An Education part two

The last thing i remember about Matamoros, on the day we left, is the light beige outside walls of the mercado where my mom and aunt Carmen had the store. The front of the building faced east and the packed station wagon was in the parking lot; the shadow from the mercado covered half the lot which means it was late afternoon. I think mom and dad had sold the business to someone, but my sister had gone in and rescued a paper bag full of candy at the last minute; i didn't know we could that, dang it! no one told me these things? She never let that stupid bag out of her sight, neither.
A month before that, though, i started second grade back in that two-story brown brick building, and unless my memory fails me, in the same classroom. What i am sure of is, it turns out, that i had the same teacher that i had in first grade, a certain miss Dolores del Rio; i know that beause i recall sitting in that classroom and we were basicly the same class from first grade, including the notorious Juan-Ramon, and who should walk in? She greets us and explains something and something or other, and due to those circumstances she would be our teacher again; and, you know what? we all cheered, that's how much we all loved her. And when she said simmer down, we simmered, and when she said take out a pencil and paper, we couldn't please her fast enough, we were that ga-ga. Our estropajoed litttle, shiny faces, the boys with our pomaded little pompadours, all looking up at her with anticipation, so eager to begin the learning process. We were together a few weeks and, alas, without ceremony or even an adiu, i was gone.

I'm no liguistics expert, but i've read that the average American has a 100,000 word vocabulary after graduating from high school and by age seven has about 10% of that. I don't think i learned 10,000 words in eight months, what my classmates learned in six years, but i think i had the vocabulary that they used in everyday conversation. I've always thought i had the advantage being seven and going into second grade at Hardin Elementary; because, in the case of my two sisters and i, when we were transplanted to Texas: my little sister was three and had no schooling in spanish and my big sister was thirteen and had finished sixth grade. So, lil' sis had a limited spanish vocabulary and big sis, in the begining, had a dificult time in school. Having first grade in me, i had the basics of spanish and could read it, but my brain had not yet finished wiring itself using the spanish schematic. So, my spanish is not great, adequate for normal conversation, but better than my little sister's, the only thing i can brag about with her, though; my older sister can talk circles around both of us, in spanish.

I'm obviously leaving out my sisters names, and that's for a reason: deny-ability; and you're welcome.

I was promoted to third grade, but i'm not absolutely certain that i wasn't one of those kids that were just moved through the system in the hopes that they would catch up, eventually; i don't know if that still happens, but i saw evidence it when i went to school. I can see that happening with me because of my special circumstances and because i could easily provoke pity but, after second grade, i'm fairly certain that i was passed for the right reasons.

Summer 1969, why my father dropped us off back in Matamoros, back to las casas de don Santos, for practically the whole summer, as i recall, i don't know, i can't speak for my parents. My aunt Carmen had a baby by then and i think my uncle was off working somewhere. I was reunited with my beloved pop gun but, i had to always take it outside; i was happy, for a day. Somehow mother found out, or maybe she intentionally asked about summer school for me, in Matamoros. So, she takes me to, of all places, back to mushroom land, back to where i refused to go to kindergarden; it was not summer kindergarden, it was just where they were holding summer school for kids who were behind; there were kids my age and younger.

I'm standing next to mom while she talks to the lady teacher, who was no Dolores del Rio, and there are a couple of girls with her that were my age and mom starts to tell her my situation about how we now live up north and how my spanish had become atrocious and, i guess to make it sound more dire, she added a few more subjects that i needed help with. It seems like eight years old would be a bit young to be dieing on the inside like i was at that moment. What made it bad were those two girls named Silvia and Amelia, who stared in disgust at the poor boy who would not let go of his mother's dress which, by the way, was one of her typical brilliantly colorful, flowery printed batas common in the tropical climes. So, the deal was done and the next day when it was time to go off to school i tried to throw one of my fits which landed me on the sidewalk and somehow threatened enough to get me walking still bawling towards school. I was nearly to mushroom land when walking in the oposite direction i run into don Santos, our landlord, who stops me and wants to know why i'm bawling like a little girl and i blubber something about life being unfair.
So, don Santos reaches into his pocket and takes out two twenty cent coins,
we called veintes, hands them to me, and says: mind your mother, go to school, and get yourself a paleta, so i did.

