notmaybeyou

[notmaybeyou]

Teenage Metalhead

I am starting this blog to document my love for music, and how it coincides with my life. 

Memoirs of a Wannabe Metal head

Part 1.

It Started in the spring of 1989.

Mitchell Senior Jr. High seemed like a very normal middle school.  I was in the 8th grade struggling, although not realizing it at the time, to find myself. Who was  I?   Having trouble fitting in. Going through best friends every couple of months and not having  my "crowd", I became very frustrated.   I couldn't help but notice the highly eccentric group that always ended up spending their lunch recess time atop the same hill as we spent at P.E.  They were always there, the same 6 or 7 kids.  Up till then I had longed to have that brotherhood of friends. Perhaps a bit jealous. At first I mocked them, not knowing how to approach them. They were different. By different, I mean they didn't don the normal atire that  the other students at the time were wearing. The Guess overalls, turtlenecks and Billabong T-shirts of the time were not present on that hill during lunch. Only holy pants, back patches and heavy metal T's.

I had a few cassettes at home that I had dubbed from my neighbor. One was Bon Jovi and the other was Guns 'n Roses. I loved the feeling they gave me when I'd blast them on my Mom's 1970's sound system. No music up to that point had moved me in such a way that it literally changed my mood.  Made me feel more powerful.  But it wasn't enough. I wanted more and I knew there was more on top of that hill.  MTV was also huge at that time. Motley Crue were all over it. Seeing the brotherhood of the band that they portrayed on screen and knowing that it exuded onto that hill as well, made me want more. I wanted that lifestyle.

One day I found my way in. I was browsing this little shop that was run by an old man and his daughter. They sold everything from candy to pantyhose. I would buy blank cassettes there all the time because they were very cheap. They were really crappy too, but i didn't care.  One day  I noticed behind the counter was display designated for heavy metal back patches. Two stood out to me. One was a Poison patch with some kind of demon sticking it's tongue out and the other was a typical Guns n' Roses with, you guessed it, guns and roses.  After I saved for about a week, I went down and bought that G n R patch for $12.99.  During that week I scoured my moms closet which still housed some of my recently passed away, step dad's leather jackets. There were 2 runner ups. One was a 70's light brown huge collar looking thing that in retrospect was hideous. the other was black leather, kinda patchwork, but it worked. The day I brought that patch home I stayed up till 2 in the morning sewing that thing on.  It was my ticket.

I don't remember the assimilation into their brotherhood. Must've been fairly easy seeing as I had a much cooler jacket than any of them. That ragtag crew was pretty steady mine for the remainder of that school year and even into the next. They supplied me with a copy of Metallica's ...and Justice For all, which basically changed my life. (I will get  into that more later)  During the spring of that year in the next town over was an annual festival dubbed Winton Fest. It was a kind of a pathetic excuse for a fair, but it was something to do. We strolled through that place like we owned it. Kinda felt like we did.  Away from the rides there was this semi trailer flatbed parked next to the small covered patio beer garden area.  Hovered around the back was a group of older metal heads.  At that time, they just seemed way too cool to approach. The sweetest metal uniforms, hair down to their belts and surrounded in gigantic speakers I only up to that point had seen on MTV.  Then it happened. The sun had set. The band was on stage. These guys played what I interpreted as metal masterpieces and just looked so freaking cool doing it. It was at that point that I knew what I wanted to do.

I had to get a guitar as soon as possible.

Getting back to the Metallica thing...

I don't know who exactly let me borrow that copy of "Justice", but it didn't matter. The next day I came back to school asking the rest of the crew for copies of the other remaining albums from this amazing band. Before I knew it, I had copies of all 4 works of art from them.  Metallica put the music on tape, provided the artwork on the cassettes as a theme, Fatal Rage..the band at Winton Fest showed me that it could be done live...and somewhat easily.   Metallica was the first band that changed my whole musical perspective. It has only happened three or four times in my life. When it does, it's big. I listened to those albums nonstop for years after that. With the music business the way it is today, I doubt I'll have one of those life changing musical moments again.

My love for the heavy metal lifestyle grew even more going into high school...

...to be continued.

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[notmaybeyou]

My long lost family.

