There was a knock at the door and it was the pizza chef from around the corner. He had his apron on with pizza sauce all over it. He said that he had a job for me making pizzas if I wanted it. I was over the moon and jumped at the chance to get something to eat and some money in my pocket. A few hours later, my belly was full and I was on the way to making some money. It was twelve hour days but I didn’t care. I went back to the hotel that night with some pizza and I thought what a difference that a day could make. The pizza restaurant manager was a good looking Mexican woman. She was thirty and I was sixteen. We began an affair and I would sometimes spend the night at her apartment. I became good friends with the owner of the restaurant and he rented me an apartment that he had. I had a regular life before long with a job, girlfriend and decent place to live. I joined a gym and started going regularly. I had a very strange relationship with the other pizza chef who had originally knocked on my door about the job. I was having a relationship with his ex wife and he was really jealous but we were good friends. This guy had not been out of prison long, where he had done a seven year stretch for smuggling Mexicans across the border. He was a little bit wild and used to pack a pistol around with him. He was not someone that you would turn your back to no matter how good your friendship was. I began to miss my sister and my grandmother. I had not seen them for a very long time so I gave them a call. My sister answered the phone and seemed a little bit hesitant about my coming for a visit. I really craved any sort of family connection which I never had. It was finally agreed that I would catch the bus up to Northern California where they lived. They were living in a small town called Yreka near the Oregon border. I arrived at there house and was completely overcome with emotion which I had never felt before. This was a completely different world for me. They both welcomed me into the house but were not completely comfortable with me. I had just got a dragon tattoo on my right forearm which did not impress them much along with my demeanour. My sister was a cheerleader in high school and was dating the boy next door. I met her boyfriend and some of his friends. I liked them very much and I realised that they all had something that I didn’t have. They all had very well rounded personalities that came from leading sheltered lives. We would all go swimming at Shackleford Falls in the mountains. The entire area was mountainous and incredibly beautiful. The place seemed to have a buzz about it aside from the one that I was getting from smoking weed. The next town along was Mount Shasta which was built around an extinct volcano. I never asked or thought about my families connection to that area and they never informed me of the connection. It was not until decades later that I discovered my families connection on an ancestry website. My grandmothers family had traveled across the country in covered wagons and settled there. This was my grandmother on my mothers side. Her family became lumber jacks for a couple of generations after arriving in Northern California. I really had mixed emotions about my sister and my grandmother. While I loved them both with all of my heart, they had both abandoned me. My sister seemed to be somewhat ashamed of me and did not really want me around any of her friends. I could understand that on one note but I was struggling to understand it on another. I always thought that if I would have been in her shoes that I would have put much more loyal to my brother. The same goes for all of my family members really but even more so for my sister. When I first went into foster care at eight years old and was getting the shit beat out of me, I thought that maybe one of them would come and save me. I could not understand how they could just abandon me there. Nobody ever came though and I eventually lost hope that they would. This was bad enough but their shame for me later made it even worse. My sisters shame for me hit home more then other family members. The selfishness of my sister was completely off of the chart as far as I was concerned. I don’t think that she ever stopped to try and consider the pain that I had gone through or the loneliness. her main concerns seemed to be that I might get something that she felt she was entitled to or that I would embarrass her in front of her friends. She was even jealous that I would develop relationships with other family members that would trump hers such as with my two half sisters in Nebraska. It was all just selfishness and something that her and my father shared. I cannot understand to this day how somebody could be so cruel and I still love her. We were in the front room of my grandmothers house one day along with her boyfriend and we were arguing about something. My sister always thought that she was right. She has always thought that there was one rule for her and a different rule for everybody else. I could also not understand how she could continue to turn her back on her own brother just so she could get more for herself. This was in regards to any inheritance, relationships, friendships or whatever. My sister told me that she wanted me to leave. I said that it was my grandmothers house and that I had just as much right to be there as she did. I walked out to the front porch and she came up behind me and punched me in the face. I was not injured but was upset that I was now seeing her true colors. I agreed to leave and caught the bus back to San Diego. I arrived back in San Diego the following day. When I went back to work I noticed this Mexican guy lurking around that I did not know. He seemed to be very friendly with the manageress that I had been seeing. I was used to throwing people out of the pizza restaurant if they got to far out of line. It was a Navy town and things got pretty wild sometimes. This Mexican guy went behind the counter and started grabbing my girlfriend and kissing her so I decked him. A fight ensued which I won but the guy did not want to stay down. I would usually flatten trouble makers and then some of the other employees in the restaurant