Jacob had a job at a local restaurant, where he washed dishes and saved enough money to buy a cheap Toyota hatcback. Jacob was fighting with his mother and sister on a daily basis and decided to run away from home. The alignment was so bad on the Toyota hatchback that the inside tread was gone revealing the wires underneath the rubber. Jacob threw on some duct tape and he was off. He was traveling south bound on the 101 freeway when he began to lose control of the car, there were sparks raining across his left shoulder up the driver's side window. Jacob looked out the windshield to see his tire rolling off in front of the vehicle down the 101 freeway. The car swerved going into the lane next to me, he struggled to get it off the road. Jacob parked, left the car there and walked to Taurus' house.
While at Taurus' home getting high and drinking heavily with a group of his friends. They decided to raid a refrigerated trailer that parked in a vacant lot a block away. They stole frozen hamburgers, cheese and potato salad. The group took the food back up to Taurus' home and began to cook the food on an open pit they had in the back yard.
They decided to walk to the local bowling alley where Jacob ran into a couple of girls he knew. The girls followed the boys back to Taurus', Jacob was trashed and became intimate with one of the girls (Natasha) in the dark in the back yard next to the fire pit after everyone had gone inside.
The next thing Jacob knew the flood light for the back yard, lighting the two up while the group was standing in the window laughing and staring at them screwing. Jacob took both girls back down to the empty lot falling asleep with them in his arms, one on both sides.
Jacob woke up several days later to pee and it felt like fire was traveling out of his penis. Come to find out later Natasha had given him the gift that keeps giving.
Jacob would spend the days that he could with Brandon in his apartment, smoking cocaine. Brandon's apartment would have little tack holes along the windows of his place from the tacking the curtains shut out of paranoia.
One night Brandon, Mark, Calvin and Jacob attended a concert at a winery across the street from my father's home. They ran into Mary one of the prettier girls in town and Brandon started making out with her. The group was drinking and getting high on the grassy amphitheater overlooking the stage below when Mary decided she had to pee, as a matter of fact she said "I have to pee" Mary pulled up her skirt squatted and pissed in front of us all. The pee ran down the grass onto the couples blanket that they were sitting on in front of us, the boyfriend said" excuse me but you are peeing on our blanket". Mary giggled, stood up while trying to pull up her skirt. Jacob was walking toward the stage when he saw his step mother in the arms of another man (not my father). She looked at Jacob and he looked at her. Jacob tried to forget about that night and did not tell his father about it until twenty years had passed.
Mark Calvin and Jacob would travel to Bakersfield once a week to pick up drugs from either the Mexican Cartel or Filipino mafia and normally on our ride back we would use small back roads. Some days we took the normal highway like Highway 46, Jacob would sometimes see a vehicle waiting for us at the county line and then following us into town. Jacob began seeing vehicles parking in front of my home up the street from Mark's home. Jacob could tell they were undercover police watching Mark's house. He told Mark about the cops, but Mark thought he had it under control. Well a couple of weeks later Mark's home was invaded by the DEA and was the first time Mark went to prison.
The day before Mark had to go to prison, Jacob bought an old Honda civic of his for $50.00. Jacob had not had the vehicle long when he had driven with a coworker at a Chinese food restaurant where he got a job as a server. Looking back on it the server job was Jacob's favorite job. Jacob would get to take the leftovers from the all you can eat bar home. He would leave with Dino his coworker the Chinese food and tips and hit the local liquor store. We would buy some beer and one night decided to drive to the river bed behind the Mental Hospital where they drank and ate Chinese food. They had drunk until passing out in the car.
Jacob woke up to a loud tap on the glass. It was a Longfellow Police man. He asked for Jacob's registration driver's license which he had none of. The officer of the law asked Jacob to step out of the car and proceeded to ask what we were doing. He apparently knew his father another local law enforcement officer and told Jacob how disappointed his dad would be in him. Jacob thought to himself that the man did not even care to have a relationship with his troubled teen let alone be disappointed in him. Jacob was thankful that he knew his dad because rather than taking him to jail, the officer told him he would impound the car.
He was not too happy about walking over two miles home but Jacob grabbed what was left of the beer and marijuana somehow getting the marijuana from the back with the officer shining his light on what Jacob was doing. But he grabbed the left over beer and walked home.
Brandon was never able to kick all of his habits, five years later Jacob was told about his memorial service. Brandon had been living for the last few years in Lake Tahoe with his longtime girlfriend. Brandon had been using during a domestic dispute with his girl and was sitting in a chair with a BB gun when the police arrived. Brandon left his home that day with seven fatal gunshot wounds in his chest.
Jacob finally hit rock bottom and felt as though there was nowhere to go but up and that he possibly could not get any lower in life, boy was he wrong. Jacob decided to stop using at the age of eighteen. He had been raised in a Christian home and was familiar with a redeeming God and he wanted redemption.
