Tag Archives: memoir

American Literature, Arizona, Childhood, Children, creative non-fiction, memoir, Short Story, Tucson

McArthur Street: Episode Nine

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez from The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

Continued from:

McArthur Street: Episode Eight

     Once again I witnessed how mean Jimmy could be to his younger brothers.  It was amazing however how his little brothers who were so much smaller than him came up to him and started insulting him.  They acted angry.  They yelled at him with their little voices.  Jimmy took a rolled up newspaper and hit them over the head so that they ran away crying.  If there was no newspaper he chased them and knocked them down, then held them down on the ground by sitting on them until they were screaming for him to get off.  It was as if his brothers felt a need to challenge him by showing disrespect for him even though they knew he would hurt them.  Weeks later Keith and Mike told me that Jimmy had not only held his brothers down on the ground but tried to force them to eat dog’s poop.  I was appalled when I heard these things.  Even my older brother, when I asked him about that, said it was true.

     One day when I was in Jimmy’s front yard my own little brother came up to me and started yelling at me and insulting me.  I felt so offended because I had never been mean to him that I became very angry.  I chased him and knocked him down.  I sat on him and held him down the way Jimmy did to his little brothers.  I was so angry I pushed his face down on the ground and kept yelling at him to eat dirt.  To his credit he refused to do so.  Suddenly I questioned myself about what I was doing.  I felt bad and let him up off the ground.  He jumped up, yelled another insult and ran off with Ronnie and Donnie.  Was my brother becoming like Ronnie and Donnie?  But I was not like Jimmy.  I went out of my way to be nice to my brother and made up my mind that I would be patient with him. 

     He tried another day to insult me in Jimmy’s front yard.  I looked at him and didn’t say anything.  He turned and said to Ronnie and Donnie, “See, I insulted him and he didn’t do anything”.  Then I became infuriated.  I chased him again and repeated the same acts, holding him down on the ground and telling him to eat dirt which he would not do.  Then I felt bad again.  I got up and walked back home. 

     After that I simply avoided Jimmy’s house. It wasn’t even a conscious decision.  In fact I now felt an aversion to Jimmy and his family.  That put a stop to these incidents.

     It was another hot, summer, Tucson afternoon when I found myself in my mother’s living room.  I was sitting on the couch, hearing the sound of the air from the cooler and looking at the drapes slightly swaying in the afternoon twilight of the room.  I looked around at the peaceful setting.  I looked thoughtfully at the set of encyclopedias and the set of books with folk tales, fairy tales and Gulliver’s Travels.  Also, there were the books of Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass on the book shelf.  These were all books our parents had bought for us.  Along with the huge, two volume dictionary that was in our kitchen our parents bought these books for us because they encouraged us with education and culture.  We had a huge Bible with a nice, reddish brown cover that had three translations in one Bible.  Every set of verses were in the three translations, the first in black, the next in red and the next in black.  I would read all of them and the scholarly footnotes at the bottom of each page that explained what the terms meant according to the customs of the times.

     I thought about Jimmy and his little brothers.  I thought about why his brothers would challenge him knowing he would hurt them.  I wondered what he did to them to make them that way.  I thought about why my own, little brother would imitate their behaviors.  I could clearly see that the problem was Jimmy.  I made up my mind to stop being friends with Jimmy.

     I started to be by myself a lot.  Sometimes I liked to ride my forest green, sting ray bicycle with its white banana seat to the gas station that was on the other side of the big, empty lot.  The gas station faced towards South Park Avenue, a main thoroughfare through the desert neighborhoods.  I would buy a cold soda from the soda machine.  My favorite flavor was the lime green soda.  One day I was by the side of the gas station when Samuel, Ronnie and Donnie came up.  Ronnie and Donnie had gold colored sting ray bicycles.  My brother did not have a bicycle so he rode on the back of the banana seat with one of his little friends.  The boys started talking to me.  For some reason they were eating carrots.  Suddenly my own, little brother came right up to me and started spitting chewed up carrot in my face.  His friends laughed.  I became angry and slapped him across one of his cheeks.  He ran away crying and left with his friends.

     Once again I was in the living room of my family home in the peace and quiet of the afternoon.  I made up my mind that I was going to be especially nice to my little brother.  I felt bad for the things I did even though I knew I had been provoked.  I knew that through it all, it all had to do with Jimmy’s bad influence.  I wanted to make a positive difference in my little brother’s life.

     I had always wanted an H.O. model motoring, slot car racing set.  It appeared that this was a too expensive toy for me to have.  I even bought and read H.O. model motoring magazines.  I read about how race car drivers used their skills to stay safe and win car races.  My father would often watch ABC’s Wide World of Sports on our black and white TV.  I watched the auto races and was able to understand the strategy of the race car drivers.  Having this knowledge made me understand and appreciate watching the races more.

     On an already warm Saturday morning I rode my bicycle to the desert, empty lot behind the gas station.  There were trails through the lot from people walking and riding bicycles.  There were old, car tires that people threw away in the empty lot.  I knew that in small town, car races they used old tires to put on the corners of the race track.  I picked out a circuit of trails to use as a bicycle race track.  There was even a hump to ride up.  With some speed a bicycle would be flying in the air after it reached the top of this hump before it came down on my race track on the other side.  This would be fun for the races.  I started putting the old tires around the corners of my new track.  Keith came along on his gold colored, sting ray bicycle with its leopard spot, banana seat.  He asked what I was doing.  He offered to help me.  Soon we had old tires on every corner of the race track.  I drew a line with a stick in the dirt that would be the start/finish line.  It was placed so the racers would hit the first corner and then have a stretch to pick up speed to go up the little hump and fly through the air until landing on the lower side downhill before continuing the race.  This would make the races maximum fun for the kids in the neighborhood.