would throw them out but that didn’t happen this time. The guy started getting up off of the floor after I had knocked him down and something made me reach for a knife on the counter. I held it up to his throat and told him to get out. The guys that normally backed me up then jumped on my back and phoned the police. It seemed that the Mexican manageress that I had been seeing had started seeing this Mexican guy in my absence. The police charged me with attempted assault with a deadly weapon. They sentenced me to 7 months in prison as I had just turned seventeen and they classified me as an adult. I went to court again before getting out and it was to decide who to release me to as I was still a minor. They made me what was called a ward of the court which meant I was considered an adult at seventeen. I had thought that they already decided that when they decided that I should serve an adult prison sentence but they had to have another hearing to release me anyway. I ended up back on the street in San Diego with no job or money and found that I had been evicted from my apartment. Some of my furniture was sitting outside and the locks had been changed. There was an old shed next to it and I slept there that night. I began hanging around with some street people and would sleep where I could and find any food or water that was available. This got old very fast so I hitchhiked up to my fathers house in Reno Nevada. He was reluctant to let me in but finally agreed. I went to see the guy who owned the janitorial company whom I had worked for before while at the foster home. He agreed to hire me after getting a referral from the man at the foster home who’s truck I had taken for the burglary. It was very forgiving of him to give me the referral. I was back working again and was able to get a van before long which my father cosigned for. He probably thought that I might go and live in it and get out of his house. I saw the man at the foster home one day and he suggested setting up a meeting with the owner of the janitorial company. We both met with him and suggested that I begin taking on some of his contracts as my own because of his failing health. I had my own van so would just need to get some of my own equipment. The idea was to slowly buy him out of the business. He would pay me less thus increasing his own profit and once the deducted money had added up to an agreed amount then he would give me an account followed by another and so on. This was fine however it meant working longer and longer hours as once I had finished my day with him then I would go and do my own contracted jobs. I also had less money and needed to purchase equipment for my own contracts. I took another landscaping job during the day for extra money. This meant starting work at six in the morning and working until after midnight. I began getting more contracts and this meant that I was now getting off of work between two and three in the morning. There was no time to sleep and I knew nothing about getting loans in order to hire help. I eventually crashed and burned after having an argument with my father. He had been putting pressure on me to pay off the van loan so that he could get out of it. My father kicked me out of his house and I went on a drinking bender. I lost both jobs and my own contracts. The only thing to do at that point was some traveling to clear my mind. It was not long before my money ran out once again though. I was along the coast in southern California somewhere and starving. I had been sleeping in the van like my father suggested several times. My money had ran out and I had not eaten in awhile. I saw a sign saying French chef wanted. I had learned to be a good bullshiter and had nothing to lose so I went into the restaurant and told the manager that I was a French chef. I was very surprised that he believed me. That night I had a great meal and was earning very good money but knew absolutely nothing about what I was doing. The manager eventually said that he was going to transfer me to making sauces because I was not doing very well. This was fairly simple to do as it mostly involved following recipes. The guy told me after two weeks that he was going to let me go because things were not working out. He gave me a check for over seven hundred dollars on my way out and I was delighted. A week or so later I arrived back at my fathers house to get some of my things. He jumped into the van and said that he was taking it back. My father refused to get out of the van so I punched him a few times and threw him out. He phoned the police on me and I was pulled over shortly afterwards. The police took me to jail and my father took the van back. I ended up serving three months in jail this time. They released me and I took the bus back to Yreka California. My sister and I had began speaking again and she helped me to get a little studio apartment behind a butcher shop. The studio had no windows in it but was at least a place to lay my head. I signed up for unemployment allowance and began looking for jobs. My sister had taken a little summer job at a burger restaurant called Mikes Mountain sandwiches. I would do a few things with my sister and her boyfriend but I was on my own for the most-part. I would go and have a burger once in awhile with my sister on her lunch break and managed to buy a little bit of food to prepare at home. The unemployment allowance was not enough to pay for my rent and food though. I had been all around the town looking for jobs but could not find anything. Things were beginning to look a bit bleak as I was not getting anywhere. I was only going to my grandmothers house once in awhile because I did not feel welcome there. I was there one day though and overheard my sister and my grandmother discussing some money that a family friend had left us. It was only about seven or eight thousand dollars each and was meant to go to us when we reached twenty one years old. I was only twenty but managed to get mine early. The money was meant for our college so I signed up in the College of the Siskiyou’s in Weed California. It was a junior college in the mountains and only about a forty minute drive from Yreka.

Next Chapter: Chapter five