Why i didn't just opt to go somewhere and hang out, dunno; so i go to class where Silvia and Amelia, or Si and Am as i refer to them, were waiting for me. One time, when the class was working quietly, Si and Am were slinking around the teacher while she was checking their work, i approached to have my work checked, and i swear i heard them purring, until they saw me. They were inseparable and anytime i got something wrong, or didn't understand something, they were the first ones there to comment on it.
In the playground they sought me out and they would tell me things like: we don't care that you live over there, my mom has lunch with the teacher, my father is a policeman, your socks don't match. Day after day. All i could say to my mom was, there's something wrong with Si and Am, because, in english or in spanish, i hadn't learned the word: phycotic.

I got through it, though, and i think puzzling human behavior has always fascinated me.

Guns and Holidays

You all know what estropajo looks like, right? Well, what my mom sold in her store was like a cat swallowed a loofah and coughed it up in the form of a hair ball. Even the very word: estropajo scratches my throat, so i avoid saying it. When the mothers in our neighborhood finished scouring us with it, they weren't finished; when we were out of the bath, we were slathered with pomada, a goop that looks like lard, so it left us looking like porcelin figurines, all shiny.


Once the flooding disappated after hurricane Beulah, i went to first grade, fell in love with my teacher-- the Dolores del Rio look-a-like --and got punched in the nose by Juan-Ramon. That was also Christmas 1967; so, besides mom, 2 sister, and my aunt Carmen, that Christmas, my aunt Socorro from Durango and her two daughters were staying with us. And, since i remember the event, that was the year of my confirmation; but, really i only remember being slapped in the face by the priest and getting my picture taken with my godparents outside the church. Many years later,
dad and i were in the shop talking about something, and i mentioned my godparents in Mexico; he was obviously confused, turns out he didn't know i was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic church. I mentioned it my mom and she shrugged and said she probably never told him. But the whole point of bringing up that Christmas is that it was the last Christmas i ever celebrated as a child. Then, in the summer of of 1968, when i turned 7, it was the last time my birthday was acknowledged with cake and gift as a child.


So, after that day that my dad came to visit and i got the whipping of my life because of Lalo, the guayava thief, i have a vague memory of mom telling me something about my fathers beliefs. I don't have a clear memory of the details, but she did tell me that my father did not believe in having guns and that we had to get rid of the toy pop gun that he saw me playing with--that i remember-- so, i deduced it. I didn't know anything about my father's religion at the time, and i doubt my mother knew much more, but later i found out that anti-guns went along with anti-war which was bundled in with the not celebrating of wordly holidays; ok, let's stop for a sec, this is a christian religion that does not believe in celebrating Christmas, i know, it's conflicting. Now, the not celebrating Holloween because it's like sending Satan an engraved invitation to reside in your home and levitate your bed, i get that; it's the same reason we weren't allowed to see the exorcist; which was a huge disappointment when i finally did see it, too much build up. The not celebtating birthdays is still nonsense to me, to this day.

Really, i'm not writing this to get sympathy, i don't need it now; and if it makes my dad look bad or silly, well, as a father, if i do or have done bad or silly things and you kids blog and boo-hoo about it, then i deserve it, have at it. I'm just reporting the events as i recall them.

You know, we didn't have much money for big birthdays and huge
elaborate Christmases, and i don't remember much about them, so as they say: you don't miss what you never had. But i had a rifle pop gun, the kind
The Rifleman had on his show, the one i used to shoot invaders with, like
gringos who were not content with just taking Texas and wanted Tamaulipas, too. So, like any good mom, she worked something out with me: i would hide the rifle (it was under the bed), dad was only there a day, anyway, but it would have to stay behind when we moved to the U.S. Again, i don't remember knowing that we would be moving across the border, all i knew about Texas was Brownsville, which is like people thinking Mexico is the border towns that they have visited. I really don't know what i knew, but the day came in September 1968 that we said good-bye to las casas de don Santos and i said good-bye to my rifle which i left with my aunt Carmen who had gotten married to the dude she didn't want to leave behind during Beulah. She kept it for me until we came back to visit the next summer, we were together then, but i never saw it again after that.