To be continued.

American author, American Literature, Arizona, Childhood, Children, creative non-fiction, memoir, Short Story, Tucson

McArthur Street: Episode Eight

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez from The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

Continued from:

McArthur Street: Episode Seven

     My father got a job managing a small, man-made lake south of Tucson on the two lane highway to Mexico.  It was in a tiny town called Kinsley.  The name of the lake was Kinsley Lake.  My father took me and my brother, Daniel, to the lake very early one morning.  When we got there, there was still a little chill in the air in the shady places but already the Arizona sunshine was getting hot.  He taught us how to “police the area” which meant picking up trash.  There was a building that had a long hall inside with pinball machines along the walls.  Near the front entrance was a counter with a cash register where tickets were sold for picnicking, swimming, fishing or to rent a rowboat or kayak.  Behind the counter were shelves and racks with fishing rods, fishing tackle and fishing lures for sale.  My father sat on a stool behind the counter, selling tickets and let us explore the lake.  He gave us each fifty cents for helping him to police the area.

     My father kept taking me and either my little brother or older brother with him to police the area in the morning and enjoy exploring the lake and the surrounding area.  We found a concrete irrigation ditch to jump in and play in the water.  We wore blue jean cut offs in those days because that was the cool thing to do and just let the short pants dry on us.  My father brought all three of us to the lake one day with our fishing poles so we could go fishing.  Sometimes my brothers didn’t want to go to the lake because they wanted to play with their friends in the neighborhood so I would go with my father.  My father taught me how to run the cash register and sell tickets.  He showed me how to count back the change to the customers.  He left me to run the cash register while he went out managing the lake.  He had to make sure that people had paid.  My father would give me a five dollar bill for helping him.  Later he would pay me more.

     I became very proficient at operating the cash register.  When people came and asked about the cost I was able to add the totals very quickly and accurately in my head the way my father had taught me.  I became very good at selling rods, reels and tackle.  When the owner of the lake came in he was so impressed that he would order more rods and reels.  He even brought in live earthworms in round, cardboard containers that I started to sell very quickly.  Eventually he even bought more fishing lures to stock the shelves with because I was starting to sell those.  I always seemed a year younger than my actual age so when adults walked into the office and saw me behind the cash register they started looking around to see if there was an adult around.  When they realized I was the only one there they would start asking questions.  Sometimes they seemed really amazed at how competent I was at what I did.

    When my older brother came to the lake he spent his time playing pinball.  He got so good at playing pinball that he became a pinball wizard.  He could knock the machine on the side without tilting it to keep the ball in play.  Once he walked away from a machine that had 150 games on it just because he was bored with playing.  When he wasn’t playing pinball he would go out and explore the little town of Kinsley with its western style buildings.  There was a restaurant and saloon there.  On the winding road that went up a hill behind the buildings there were the homes of people who lived in this desert area with its surrounding farm fields.

     When my little brother came to the lake he wanted to fish all the time.  He was very good at catching blue gill and bass.  He was so good at fishing that if he forgot to bring bait he could catch fish with the cotton from cigarette butts that he found.

     More often my brothers would not come and it would be me and my father.  When he gave me a break and worked the cash register himself I would go out exploring the lake in one of the kayaks.  Sometimes I would walk out on the wooden wharf and untie one of the rowboats.  I would row out on the lake.  I liked to row out to the middle of the lake and look down at the bottom of the lake.  The water was so clear.  Twice I swam to the middle of the lake and looked down.  I felt like I was floating high up in the air and after a little while it became scary so I swam back.  I felt aware that sometimes when I walked out on the wharf to untie a boat or came back and tied up a boat that the cute, young girls who were swimming and sunbathing in the swimming area must have thought I looked pretty cool.  One of the popular shows on television was Flipper which had two boys who were always walking out on a wharf and untying a boat. 

     My parents had become acquainted with Jimmy’s mother.  My father decided that he wanted to invite Jimmy and his brothers to come with me and my brothers to Kinsley Lake on a Saturday to enjoy the lake and camp out overnight.  When we got to the lake we had races where we raced in the kayaks, then grounded them on shore and ran around the hall to come back to the kayaks to race them around the lake once more.  When I took them out on the wharf I felt that Jimmy noticed the cute girls in the swimming area watching us.  When I looked at Jimmy while we were in the middle of all these fun activities it seemed that he noticed I was looking at him.  It seemed he felt proud of being at the lake and enjoying what it had to offer all for free but he never smiled.  I realized that Jimmy was too overly competitive with others. 

     We camped out that night on the narrow strip of land between the two sections of the lake.  The office with the pinball arcade was on that strip of land.  We roasted hot dogs and had them with pork and beans that we heated in a campfire in one of the fire pits in the picnic area.  The boys talked and laughed.  We all slept well and woke up to the sound of the ducks quacking.

