Tulelake, CA— Not giving up
There comes a time in all of our lives when we get the opportunity to meet someone that tries and gives us the opportunity to do things we might not had the chance to do otherwise.
In life sometimes they say it is not what you know but whom you know. For me it was friends that I knew that worked at radio stations in Redding, CA. I met them both at a gay bar in Redding. The bar no longer exists anymore or at least not that one. I met Allen first he had just got a divorce from his wife and decided that he was gay.
I just went there to meet people, as I had no real desire to have a relationship. I just felt more comfortable in a gay bar. I didn’t have to put on manly airs about myself the way you do in a straight bar. I did not have to pretend I was something I was not. Spending time in a place to let loose and be comfortable with whom I was.
In my life I have had many relationships with females but none of them ever seemed to work out for some reason or the other. Five times I ended up in the middle of rebounds. They always turned out the same. You would think after the forth time I would have learned a lesson but I didn’t. The last rebound was it for me and that was in 1991. Each of the rebounds was different so I did not pay much attention they were things that just happened. From that point on I made it a point to never get caught in rebounds again and only have them as my female friends, ONLY.
In one of the rebounds I ended up raising a 15-year-old boy Eric until he was 18 years old. After his mother and I had broke up his father passed away and he did not want to live with his Mom and her new boyfriend. He got into a little bit of trouble by being caught on a stolen motorcycle that another younger friend of his and mine had stolen. Eric got caught with it and took the blame and spent 4 months in juvie for it. Where I drove 100 miles every other Sunday to visit him. His little brother Aaron, six years younger just love me to pieces and I loved him. But I choose the one that loved me the least over the one that loved me the most in this situation. At the time Eric’s girlfriend was also my niece Amber. Aaron was better off being with his mother and besides it was Eric who needed me more.
My sister and all her kids had moved back to Bellflower, CA where Eric and I were living at the time. Where adventurously we would all move up to Redding, CA after I became Eric’s legal guardian. Where I spent the time raising him from 15 years old until he turned 18 years old.
During this time I had met Allen who also had kids of his own but they did not live with him. It just was not the right time for me to have a gay relationship, not with responsibility of Eric at the time. I know now a days it is acceptable and can be done but during that time it was not right for me. But with my relationship with Allen I met Art who was also in radio in Redding. In fact he was one of the program directors as well as an on air personality at the time.
After Eric turned 18 years old I left Redding and headed back to Los Angeles where I landed a job at Universal Studios. Then when I no longer worked at Universal I ended up moving back to Redding and opened my own recording studio at the same time got a job working on the air at a county radio station that was in the process of being sold. The owner was one of Allen and Arts friends' and they both encouraged me to give it a try. And I did, as I always wanted to be an on air radio dj and even took radio classes when I was in college the first time. I was given an opportunity I would have never had had it not been for both Allen and Art.
The same can be said for others in my life in Tulelake I was trying to guide a young man in the right direction and he chose to take a different path and he knows whom he is. In fact he has gone out of his way to from what I hear to make a web site with all kinds of bad things about me. I have not seen it and it is a good thing and he better hope I never do. He did it because he was angry and jealous and in the process made it a point where he ruined it for someone else I was trying to give an opportunity to that they both threw away. But that is another story for another time and place.
In life some people have to learn a lesson the hard way, you cannot go back and fix something that was broke because opportunities only knock once in life. Once you pass them up there is no going back. What is done is done and there are no second changes once you burn your bridges.
Written by James Garland of Tulelake News
PO Box 772
Tulelake, CA 96134-0772
Home Phone (530) 667-4744
Cell # (530) 708-7852
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