I've told my kids: i will not have estropajo in my home; sometimes, i think they hide it from me.

An Education

Matamoros was a fair sized city in the late sixties, i don't know about then, but now there's over 4oo, ooo pop. I remember palm tree lined boulevards and beat up, old city buses running up and down the dusty streets leaving black smoke at every stop. It was hot and humid, which may explain why mom sold a lot of estropajo at her store; kids came out of the shower all red from being coured with those infernal things. I ran around (unsupervised) in just my briefs and would often have to run from one shade to another because the tender soles of my little feet would burn on the hot concrete.

Las casas de don Santos were on a street named Laguna Salada and it would turn into a raging river of brown water when there was a good rain; some neighborhood kids would jump in it and splash around. At night, after our baths, we joined the adults outside who would sit on their porch or they would pull chairs out on to the sidewalk and pass the time while the house cooled down a bit before bedtime. We would have a game of tag or hide and seek and get all sweaty again. People stuck box fans in their windows and you lay there sweating until you fell asleep, we survived without air conditioning.

I refused to go to kindergarden, it's that simple; but i'm getting ahead of myself. As far as i was concerned i was growing up with a single mom just like the lady next door and her little son and daughter that i played with. Even though my aunt Carmen, who lived with us, said that my dad lived with us for a time, neither i nor my older sister remember that; but, she does remember him visiting more often than my two memories. Then in September of 1968 he showed up in that 1958 Chevy station wagon and piled our belongings on top of the roof rack to drive us back to Burkburnett where he had been living for nearly a year with El Zapatero who was now working for him there and that's when i start to remember having a father around.

I just refused to go back to kindergarden, actually, because i went there-- i dunno--couple days, a week, and the teacher wants us to pair up to dance; gotta hold hands, learn some kinda waltz thing, the whole bit. I snapped, threw a fit, apparantly mom couldn't get me to go back or she just said forget it! Wait 'til your father gets home! Well, guess what? he didn't show up. She was a working mom with a one year old and no father around to lay down the law to me, so i didn't go to kindergarden. The school was a cool looking place though; i always picture the buildings as colorful giant concrete mushrooms because that was their basic shape, the roofs weren't that round just domed and white. There were 2 or 3 mushrooms on this nice green lawn that was fenced in; the buildings had no doors, they had garage size entrances, one facing the front, and one facing the back, where the playground was, so you got a nice breeze through. Inside it was the size of two average classrooms and there were bathrooms on one side where i can remember looking out a window at a banana tree with green bananas hanging from it.

The next year, somehow (without learning to dance) i got into the first grade in this brown brick two story building with lots of windows, not too far from home; i walked there every day. I started learning how to read and how Cortez put Moctezuma's feet to the fire in order to find out where he kept all the gold, dang Spanierds, always wanting things the easy way. And what did they give the Aztec, besides gonorrhea? The siesta.

Two memories from first grade: turns out i was susceptible to nose bleeds from being out in the sun too long. Or thats what my teacher told me as she wiped the blood off my face, and she said: just stay out of the sun; she was pretty. She wore these tight knee lenght skirts and a blinding white button down blouse all the time. We had a uniform, actually, white short or long sleeve dress shirt and navy pants and navy skirt for the girls. She put her hand under my chin and held my face up to hers as she wiped my bloody nose while i stared at her red lipstick and dark Dolores del Rio eyes, i knew, pretty much then that i would like girls, not like in kindergarden.