     I was in Jimmy’s house with his mother in the living room one day.  Janet Holly was sitting on the couch and Keith’s sister was there.  Keith’s sister said I should sit next to Janet on the couch.  I looked at Janet.  She looked so beautiful.  She didn’t say anything.  I wanted to sit next to her but I felt embarrassed.  Keith’s sister was insistent.  Jimmy’s mother came and grabbed a hold of me.  She led me over to where Janet was and I sat next to her.  I couldn’t believe I was sitting next to Janet on the couch touching her.  I didn’t want to move.  I didn’t say anything.  I looked at her.  She didn’t do anything but just stayed there looking very calm and serene.  Jimmy’s mother from the dining room area watched us with a smile on her face.  Keith’s sister said, “Mark is sitting next to Janet!” just as my little brother with Ronnie and Donnie emerged from the hallway that led to the bedrooms.  “Mark is sitting with Janet!” they all exclaimed with big smiles on their little faces.  I stayed for as long as I could but I had to get up in embarrassment.  I looked back at Janet before going for the front door to escape.  She still sat there motionless, looking serene.

     I was sitting with Mike in front of his house on another day.  He said we had to keep our voices low because his mother worked at night and slept during the day.  He said she was a very light sleeper.  He wanted me to know that the place where his mother worked was a restaurant, not just a bar, and his mother worked as a cook there.  This made me feel better to know that she was a cook and not a topless waitress.  Mike said the reason she worked there is because it paid so well and that most cook’s jobs didn’t pay very well.  Mike told me that his mother said there were Catholic priests who came into the bar to drink.  I found this hard to believe but I had no reason to think Mike or his mother would lie about something like this.  I didn’t think that the priests from my church would ever do such a thing.

     Keith came walking up to us from across the street asking, “What’s happening!” with his usual grin.  The conversation turned to Jimmy.  Mike said that when Jimmy’s father came home from work all he did was have dinner and then go into his bedroom with a six pack of beer and a Playboy magazine.  Keith said this was true.  They told me that Jimmy would go into his father’s bedroom to look at his Playboy magazines.  I said, “Jimmy said that he wants to be a priest”.  They said that he still does but he still looks at his father’s Playboy magazines.  I was having a hard time dealing with the idea of someone who wanted to be a priest but who looked at Playboy magazines.  My feelings were that he would probably never become a priest.

     One day I was in the living room of Jimmy’s house.  I saw one of the album covers of a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass albums resting against a shelf on the floor.  Jimmy’s mother loved to listen to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and they had several albums by this popular instrumental band in the living room.  I noticed that all the album covers had a picture of a beautiful, young woman looking very sexy on them.  My little brother, Ronnie and Donnie wanted me to come into a bedroom to play board games.  They liked to play Sorry and a card game called, Old Maid.  I played games with them for awhile and then left.  As I walked through the hallway I saw Jimmy lying on the end of his father’s bed looking down at a magazine.  Jimmy got up from the bed when he saw me and came over to me with the magazine.  Jimmy tried to get me to look at the Playboy magazine.  I took a glance from where I was standing and said I had to go.  I let myself out of their front door and went home.

     One day I came to McArthur Street and there was an ambulance in the driveway of Keith’s house.  I stood in front of Jimmy’s house in the gravel and dirt next to the street.  McArthur Street did not have sidewalks like our street did.  The neighborhood kids were out including Robert, Richard and Diana, Jimmy and Mike.  Janet was watching from a lawn chair in front of Jimmy’s house.  Keith’s father had a heart attack I was told.

Life went on for Keith and his family.  His father did not die. They acted as if everything was normal.  I never noticed that Keith or his sister seemed upset. 

Continued on:

McArthur Street: Episode Nine

American author, American Literature, Arizona, Childhood, Children, creative non-fiction, memoir, Short Story, Tucson

McArthur Street: Episode Seven

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez from The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

Continued from:

McArthur Street: Episode Six

Keith had a birthday party at his house.  My younger brother and Jimmy’s younger brothers were there.  My brother, Daniel, and Jimmy were not there.  They often made the long walk to visit with their friend, the older John.  Mike Holly was not there.  Mike had told me that since it was his last year at Wakefield, when his family moved to McArthur street, he had been allowed to remain at Wakefield instead of being transferred to Utterback.  He often went visiting with his friends from Wakefield.  Keith went to Utterback.  It was amazing the rivalry between these two junior high schools.  Janet Holly and Keith’s sister were there.

     Keith wanted to arm wrestle with me.  He always seemed to want to do this when I was at his house.  He would always beat me but this time I had a strategy.  I acted like he was winning and kept letting my arm lower back.  At the same time I was letting him waste his energy by giving just enough resistance to his pressure.  When my arm got rather low to the tabletop I started slowly pushing back until our arms were in the starting position again.  Keith was getting frustrated and started pushing with all his strength.  I just held the position, not trying to push forward.  When I could see that his arm was getting tired I slowly started pushing his arm back.  I kept doing this slowly while resisting his frantic efforts to push my arm back.  A little at a time I was able to push his arm back until I could see that his arm was getting really tired.  Then I pushed down on his arm as hard as I could, slamming his hand down on the table.  “Damn it!” Keith yelled.  “Mark beat Keith!” I kept hearing the other kids saying.  I felt a little shocked that Keith would cuss in front of the little kids.  Keith was mad.  He wanted a rematch.  I didn’t want to but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.  I tried to use the same strategy but Keith got frustrated and lifted his elbow high off the table to push my arm back.  I just said that was cheating and he didn’t really win.  He wanted another rematch but he did the same thing again, lifting his elbow off the table. 