I was born on April 28, 1977 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. My mother was very young, 16, and chose to raise me with the help of my grandmother, rather than going back with my biological father. She felt it wouldn't work out with him as he young as well, and they had grown apart. She later moved with my grandmother and I to Tulsa Oklahoma, and raised me there while she worked various jobs mostly in fast food. During that time she had lost touch of my father. It was in 1981, when I was 4 that my grandmother succumbed to a battle with breast cancer. My mother, 21 at the time, at a crossroads chose to try a new path in life.

Her father, my grandfather had a new family in California. She took the opportunity to make the trek across country and packed me up with everything she could fit in just a few bags and a box, jumped on a greyhound and we relocated to Merced, California. Over about a month while we resided briefly at my gradfather's, she searched for jobs. She found one where she would be a live in caretaker helping a man named Steve who was a quadriplegic. He allowed her and I to live there with him in Atwater, California while she worked for him. Eventually Steve became family to us, as he took the role as a father figure, and his very large family took me and my mother in as theirs. We lived with him mostly, until he passed away in 1989 when I was 12 years old. His family has kept my mother and I in their hearts, and I consider them all family to this day, and Steve, although only a part of my life for around 8 years, from 4 until 12, were very impactful and up to that point in my perspective, was forever.

Through those years in the 1980's, my mom and I spoke about my biological father on many occasions. She had always been open about him and often told me everything she remembered about him. We even at one point ordered phone books from Pacific Bell for the local areas around Muskogee so that we could attempt to reach him. Obviously this was our only option at the time because the internet did not exist. For whatever reason or another we always came to a dead end when it came to finding my father. At times I even became dismissive and weary. I didn't want to find him. Through my teens and even into my 20's the idea of knowing my father was at times scary. I often felt no need to find him and shut down the idea completely.

Two weeks before my 27th birthday, in April, 2004, my daughter Elise was born. It was after she was born, that newly inspired my want and will of finding my biological father. Although it took a few years of me being a father myself, just the sheer fact that I was a father coupled with the fact the I not only wanted, but needed to know for Elise's sake whether there were family illnesses to be concerned with in my genetic line.

In March 2013, as my mother became less and less healthy, I decided to have her write down anything and everything she remembered about him, from siblings, family members, everything. I looked around and did some of my own research online and found a Melton tire shop in Muskogee, where my father (Johnny Melton) was from, and where I was born. I ended up calling and talking to an older man that said he was cousins with Johnny, but that he had passed "some time a while ago" it was then that I found out I would never get to meet my father. He also told me that he knew that Johnny, my father had some other kids. I had siblings. I knew I couldn't stop my search. He couldn't offer much more information.

It was then in early April of 2013 that I opened an account with ancestry. com. I put in the information I knew about Johnny and the very first thing to come up was his obituary. It listed all his children that he was survived by, including me. There was also a picture. It was the first picture I have ever seen of my biological father. I was stunned. Can't describe the feeling. One I have never felt in my life.

Of the names of my siblings, I quickly took to facebook and typed in my sisters name, Aimy, because it is not a common spelling. I found her immediately. Luckily her profile was not private at the time and also listed all my other siblings matching almost exactly as the obituary did. I had found them. I had 5 brothers and sisters, no father, but 5 siblings. April, Aimy, John, Brandon and Dustin.

I spent most of the day composing myself, studying their pictures and thinking of how I would approach them. How do you tell 5 people that you are their older, long lost brother? Did they even know I existed? I was scared that they would resist the idea of knowing me, or push away. It was really quite terrifying. I couldn't sleep at all that night and finally came up with a message to send them through facebook. I tried to send it, but facebook had criteria in place that would not allow me to send messages to people I had no other connection with. The way around this was to pay a dollar per message. Best 5 dollars I have ever spent.

The first to reply was April. We immediately exchanged numbers and we talked for a couple hours. I learned hundreds of times more about my father's side of the family than I had ever known up to that point within that time. It was one of the best moments of my life at around 4 am on April 5th 2013. I finally went to sleep for about an hour before I went to work. Throughout that day I talked to most of the rest of my siblings, and added them on Facebook.

Since then, I have been back to Oklahoma to see them a couple of times. John, my brother has been to California to see me. Elise and I have been welcomed into their family, not only by them but by their amazing mother Cecilia, as well. I am so thankful for them, for finding them and knowing them. They are now my family, and I love them all.