Memory two: we sat in desk-chairs, the guy in the next isle to my left, can't remember his name, it was either Juan or Ramon; well, he didn't like me.
This one day, it seems everyone had their pencils out, including Juan-Ramon, i had one of those clear plastic Bic pens (mother sold them) and was having problems with it so i would shake it; Juan-Ramon was making faces and pretending to shake his imaginary ink pen, in essence, mocking me. Ok, i get it, what can i do about it? Juan-Ramon is a tough guy, i get nose bleeds in the sun. This un-macho, anti-Latinish, savoir-faire attitude of mine must have infuriated poor Juan-Ramon whose father must have taught him to accept nothing less than machismo from his fellow man, even at that early age. All i remember is that all the students were up by our chairs gathering our thngs, or putting things away and something was said or done, that i have no recollection of, and J-R hauls off and punches me in the nose. There's plenty of blood, of course, my nose was not just sensitive to the sun; but, guess who has to clean me up? oh, yeah.

So, mothers were informed (no one has telephones); next day, mom and i, J-R and his mom are sitting in the principals office and he's chewing out
J-R pretty good and J-R is just bawling like a baby; i would probably be bawling myself from radiant scolding if i hadn't been so distracted and baffled and maybe a little embarrassed by J-R's total break down. He and i never had any more trouble.

More Matamoros

In July of 1967 father came to visit and he took us to the beach on the

Mexican side of the Rio grand, just a few miles from South Padre. We brought a watermelon and shot seeds at each other by squeezing them between two fingers. By then, dad was driving a 1958 Chevy station wagon with manual shift on the steering column; i think it was a Yeoman; he still had it 4 or 5 years later when my sister wanted to learn to drive and she said it was a challenge to operate.

The other memory of dad coming to visit, i can't remember if it was before or after the beach visit, i just remember what happened. Lalo, an older neighbor boy, had climbed on top of the bathroom building to steal guayavas off the neighbor's tree and got me to stand below and catch the loot. Next thing i know mom calls me in and said my dad wanted to talk to me: were you stealing the guayavas? yeah, but...; were you stealing the guayabas? yeah, but...Lalo...

I don't remember ever gettting a whipping before this, and the worst part wasn't watching him take off his belt or making me bend over a chair, it was the actual whipping, this was a genuine, old fashion, hillbilly whipping.

I didn't even like guayavas.

A block away from las casas de don Santos, they had built one of those typical Mexican indoor markets that rent stalls and my parents were the first merchants to set up shop in the mercado Trevino Zapata. It was dad's idea that my mom open a general merchandise store there; one might think that dad was ahead of his time by putting his wife to work, but i'll offer a better explination in a later post. Dad also had a stall there where he'd set up a shoe repair shop and had his friend, whom we only knew as El Zapatero, to operate and manage it.

The stalls were two walls and the space were probably 10 feet by 25; this market had--i would guess--40 spaces. Besides my parent's stalls, there was

a butcher with a mustache and a booming voice; the rest was empty and i ran around screaming to hear the echos, usually in just some tighty whities. The white-whiskered night watchman, who everyone called El Velador, would pay me a twenty-cent coin to go buy him a pack of cigarrettes from my mom's store.

When she started the business, mom had 2 women working for her, but she found out they were stealing from her. She then started writing to her brother, Manuel, in Durango, Mexico, asking him to let their sister Carmen come to Matamoros to work in the store with her, but he wouldn't allow it.

When my mom was 18 and Carmen was 5 their mother died of cancer; their father died about 10 years later of a mysterious ailment. My mother's family had a farm near a village 70 miles north of Durango, Mexico, which is about 500 miles southwest of Matamoros. Since mom was the oldest she kinda took on the role of mother to little Carmen, but Manuel, being a man, and having gone to school and gotten an "office job" in the Durango postal system (Correos de Mexico) seemed to have also reached the position of patriarch in the family; she couldn't pull rank on him even though she was older, so she did the next best thing: she kept sending letters petitioning for her little sister until he gave in.

So, middle of September 1967, hurricane Beuhla is picking up steam in the Gulf and my mother is getting nervous; my little sister was 2 then, but mom was always "nervous", my aunt would say; so, mom wanted us all to go stay with Manuel in Durango until the storm blew over. But, aunt Carmen had just started seeing some new beau and would tell mom to calm down; it was that and probably that business was good that she put off leaving town. And she wasn't about to show up at her brother's house without their baby sister, leaving her to fend for herself if the storm hit Matamoros.