     I said I wasn’t going to arm wrestle with him anymore if he was going to cheat.  I was glad that I said this because I was tired of the way he always wanted to arm wrestle.  I remembered when he wanted me to hit him in the shoulder as hard as I could and I didn’t want to. He kept insisting.  He said it didn’t even hurt.  I said I didn’t hit him as hard as I could have.  He said he wanted me to hit him again as hard as I could.  I must not have had the ability to want to hurt someone so I couldn’t hit him with all my strength.  He just told everyone that it didn’t even hurt.

     Keith’s sister brought Janet Holly to me and said she wanted to see which of us was taller.  Keith’s mother wanted to see, also.  They had us stand back to back.  They told me to stand up as tall as I could.  They had a ruler to put on top of our heads for measure.  Janet’s body felt so warm and soft against my back.  Even the back of her head with her soft hair was against mine.  I marveled at her softness.  Keith’s sister said, “She’s taller than you!”  Keith’s mother said, “She’s taller than you!”  The kids chimed in, “Janet is taller than Mark!”  Keith reappeared to keep shouting at me, “She’s taller than you!  She’s taller than you!”  I didn’t see why that should be such a big deal so I just smiled and shrugged. 

Keith’s mother couldn’t understand why I didn’t want more cake and ice cream.  I actually had a low tolerance for too much sugar.  Ice cream made me feel a little queasy in my stomach.  The cakes that Keith’s mother had made seemed to have double the amount of sugar in them.  They had about an inch of frosting on top and a lot of frosting in the middle.  After she asked me if I wanted more cake and ice cream and I said, “No, thank you”, I just ate some potato chips and drank some punch.  She came back and asked me again if I wanted more cake and ice cream.  She seemed frustrated.  She just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want more cake and ice cream.  I walked back home with my little brother from the party to our house on E. Illinois St.  I couldn’t stop thinking about Janet Holly.

     On summer nights I and my two brothers often slept outside in the back yard in sleeping bags under the sky since the summer nights were so warm and beautiful in Tucson.  Countless stars were everywhere in the sky.  Even without a moon there were so many bright stars because of the clear, desert sky that there was light.  My father had built a small fire pit on the ground with red, clay bricks and cement that he called a fireplace.  We would build a fire from scrap wood and sit around the fire on large, smooth stones my father had collected. 

     My mother and father said it would be okay to invite Jimmy, Ronnie and Donnie over to sleep outside in the back yard.  Keith was invited, too.  We roasted hot dogs on long twigs from the weeping willow tree.  Then we had fun roasting marshmallows.  We twirled the red burning embers at the end of the twigs in the air to make circles of red orange light in the darkness.  I even got fancy and tried to write longhand words with the glowing embers in the dark.  The boys loved this.

     I had read a book from the Tucson public library of ghost stories for children that was published by Alfred Hitchcock.  Although it took me awhile to finish the book when I did finish on a Saturday I was so impressed that I read all the stories all over again. 

     I gained a reputation with my brothers for telling ghost stories around the campfire.  They wanted me to tell ghost stories.  I started to tell the same stories again.  I told the story about a man who had bad luck because he had been tricked into walking a widdershin.  A widdershin was a counter clockwise circle and this was considered to be bad luck.  Then my brothers asked me to tell the story of Old McDonald.  It was the story of a farmer named Old McDonald who stayed too late in town and had to walk home in the dark.  Along the way he encountered a ghost.  He had a conversation with the ghost.  As I was telling the story I looked at the faces of the boys in the firelight especially the little ones, my brother, Ronnie and Donnie.  They had smiles on their faces and listened intently.  I told a few more stories and they wanted to hear the story of Old McDonald again.  Even my older brother wanted to hear the story again because he said it was one of his favorites.  Story telling was interesting because I found myself embellishing the stories just because of the reactions and sometimes questions from my audience.  It was as if they wanted me to add to the stories.  I had to admit that the telling of the stories was never the same and they seemed to change over time.

     After the fire had turned to glowing embers I walked to another part of the yard and was talking with Jimmy and my older brother.  Soon there was a hissing sound.  I looked to see that Keith was urinating on the embers.  There was steam from the fireplace and a horrible smell.  “Uuhh!” I exclaimed and moaned a little.  What kind of person would do such a thing?  I was in disbelief.  I walked over to Keith and scolded him.  It didn’t seem to phase him any.

     The little boys were still running around the back yard playing when I retired to my sleeping bag.  I couldn’t sleep.  I was lying on my stomach.  I drew in the dirt with a stick, “Mark + Janet” and started singing quietly to myself with the melody of a pop song, “I love Janet Holly”.  The little boys noticed and started to tease me.  I messed up what I wrote in the dirt and turned on my side to go to sleep covering up my face with the top of the sleeping bag.  I still sung very quietly to myself, “I love Janet Holly” a couple of times before going to sleep.

