Post note: Each Sunday’s post will be about my family’s history. During the week posts will be about my art, new work and upcoming shows.
My father was born in 1929 in a small town in Arizona named Hayden. There were many Mexican immigrants and their children living there. Most of the men worked in the copper smelter; hard work in an extremely high temperature setting (110⁰F outside and much hotter inside the smelter) all day. My paternal grandfather worked there, also gathered wood to sell to make extra money and played poker for more extra money. My father recalled abuelo would always win at poker. My father attended public schools, swam at the segregated public pool during the “brown people hours” and traded his bean burrito for sandwiches at lunch with his white friends. When he told me these stories it was without emotion or resentment as he noted it helped him become the adult he was, a proud father of four and captain in the Los Angeles Fire Department
As a young boy he had an after school job sweeping the floor of the one bank in town. Being the oldest of four he was the most responsible and saved his money to help the family. When he was twelve (1941) and my grandparents divorced he had saved $175 for their move to Los Angeles.
East Los Angeles was another planet for my father, a light-skinned, skinny kid who liked to read. He spent his after school hours in the library reading and avoiding the street. It worked most of the time. Walking home from the library one day he saw two guys walking toward him he knew were local gang members coming for him. He swung first and second, hitting one then the other but lost his balance and knew he was in trouble. Before they could respond, their gang leader turned the corner and told them to back off. He said “Hey, that’s Guero, he’s okay, leave him alone”. (Guero is a term of endearment for someone who is light skinned). From that day on he had a pass on the streets but still spent much of his free time in the library, he liked to read.