Colorado. I showed up 14 months after my
sister Britney. My mom came from a family of conservative, Evangelical
preachers, and my dad had a lineage of fun loving, hard drinking, total smart
asses. Things got weird straight away.
It
turns out the funneling process of this bizarre genetic combination makes for
some pretty strange personality traits. Britney and I both have OCD about the
weirdest shit (my big one is that I can't touch dry flour), we're hilarious in
social settings, but hate leaving our houses, and we both have a zero tolerance
policy for stupidity and rudeness. The irony of that last bit is that we will
verbally demolish you for your stupidity or rudeness, which is kind of rude. Oh
well. Nobody's perfect. Anyway, I'm rambling.
So,
when I was about eleven or twelve I discovered punk rock. I didn't so much 'discover'
it as my older cousin gave me a Dead Kennedys tape and told me not to listen to
it when my mom was home. Considering the fact that non-Christian music was
banned from our house at the time, this was pretty sound advice.
I
had no clue what they were talking about at that age. The social and political
messages of their songs were way over my head, but I knew they were being angry
and sarcastic. I understood this aspect perfectly. I had found my calling. I
just needed to figure out what I was pissed off about. This took a few
years.
I
joined my first punk band at 14 and started writing like a maniac. Literally. I
shoveled every thought from my crazy, puberty addled brain onto the pages of my
notebook. I must've written a book's worth of psycho babble in various
notebooks, including one that was just graph paper. I didn't care though. I had
to write.
I'm
sure that the content of those notebooks is utterly insane, but I lost them
years ago. It's a shame really. If I could read them now I might actually feel
sane compared to the Chad of the past. It wouldn't take much.
So
fast forward to 2009. I moved to San Antonio and started working at Dick's Last
Resort. For the uninitiated, that's the restaurant where smart asses are
encouraged to mock their guests and sarcasm thrives. There are worse jobs,
especially for a natural born smart ass like me. In fact, I was working at an
Italian restaurant years before, when a coworker of mine (a Dick's alum
himself) told me that I should work there. He always laughed when he overheard
me with my tables, because I would subtly make fun of them. They'd ask things
like “What red wines do you have?” while holding the wine menu, and I would
respond with things like “We have them all listed here where it says 'red
wines.'” making sure to reach over their shoulder and point to the menu that
was in their hands. They never caught that I was being an asshole, but Tom (the
aforementioned coworker) did.
People
always ask me why I moved from Colorado to Texas, and my usual reply is “Boredom,
mostly.” This isn't entirely true. While I love Colorado and desperately want
to move back now, I was in a pretty serious rut at the time. I couldn't find a
job, was living on couches, and had completely stopped writing. A change of
scenery was absolutely needed.
About
a month into my San Antonio life, I met my future wife. She was sitting
cross-legged on top of one of our patio tables drinking a Shiner. I thought she
looked extremely interesting by the way that she carried herself, but I was
slightly too busy to go over there and hit on her. I had tables to mock.
An
hour or so later, she came up to me. It turned out that she managed a retail
store across the river from us, and came in often for post-work libations.
Everybody knew her because she worked close to us and used to date one of our
managers. While she was picking people's brains for places to go for her
upcoming cross-country road trip, someone told her “I think the new guy is from
Colorado.” This became my in. I told her about all of the amazing features of
my homeland and then gave her my number. You know, in case she got lost out
there. She called me later that night, and we've been together ever since.
The
thing about my wife is that she's an absolute bad ass and you have to keep up
with her. She camps, travels, builds amazing things for the house, and does
great pieces of art. It was her that reignited that creative part of my brain
that fell dormant for so long.
I
started writing again. Feverishly. I was submitting articles to everyone I
thought might publish them, I started a book (now I just need to finish said
book), and I became the writer for a large graffiti festival called Clogged
Caps.
The
problem with my writing is that it's reflective of my personality. This isn't
necessarily a problem for the reader, but editors can be a little trepidatious
about running my stuff. I use a lot of sarcasm and sex puns in an attempt to
eviscerate every manor of social and political injustice in America. I'm not
great at pulling punches.
The only time they would ever consider running my
articles was after they'd given them a full blown rewrite. They would cut them
so much that all of the voice, style, and original opinions of these articles
would be completely gone. This usually ended with me getting upset and telling
them things like “Put your name on it. You wrote it. I don't want my
name on something that has only three lines of my actual writing.” This always
resulted in them pulling the whole article.
Now,
before you think I'm some insufferable, egotistical prick, there's something
you should consider. My name was going to be on something that had been changed
so much that the original opinion was no longer reflected. At all. Not even a
little bit. I stand behind those decisions.
That
brings us to present day. I figured out that it would be much simpler to just
start my own media source than to try to convince these local editors to have a
backbone. That's partly true, but it's been a lot of work.
Now I'm the editor. Our only other permanent
staff writer is Robert Anthony Cuomo, who may be more opinionated than I am,
and our web designer Brittany Nichols has put in a lot of
hours creating a website that looks absolutely amazing!
My
hope is to never do to the Citizen Roots Magazine writers what these guys
were doing to everyone else. I'm not the thought police. I'll run things that
differ from my own opinion.
In
fact, we recently started working on a segment called 'Two Sides, One Coin,' in
which we publish two opposing views on the same topic. I'm still trying to find
a televangelist to do one on gay marriage with me. Surprisingly (to probably no
one at all), I haven't heard back from any of them yet.
But
it's about the conversation. Critical thinking is gasping for air in this
country, and it won't get better until we drop our hypersensitive, PC nature
and hear each other out. That's the goal of CitizenRootsMagazine.com. Ok. That's the last shameless plug. I promise.
Photograph
Description And Copyright Information
Photos
1, 3, 9 (young boy), 10 (age 14), 11 (January 2010), 18, and 24
Chad
Hankins.
Copyright granted by Chad Hankins.
Copyright granted by Chad Hankins.
Photo
2, 19, and 23
Web
logos for Citizen Roots Magazine
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
4.
Typewriter
art
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
5.
Hankins
Family- Sister Britney far left and Chad far right.
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
6 (early years) and Photo 7 (today)
The
Hankins siblings Britney and Chad
Photo
8
Dead
Kennedy
Klaus
Flouride, Tello Biafra, D.H. Deligro, and East Bay Ray
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo
12
Logo
for Dick’s Last Resort
Copyright
by Chad Hankins
Photo
13
Colorado
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
14
San Antonio
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
15
Mrs.
Chad Hankins
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
16
Hankins
wedding photo
Copyright
granted by Chad Hankins
Photo
17
Logo
for Clogged Caps Nine
Photo
21.
Robert
Anthony Cuomo
Copyright
granted by Robert Anthony Cuomo
Photo
22.
Brittany
Nichols
Copyright
granted by Brittany Nicholas
Well done bravo!
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