     It wasn’t long before Keith invited us to sleep in his back yard.  His backyard was entirely under all of these trees so there was only dry grass and some patches of dirt underneath.  My brother, Daniel, and Jimmy weren’t there.  My little brother, Ronnie and Donnie were there.  First I had to deal with Keith’s now overly friendly German shepherd trying to lick my hands and slobber on me.  I was starting to feel dirty and grimy.  Then Keith’s mother gave us packages of hot dogs.  When I went to open the packages I noticed there was a white, milky liquid in with the hot dogs.  I pulled one of the hot dogs out to see that the milky liquid was sticky.  I smelled the hot dogs and they had a sickening, sweet smell.  I realized that it would be dangerous to eat these wieners.  I told Keith and the boys that the hot dogs were spoiled.  I had eaten supper at my own home earlier so I wasn’t too hungry. 

     There was a spotlight in Keith’s backyard.  There was the yellow, incandescent light, shadows and darkness under the trees.  It was perfect for making the little kids want to play tag.  I played tag with them as they ran around.  At a certain point I emerged from under some trees to find myself facing Keith who confronted me.  He grinned and punched me in the stomach.  I doubled over with pain.  My little brother ran up and asked me what was wrong.  I told him, “Keith punched me in the stomach”.  “Keith punched you in the stomach?” he exclaimed.  I starting walking to my sleeping bag with my hands over my stomach still doubled over.  My brother, Ronnie and Donnie ran up.  Ronnie and Donnie asked, “What’s wrong with you?”  I said, “Keith punched me in the stomach”.  “Keith punched you in the stomach?” they said and then they ran off.  I was lying in my sleeping bag on my side.  I had never been punched in the stomach before.  I had no idea how painful it was.  The little boys continued to run around the back yard playing tag.

     The next morning I walked home with my little brother.  I knew that the days of sleeping in back yards with the other boys from McArthur Street were over.  My brothers and I still slept in our own back yard with a fire and ghost stories the way we had always done. 

     Why I continued to remain friends with Keith seems like a mystery.  I actually felt a sense of being understanding towards him. As young as I was I read a lot of articles in magazines about all the social problems in America.  I understood that Keith was the product of his background and that he went to a tough public school with a bad reputation.  I still liked his sense of adventure.  I sometimes would see his father coming home from work.  His father was a tall, chubby, burly man.  He looked like a worker, wearing his blue jeans and white, cotton undershirt.  He often came home with a case of beer.

Continued on:

McArthur Street: Episode Eight

Anthology, Arizona, Book in Print, Childhood, Children, creative non-fiction, Excerpt, Literature, memoir, Tucson

McArthur Street: Episode Five

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez
From McArthur Street
From The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

Continued from:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/09/25/mcarthur-street-episode-four/

One fine day a family moved into the house next door to Jimmy’s that had been vacated by the family of the younger John.  It wasn’t exactly a normal family.  There was a mother, son and daughter but no father.  I found out this was the result of a divorce.  The new boy of the neighborhood was outgoing and popular.  His name was Mike Holly.

    He had an air of confidence in everything he did.  Although he was popular with Jimmy, myself and my brothers he was a public school boy who soon became friends with Keith, the boy who lived across the street from Jimmy.  Keith was the boy who Jimmy said was ba-a-a-ad.

At first there was the sheer pleasure of meeting Mike Holly.  Besides the fact that he was very likeable it was exciting that he went to one of the public junior high schools that was legendary among the Catholic school boys for being a very dangerous school.  The boys at my school would have debates as to whether Wakefield or Utterback was the toughest of the schools.  Mike went to Wakefield.

Mike once said something to me of great interest.  He said that the previous year he had lived with his father.  He said his father was Mexican.  His father bought him two pairs of jeans and a package of white, cotton undershirts for clothes to wear that year.  He said he was the most unpopular boy in school that year.  The next year he lived with his mother and everything changed.  This was something new to me.  In Catholic school we wore uniforms.  Clothes was not an issue.

Mike often went to dances for junior high school kids at the YMCA.  In Catholic school boys and girls were often separated and there was no such thing as dances.  I started to get glimpses of Mike’s younger sister.  She had short, blonde hair and was very cute.  I wondered why if Mike’s father was Mexican that he had an Anglo last name.  I assumed this had something to do with his mother and father being divorced.

It wasn’t long before I met Keith, the bad boy from across the street.  Jimmy told me that he cussed a lot and so did his father.  Jimmy said his father got drunk a lot.  Keith’s family, also, kept a German shepherd who barked viciously from behind the low, chain link fence in their front yard. All this contributed to the general notoriety of Keith’s family.

Keith was a freckle faced kid who was just a little pudgy.  He grinned and laughed a lot.  He had a younger sister with long, thick, red hair.  Even though I didn’t approve of Keith’s cussing we got along well.  I think I liked his sense of adventure.

Mike Holly continued to gain in popularity.  I remember one day visiting with him in his front yard.  Although his yard was dirt and a few tufts of dry grass it was all underneath the shade of lines of trees, each of which was thick with dark leaves.  We knew there was no man in his house and realized that his mother was a divorcee struggling to support her family.  It was cool and a little dark under the shade of these trees as we sat in lawn chairs in front of his house.  Mike confided with me that his mother had told him that he should hang out with me and my older brother, Daniel, rather than the other boys in the neighborhood because we were good boys from a good family and that the other boys were sort of rough.

This sort of made me feel happy because Mike was very popular and popularity seemed to be the name of the game at the time.  Becoming close friends with him would have enhanced our image on McArthur Street.  I felt however that Mike was really saying that goody two shoes guys like us were less interesting and exciting than bad boys like Keith and that he was prepared to spend his time more with Keith.