There were shelves all along the walls with detergents, corn flakes, canned foods, and sundry items. In front of the counter were the fruit crates and slanted vegetable bins; on the counter sat, prominently, the large scale with it's sliding weight, oval metal bowl, and scoop. Dangling on the end, opposite the bowl, there was a metal rod with a catch on the bottom for the hockey puck shaped weights that were notched out to slide onto the rod. Beans, rice, sugar, and some candy were sold by the kilo and gram. One of the items i remember clearly in mom's store is the estropajo, the loofahs; probably because they felt like sandpaper on my skin.

Finally, when they were practically out of stock and she was hearing the weather predictions on the radio, mom told my aunt to pack a bag, they were going to Durango, like it or not. We all got on a bus and my older sister who was 12 at time, said Beuhla had hit as we were leaving, but my aunt told me it was just raining. We spent a week sleeping on my uncle Manuel's floor; aunt Carmen wanted to go back sooner to make sure her new beau was alright, but there was a bridge out, no buses were getting to Matamoros.

It was a catagory 5 storm with 160mph winds, spawning 115 twisters in Texas, and killed 58 people. The name Beuhla was retired after that hurricane. It was night time when we got back into the city; my aunt said we waded through knee deep water on the streets to get home, i don't remember that, but i remember inside the house, seeing by candlelight because there was still no power, there was 2 or 3 inches of water.
A bit anticlimatic, i suppose, but even if i had been in that hurricane, i doubt that i would remember much.
One last bit of trivia: while i was sleeping on my uncle Manuel's floor in Durango, about 6 blocks away, an 8 week old Patricia was giving her mother a hard time as usual. We would meet 20 years later.

Matamoros

When i began my life i was destined to be a coastal kid.

Matamoros, Tamaulipas in Mexico is the sister city of Brownsville, Texas,
across the Rio Grand, and it's where i was born and growing up in 1967 when i was 6 yrs old; the year my father was working in a New Orleans shoe repair shop in a Schwegmann's store, and had plans to move us (mom, and 2 delightful sisters) there, another coastal city. Before N.O. he had been in Los Angeles, CA working in a shop there, again a coast.

Things didn't work out in New Orleans and he decided to strike out on his own, and about the time he was making his way to Texas so was a tropical storm named Beulah who became a killer hurricane in September of that year.

I don't know what is the age one normally has the good, clear memories,
but mine don't start to come in like video with sound and color until we moved to Texas exactly a year after that hurricane, at the age of seven; before that they are mostly snapshots, in black and white.

Even though i don't have many memories to share from that time, i can give you some facts about life in Matamoros because after moving here we did go back a few times to where i lived as a child there. We lived in what was known as las casas de don Santos, don Santos was a fat, old, hairy man who always wore kahkis and a white tank; your typical landlord. He had two houses that faced the street, one was a duplex that he lived in with his daughter. You walked between the two long concrete houses and on to a courtyard about 35 feet square; in the back of this property, facing the back of the street facing houses, were another two houses. We lived in the house on the left and between it and don Santos' unit was a small concrete building with green, wood plank doors that contained the toilet and shower; there was a faucet in our kitchen, but you had to go outside to use the bathroom. The house had a concrete porch across the front held up by concrete pillars and tiled like the rest of the house and like every house i ever been inside in Mexico. Just in front of our porch, there was a square concrete laundry tub with a faucet; there were clotheslines that crisscrossed the courtyard, when everyone hung up their sheets, it became a maze for the grown-ups. We just went right through them with our grubby little faces and hands.

This was a great place to live for me because there were a lot of children in the neighborhood, but lets not romanticize the place; they were rental apartments that were a bit slummy, which is odd because it was not really a squalid area, there were some nice homes nearby with their fenced in small green lawns. What i was used to was a concrete world, and where there was no concrete, there was just dirt like someone stole the grass that would dare to grow there.

I always thought my father never lived with us in that house because i have only two memories of him coming to visit before he came to take us back with him to Burkburnett, but i've been told he did live with us a short time before he went north, apparently to make a life for us in the U.S.