diary of a husky kid

My boy had his first run in with a school yard bully recently. Which took me back to my days as a “husky” (read: chunky Chicano) kid. Before my first real run in with such a tormentor, I remember my old man showing me how to defend myself. I am not the smartest person, but I can take directions. “Put your fists just in front of your face, Frankie.” Ok? “No, look at me. Hands at temple height with your left leading your right. Get in this stance. Bend your knees and jab. Jab, jab, jab. Fast and hard. Like Ali and Mando Ramos.” So I did and practiced in the garage regularly.

Then the day came at Driffill Elementary when I was in the 4th grade. An even fatter, shorter, and mean (half Mexican-Japanese-American) Jimmy I. started picking on me in the hallway in front of girl classmates. Feebly, I said, “Stop it.” Emboldened by this weak protest, Jimmy I. was getting ready to attack. Without saying another word, I methodically staggered my stance, bent my knees (à la Bruce Lee), and raised my dukes just like dad showed me. Fat Jimmy I. rushed forward. Jab. Jimmy I., stunned, stepped back. Nose reddened and angered, he tried again. Jab. Jab, jab. I struck on target. Jimmy I. retreated looked at me, for a moment, and those around us and ran home crying.

I held my own. But I felt kind of bad since Jimmy I’s. mom was my Little League team mother. Well this is how I remember it.

Con Safos,

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Americana Condiment

The family ate at Doc Brown’s Chicken last week at Universal Studios and discovered that El Tapatio sauce is as iconic a condiment as ketchup and mustard. This is yet another sign that facets of Mexican culture (i.e., breakfast burritos, tortillas, pollo that’s loco) is redefining markers of Americana.

The issue of condiments also reminds me of how Eric, a Chicano-MEChista student of mine at Cypress College, once giggled and blushed when I mentioned the word condiments during a lecture.

Con Safos,

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Sundown Towns

An oral history interviewee last week indicated that at one time the City of Oxnard was a Sundown Town. To verify this phenomenon I asked another long time Oxnardian of Mexican descent about this and he indicated that he was not aware of such an ordinance. But he did express that by the actions of the Oxnard Police Department that, "we (Mexican Americans and Mexicans) knew that we did not have any business over there (i.e. the White residential area of the city)." When I shared this with my Osher class today at California State University Channel Islands, a student indicated that Burbank was such a city. James Loewen has a book titled Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. This book is next on my reading list.

Con Safos

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Never say never because . . .

I recall that when I was at Fresno State History Professor John W. Bohnstedt (a WWII refugee from Nazi Germany; his mother was Jewish) stated to the class that in history you avoid saying “‘never’ because ‘never’ is a long time.” In other words, change is constant. So when I read that both my retirement systems, Cal PERS and STRS, are underwater with regards to their long term sustainability, I remembered my professor as I once thought my financial golden years were never in jeopardy as a public employee.

But nothing is a sure thing in these current times when we have witnessed the overnight burning to ashes of the likes of corporate giants Lehman Brothers, GM, Toyota, and Tiger. Oh, well. I still got Social Security.

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BTW: I loved the way Professor Bohnstedt pronounced my name with a German accent. Fronk

The Fifth Street Twilight Zone

Last week I met with Dr. David Garcia about a joint research project on the history of the Oxnard School District and the practice of segregation. Being both educated in the city’s public schools, we shared stories growing up in Chiques and situated the school desegregation case of Soria v. Oxnard School District Board (1971) with that of Mendez v. Westminster (1946) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

I mentioned how when I was an adolescent, whether riding my Frankenstein bike or walking, I felt an unexplained unease when I ventured north of Fifth Street. Residents between C Street and Ventura Road and north of Fifth, during the 1970s, were solidly middle class and predominantly of European ethnic ancestry—Italian, German, Irish, French, etc—and Catholic. When I attended catechism classes at a craftsman style home on F Street, in what is now the city’s “historic” district, I was in awe and thought to myself, “I am in the house of rich people.” As I rode my bike home each week, I wondered how it was like to live in a spacious two story home like the ones in this neighborhood, instead of the south side one story two bedroom ticky-tacky residences in the blue collar Bartolo Square.

After meeting with David, I studied the 1974 Soria opinion of Judge Harry Pregerson of the 9th Circuit Court. In this document Pregerson cited Oxnard School Board minutes and stated:

To implement the "principle of segregation," the minutes for November 1936 to June 1939 show how Oxnard's School Board not only established and maintained segregated schools, but also established and maintained segregated classrooms within a school. Where segregated classrooms existed within a school, the Board had the additional problem of keeping children of different ethnic groups from playing together. In addressing this problem, the Board debated the feasibility of staggered playground periods and release times. Feasibility also dictated some exceptions to the Board's general principle of segregation. . . . . (Minutes for September 13, December 12, and December 21, 1938.)

Interesting. Then my eyes locked on to the computer screen as I read that in a 1937 board meeting Trustee J.H. Burfeind called for all “‘Mexican’ children living south of Fifth Street to attend the Haydock School, leaving all white and oriental children living south of Fifth Street in the Roosevelt and Wilson schools [in the north side of town]. The moving of Oriental children living south of Fifth Street to the Haydock School will be taken into consideration in case of future emergency, and no further shifting of pupils is intended.” The goal then was to carry out this crass segregation plan “with as little fuss as possible.”

Amazing. The apartheid-like feeling I internalized as a child crossing north of the Fifth Street twilight zone was not a figment of my imagination; it was de jure policy in the city of Oxnard. This is going to be a rich project. Stay tuned.


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Continuity and Change

A boyhood recollection consists of the fragrance of my grandpa’s hair brilliantined with Tres Flores (Three Flowers). When he was at work at the lemon packinghouse, I would open my grandparent’s medicine cabinet to take a whiff of the Tres Flores bottle or jar—similar to what I did with Vicks, regularly. The perfume was soothing and culturally linked in my memory with what I closely associated as an aspect of what it was to grow up Mexican. As I entered junior high school and flirted with being a cholo-molo wannabe, as a husky adolescent I straightened my curly-brown hair with Tres Flores as though it would make an impression with the cholitas. It didn’t. I envied the slim and slick boys with straight, jet-black coiffures.

As I have balded over time, I no longer have a reason to lubricate my hands and head with this oil or jell. In an effort to vicariously relive my youth and continue this tradition in toiletry, I purchased a small jar of Tres Flores for my son. He too found the scent captivating. But he has quickly forsaken this hair oil. As historians know, change is the only thing that is continuous. Among Latino youth, I have been told, it is no longer fashionable to grease one’s hair with the old Three Flowers. What is now “in” is not so suave, at least in name. The new popular hair jell is called moco de GORILA.

Go figure. Any lingering doubt of my being a middle-aged, nerdy dad is now gone.

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That Smell

Great Oxnard ambrosia this morning. A hybrid fragance of a dairy, garbage dump, chicken ranch, and burning trash. Mi tierra natal. I love it. Kind of like what Duval's Colonel Kilgore character stated in Apocalyse Now, ". . .that gasoline smell. . . It smelled like. . . . victory. Someday this war is gonna end.”