During the course of the conversation while I was relating a past experience I felt it necessary to spell out a swear word because I wasn’t actually allowed to say the swear word.  Mike admonished me because we were in front of the windows of his home.  He felt that his mother might overhear.  I said that I was only spelling it out, not saying it.  He said it didn’t matter.  His mother thought it was just as bad to spell it as say it.  This I found a little odd because once Mike had shown me a message pad with a caricature of a topless waitress holding one of her breasts and underneath was a caption that read, “We also serve these”.  He said it came from the place where his mother worked.  I wondered why if his mother worked at a topless bar she would be so strict about swearing but I figured she was doing what she had to as a result of the divorce to support her family.  That didn’t mean that she didn’t want to raise her children decently.

I had been becoming nearsighted and I finally got a pair of glasses.  I chose a style of horn rimmed glasses with frames that were dark gray on top and clear on the bottom because Jimmy had a pair that were similar but brown on top.  He rarely wore them.   He was very vain and not so nearsighted as I was.  I needed my glasses.  I had a hard time playing baseball without them.  I never knew where the ball was because I couldn’t see where it went.  Once at school we had been playing baseball in the dirt field at lunchtime and I hit the ball straight and far into left field.  I ran around the bases all the way to third but when I looked around to see where the ball was I couldn’t see where it was.  Some boys were shouting at me to stay and some were shouting at me to run for home.  I couldn’t see which boys were telling me to stay or run and which ones were on my team.  I decided to be safe and stay.  In school the boys made a big deal that I had hit a triple off of Brown who was considered to be a good pitcher.  They said I could have had a grand slam if I had ran for home.  I explained that I couldn’t see where the ball was and wasn’t sure who was telling me to stay and who was telling me to run.  For awhile I wasn’t one of the last or almost last to be picked for one of the teams.  Later when they saw I couldn’t always hit that well I went back to being one of the last picked.

What a shock it was when I wore those new glasses!  Suddenly I could see clearly.  No more squinting to read the chalkboard at school.  The world now was so sharply defined and fully of clarity as I had never known.  What a change from the dim view I had before!

One day I visited in Jimmy’s house with my new glasses.  There was the dingy living room with the brown yellow, cigarette smoke stains on the ceiling, the carpet that needed vacuuming and picking up.  I then was alone with Jimmy’s mother in the kitchen.  She was asking me how I liked my new glasses.  I was trying to communicate to her the amazing difference in perception when I said, “I can see every grain of dirt on the floor!”  She said, “Well, gee, thanks a lot!”  I tried to apologize.  I didn’t mean it the way she thought it sounded.  It was something I had noticed when looking at her kitchen floor that had seemed amazing to me.  I felt bad but she didn’t really seem to be upset.

Later I thought how different Jimmy’s house was from ours.  I could picture his mother in her shorts with laundry baskets on the couch, folding clothes in the middle of the room filled with debris that needed picking up.  It was a feeling of disorder.

Continued on:

McArthur Street: Episode Six
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McArthur Street: Episode Four

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez
from McArthur Street
by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez

Continued from:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/09/11/mcarthur-street-episode-three/

Not long after becoming acquainted with Jimmy’s family John’s family next door to them moved away.  The house was vacant for a time.  One day Jimmy asked me to come along with him, his mother and younger brothers to visit with John.  Apparently John’s family had bought a brand new house.  Our neighborhood was that of very simple tract homes that appeared to have been built in the early fifties.  John’s new home was sixties style, fancier and brand new.  The tract of homes was even built on a hill and not on flat land.  He lived at the end of a curving cul-de-sac.  The home was so new that the land around it was dirt.  There was no landscaping yet.  We were taken on a tour of the new, fancy house.

      This was only the second time in my life I ever saw the younger John.  I remembered how cruelly Jimmy had treated him at the last meeting.  Much to my surprise Jimmy now treated John with the utmost respect and friendliness.  Something had suddenly changed.  He seemed to treat me with disdain as if since we had been seeing each other regularly the familiarity had turned to disrespect and contempt.  Very quickly he and John disappeared around a corner leaving me alone, alone outside a brand new house that seemed barren with no landscaping.  All I could do was wait patiently until Jimmy’s family decided to leave.  I wasn’t in a good humor on the drive back.  I was quiet.  I couldn’t wait until we arrived so I could walk back home.

Our yard was not perfect.  It wasn’t like the Miller’s who were a retired couple across the street whose lawn was perfectly green and always cut and trimmed perfectly with its perfect flower beds.  It was weedless all the time.  Our lawn was not dry but was never completely green.  There were always some weeds that needed to be pulled.  At some point my father taught all of his three sons to care for the yard but left it up to us to do so.  There was no pressure.  I think I took up most of the responsibility myself but try as I might I could never make the yard look perfect.  I watered in the evening, pulled weeds, mowed and edged the lawn and swept the walks.  My father collected a lot of nice rocks and cemented them at intervals on top of the low wall that bordered our yard.  Ours was a corner house and even though the corner of our front yard was rounded and not a sharp corner the neighborhood boys would cut across our yard for a shortcut.  Sometimes some of them would push and pull on the rocks until they pulled them out.  They seemed to want to do these things as a sign of disrespect and rebellion against authority.  I had no idea why.  I finally had to confront some of these boys and tell them they couldn’t do that.  They would want to argue and say, “Why not?” but I got them to stop.  I even got them to stop taking short cuts across our yard.

