ONE THING LED TO ANOTHER
by Julio Martinez
When I was three years old, my older brothers Gorge, age 9, and Enrique, age 8, were given the responsibility of taking me by train from our apartment in Puerto Rican Harlem to Astoria Long Island. We were going to stay with my Aunt Tatin for 6 weeks while our parents went on tour as the ballroom dance team with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra. When they got off the subway at Grand Central Station to catch to train to Queens, my brothers noticed that I wasn’t with them any longer. For the next 7 hours I was traveling back and forth on the A Train right up to Harlem and back downtown again.
This led my Aunt Tatin to decide she did not want to be responsible for a three year old with wondering feet for six weeks. This led my parents to delay going with Cugie for a week while they placed me with a temporary foster family in New Jersey. In order to make up for the lost revenue and the expense of foster care, my dad agreed to go with Cugie after the tour to Hollywood, to look over the contracts for an MGM movie Cugat was scheduled to appear in. My dad was also Cugat’s personal accountant.
This led my dad to come to L.A. in January 1943. He took one look at all this sunshine and came to the decision to quit dancing, bring the whole family to California, open up a restaurant in downtown L.A and lead a respectable middle class life. This led my mother to make his life miserable because she never wanted to quit dancing or become a respectable housewife. This led my dad to retaliate by having sex with just about every waitress who worked for him over the next 12 years.
This led my mother to divorce my father the week I graduated from high school. The divided family revenue precluded me going to Whittier College as I planned and instead I attended L.A. City College for two years as a music major. This led to my applying for and winning a scholarship to complete my degree in music education at the University of Michigan.
I hated the place; I also hated music education, which led me to turn down an offer to teach at a high school after graduation, which would have extended my draft deferment. This led me to be drafted into the army during the Berlin crises of 1961, which led me to spending my tour of duty teaching music theory at the Army Band School at Fort Ord. My decided lack of military discipline eventually led to me being court-martialed.
My subsequent enforced military idleness led to me take up the guitar, which I continued to work on after my early release from the U.S. Army onto the streets of San Francisco in the summer of 1964. My wholehearted absorption of the San Francisco music scene during the 60s led to my meeting singer Al Jarreau in 67, for whom I worked as his arranger and guitarist for the next seven years.
Working with Al led me back to Los Angeles, where our professional relationship ended in 1975. This led me into entertainment journalism and a somewhat stable life, which led to a marriage, which produced two children, my daughter, Corrie and my son Cullen. Having two school age children led to lots of requests for help with homework, which led my then 15 year old daughter to ask me to give her a current events news item to complete an assignment.
This led to me grumpily telling her to pick up the newspaper and find her own news item. This led her to instead turn on the FOX TV news just in time to see their weekly Wednesday’s Child segment, which profiled adorable little children, trapped in the L.A. County Foster Care system, who were now eligible for adoption.
This led my daughter to relentlessly petition me to adopt a needy child, which, four years later led to our adopting 7-year-old Jesus.
This led my now 19-year-old daughter Corrie and 16-year old son Cullen to proudly take Jesus to family day at Cullen’s school, The Los Angeles County High School for the arts, which was located on the campus of Cal State L.A. in East Los Angeles.
This led Corrie, Cullen and Jesus to catch the Subway train at the North Hollywood Station, traveling to Union Station downtown, planning to transfer to a shuttle bus to take them to Cal State L.A. One exit before union station my son and daughter stood up in the crowded train car to prepare to exit at the final stop. Jesus misunderstood and darted his lithe little body off the train.
Three hours later, this led me to drive downtown to retrieve Jesus from the custody of the Metro authorities. As I drove along the 101, I kept thinking. None of this would have ever happened if I had just made it to my Aunt Tatin’s house when I was three.