Jacob began to pray and read the bible in the evening. He needed a change and moved in with his dad. There was a lot of tension between Jacob and his step mother in their home. Jacob would sleep on the pull out couch in the living room where Jacob would see his father's wife come home through the front door around six or seven am almost every morning. She told him she was working late but obviously she was sleeping with another person.
His step mother kicked him out to his father's disappointment and they helped Jacob with a job and first month's rent on a place in Longfellow near work.
His sister was pregnant and getting married to an older man whom she worked with as a server in a local restaurant. Jacob's father visited one day at home, Jacob asked his dad if he had received the wedding invitation to his daughter's wedding. He told Jacob he had gotten the invitation.
His father had bought my sister a used car and took it back giving it to his brother in law after finding out my sister's boyfriend had moved in with Diana's mother and sister. Jacob asked his father if he would be going to the wedding and he explained to Jacob that he could not because sometimes in life you have to choose between two families. Jacob's father to this day denies receiving an invitation to his daughter's wedding. I guess there are some decisions in life too difficult to accept.
Jacob had returned a month prior to a trip to Alaska. Jacob had hit rock bottom, began reading the bible, heard from God and had an unforgettable dream of the resurrection.
Jacob's decisions to leave for Alaska was based off a decision to totally be obedient to God and in order to do that he decided it would be best to read the entire bible without outside interference.
Jacob saved a few dollars and began his journey. Jacob's father was on his way to the Veterans Affairs office in San Jose and gave me a ride. Jacob was dropped off in San Jose and looked up a woman (Wanda) the pastor of a church we he attended as a child. Jacob told her his dream of the resurrection and what God had spoken to me. We prayed and I took a train to San Francisco. Arriving he placed my back pack with provisions into a locker at the trains station and headed to China town for some lunch.
Jacob began to hitchhike and got a ride to Sacramento from a man that was on his way to do some gambling. He was dropped off and picked up another ride by an older middle aged man. The man offered to take Jacob as far as Redding. The sun had gone down and we were about twenty miles south of Red Bluff California, when he offered to let Jacob stay with him in a hotel. He stipulated that he preferred to remain in the hotel room without clothing. He decided to get dropped off at the local camp ground outside of Redding. Jacob was dropped off, walked to the grounds keeper to purchase a camping site. Jacob set up my tent and drifted off to sleep. He awoke to find myself along the edge of the Feather River. Jacob picked some black berries from a nearby bush, started a campfire and made some eggs for breakfast with black berries. What a wonderful morning it was, the river and black berries were could not have been a better gift from the creator.
He packed up his tent and headed back to the highway. Jacob was picked up by a college student headed to Chico. He was on a mission to get to Alaska to pursue God and understand the bible without man's interpretation. He got as far as Red Bluff California where he walked down to the river bank off the Freeway.
Jacob had lunch along the river and began hitchhiking north. Their were two young men although older than me starting to discuss what they did to outsiders while throwing the bowie knife. Jacob was becoming a little concerned with their threatening behavior when a 1974 rusty green pick up pulled up along the river bend. The occupants of the truck included a boy that was about 17 a 14 year old boy and a young girl 15 or 16 and her young baby. In the back of the truck was a baby walker a couple of cast iron skillets and some baby toys. Jacob realized the group of young people had been living out of their truck with the baby. He asked if they could give him a ride to the train tracks. Jacob had always wanted to ride the train like a hobo. Growing up in a small town in California he often saw people riding the freight trains through town. Jacob romanticized the people and their lifestyles that rode the rails. Jacob and the couple were now on their way to the train tracks.
Upon arriving, there were about seven people waiting for a train. Jacob asked them if anyone was heading north, but they were waiting on a southbound train. Jacob was not going to jump on a train for the first time by myself. So he asked if they knew where a Greyhound station was. This hobo who was probably in his forties but because of the wear and tear and hard life he had lived looked like he was I his sixties. With his grey and yellow beard he belted out with all the pride he could muster "I don't know, I don't ride no hound".
The youngsters in the truck said they could give Jacob a ride just outside of town called Shasta. They could not take him into town because their registration on their truck were out of date. Jacob hopped off the truck and handed them a few bucks to buy transmission fluid that was leaking onto the road. Jacob began walking into town, walked by the local police department and through a grocery store parking lot.
As Jacob was walking through the parking lot two young girls walked through the parking lot giggling and one yelled to Jacob that her sister was single. Jacob replied that he was single too. The girls stopped and talked to Jacob and invited him to their mothers for dinner. They all had dinner and the nice family let Jacob stay the night at their home.
Jacob said goodbye the girl he had met in the grocery store parking lot and walked toward the interstate.