Try as I might our yard was never perfect.  However we had a very tall mulberry tree in our front yard that gave an abundance of fruit every summer.  Lots of neighborhood kids would be in our yard uninvited picking fruit including children we didn’t even know.  Eventually there was even a grown Mexican woman who we didn’t know picking fruit with the children.  My mother who was raised on a farm in Ohio knew how to bake pies from scratch and she would bake us delicious mulberry pies every summer.  There was always a smaller, immature mulberry tree on the other side of the front driveway that as yet did not bear fruit.  It was not planted by design but it looked very beautiful and perfect where it was at.  It was obviously a child of the mother tree.  Between the front sidewalk and the curb grew a Palo Verde tree.  This type of tree was native to the Arizona-Sonora desert.  It had a slender trunk and limbs with smooth, green bark.  The branches hung down with leaves that were thin strands with tiny green, pointed ovals along each strand.  This gave the leaves a feathery look.  At times the tree, also, had tiny, yellow flowers.  People who were driving by would stop their cars in front and tell me that the tree was beautiful.  Another of these trees had begun to grow several feet away.

We had some bushes along the front wall of the house that had small, dark green, waxy leaves.  They grew up to the roof of the house and had a low arch between them.  We called them bird berry bushes because they grew berries that looked exactly like tiny apples that the birds loved to eat.  They were bright red on the outside, white inside and had tiny black seeds just like tiny apples.  We ate them ourselves sometimes.  Sometimes we’d watch the birds go crazy eating them.  My father later told me that the bird berries made the birds drunk.  That’s why they loved them so much.

We, also, had two plum trees on the other side of the yard past the car port.  They grew right up next to the backyard fence.  These small, dark, purple and green trees gave fruit every summer.  In the same area was a small palm tree that was only a few feet high and the pond, a small concrete pond that my father had made.  It was bordered by large rocks that were good for sitting on.  The pond was only filled when one of my brothers or I filled it with a garden hose.  After the two rainy seasons in Tucson we would bring tadpoles from the desert in jars to put tadpoles in the pond.  The cats would come and lick some of them up from the pond to eat them.  We watched the ones that were left grow hind legs and front legs.  Then they would lose their tails.  Eventually they became little frogs hopping around the pond until they got bigger and hopped away.

And these were the treasures of the front yard!  In back there was a patio where on summer days we would eat breakfast outdoors since it was already seventy degrees even early in the morning.  We would eat cereal and cantaloupe.  There was another fruitless mulberry tree that was a good climbing tree.  Here is where we built a tree house in it of scrap wood.  The mulberry tree, instead of growing fruit, grew yellow flowers.  My mother just called it a fruitless tree.  Later in life when I thought back on this it became obvious to me it was the male tree that pollinated the fruit bearing mulberry tree in the front yard.  There was a lawn there and next to the redwood slat, back yard fence was the clothes line where my mother hung clothes to dry and sometimes lots of diapers.  I often helped my mother with the laundry.  We had an old fashioned, washing machine in the back yard with a wringer to wring the excess water out of the clothes.   I loved to run through the lines of cotton diapers on the clothes lines when they got dry because of the fresh smell.

Next to the wall of the house in the flower beds was a peach tree.  The mother of this peach tree was in a small patch of dry lawn on the other side of the patio.  Every summer the peach trees were heavily laden with fruit.  The younger peach tree was once so heavily laden with fruit that one of its branches broke from the weight.  My mother would make us peach pie, peach cobbler and peaches with whipped cream for dessert.  She made the whipped cream from scratch.  We often had peach slices with our cereal in the morning.

Then there was the weeping willow tree on the other side of the back yard driveway.  The entrance to the driveway had tall, wooden gates that my father built into the redwood slat fence that encircled the back yard.  The tree grew from a square made of low, red brick walls.  Its gnarled roots filled the earth inside the brick enclosure.  Its long, thin branches hung down low over the roots with its long, green leaves.  In the spring it was not good to be under the tree’s branches because the caterpillars would be spitting out green junk that would fall on us.  Later came the beautiful butterflies as they emerged from the cocoons that the caterpillars had retreated to after having their fill of eating weeping willow leaves.  For a short time butterflies covered the hanging branches before flying away.   Then there was the summer when the tree would achieve its full, lush greenery and glory.  It was nice and cool in the shade behind the green curtains of the weeping willow tree branches.  I felt a sense of peace hiding in there on hot summer days.

In the back yard behind the weeping willow tree was a fallow area of dirt.  At times we grew watermelon there, potatoes and carrots.  My mother gave me packages of seeds and my father taught me how to grow things.  We were able to grow some corn but the stocks of corn did not get really high like on my grandfather’s farm in Ohio.  We tried to grow sunflowers and were successful but the birds ate all the sunflower seeds.  The birds went crazy eating the seeds from the big, yellow flowers.  At times it was hard for us to even get close to the plants because of the crazed birds.

We had a kid goat for awhile as a pet and then a desert tortoise.  My sisters were afraid of the goat so my father sold it back to the feed store he had bought it from.   The tortoise kept digging under the fence to escape out to the desert.  He finally got too much of a head start on us so we couldn’t find him.  Then we got a little dog and this patch of dirt became his potty area.

