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.