The weeping willow tree was not a great tree for climbing.   It was not like the huge mulberry tree in the front yard.  The mulberry tree had thick branches that separated at a low level on the trunk.  It was easy to climb and there was a place high above from which I could look down on the world below.  I could even look down on the roof of the house.  It was a natural place where branches cradled me.  I could recline there.  It was a place I would go to when the noise of my brothers and sisters became too much for me.  When I got upset I would climb up to my high spot in the tree to think and have peace of mind.  It was a place where my imagination was set free from the troubles of life.

Continued on:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2020/01/14/mcarthur-street-episode-five/

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McArthur Street: Episode Three

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez
From McArthur Street
From The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

Continued from:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/08/03/mcarthur-street-episode-two/

It wasn’t long before my younger brother, Samuel, became friends with Jimmy’s two younger brothers, Donnie and Ronnie.  My younger brother, Samuel, is about three years younger than I.  Jimmy’s two younger brothers were two years apart.  They were close to the same age as Samuel and considerably smaller in stature than Jimmy.

One day I remember going along with Jimmy and his mom and little brothers to shop in the morning during the three month summer vacation time that we had from school.  In Tucson in the sixties during the hot days of summer we, boys, wore cut-off jeans to look cool.  It was at the beginning of summer vacation and before nine in the morning there was still a little coolness in the air.  We were going to a large, discount department store in a new complex recently built in the desert.  The modern four lane, divided road had an exit that looked like a freeway exit but this was Tucson so this was not a freeway at all.

We arrived in the old, station wagon that Jimmy’s mother drove.  We were there at the doors of the new, modern looking department store in the desert where no greenery of landscaping had started to grow yet.  It was before the store was open.  The day was growing hotter in the Arizona sun as I noticed all the other housewives, most of them middle aged, who were waiting for the doors to open.  It was the day of a sale that had been advertised.  I had no previous experience or knowledge of these types of events at all.

I remember a tall, young man in a light grey suit unlocking the glass doors and then I was witnessing a site that I had never heard of.  Everyone was pushing up toward the doors as they opened and then there was an insane, mad rush of women running to a certain department.  I found myself caught up in the ebullience of the moment and rushing with all of the others to see what the excitement was all about.

Soon I came to a scene in which there was already a crowd of women gathered in a certain area and others were fighting their way to get in.  I decided to become one of them to see what was going on.  When I was able to push through the women and get close enough to the front I was amazed by what I saw.  There were tables piled with women’s clothing that had been neatly folded and women were practically fighting over the clothing! It was a garish spectacle!  After watching for awhile I turned and walked away.

One thing that really stands out in my mind is the way Jimmy’s mom placated her two youngest children by giving them candy.  At a certain point in this shopping experience Jimmy and his mom left me alone in the old station wagon with Donnie and Ronnie.  I sat in the back seat and Ronnie and Donnie turned to face me from the middle seat of the station wagon.  I tried to talk to them as I would with my own younger brother and sisters but they seemed more keen on trying to impress me with the fact that they had candy.  I found myself in a state of disgust looking at their dirty, little faces with candy coating around their mouths.  Already their teeth were small and brown with gaps between them.  They smiled at me triumphantly as if the mere state of constantly having candy showed superiority.

I sat in the back seat of the station wagon looking at the dirty, little faces smiling at me.  Inside the station wagon was a feeling of dirtiness and smelliness.  There was a gritty feeling.  I just felt a sense of disgust.  Needless to say I never went along with Jimmy and his mother when they went shopping again.  When he asked me if I wanted to go along he seemed not to understand why I would say no.

I actually liked Jimmy’s mom.  She was younger than my own mother.  She had bouncy, blonde hair down to her shoulders.  Often she wore shorts.  She seemed pretty.  She always acted nice.  She seemed rather child like herself.  She often talked to me as if I were an equal.  There was an air of excitement about being in their home.  It was something different, something new.

Jimmy’s father was a dark, shadowy figure who made his appearance rarely.  It was a long time before I ever saw him.  He was a burly, Mexican man with black hair, a dark complexion and a small moustache.  He seemed unpleasant and never smiled.  He was not like my own Mexican-American father.  My father was known for smiling and joking.  Jimmy’s father was a glazier and apparently made good money.  His glass truck would sometimes be parked in the driveway of their home.  Jimmy said that he often worked on Saturdays which was why he was rarely at home.

It seemed as if marriage for him was his wife only and not his children.  He seemed to leave the raising of his sons to his wife.  This may have had to do with the fact that all three of his boys turned out to have blonde hair like their mother and fair complexions.  When he was at home he usually retreated to the bedroom.

I remember on a few occasions during this time in my life I found myself alone in the living room of my family home on a hot, Tucson afternoon.  It was cool in the living room from the air of the cooler as I looked peacefully at the drapery.  I became impressed with the sense of order and calmness in my mother’s neat and nice living room.  There was the couch decorated with the Mexican zarape, the fireplace mantel with the clock ticking and the family photos.  There were the paintings and old fashioned carpet with its oval shape, the coffee table, end tables and lamps.  I was sitting in my mother’s comfortable upholstered rocking chair.  There were the drapes gently swaying because of the one window that was slightly ajar from which the heat of the Sonoran desert and fresh air from outside radiated.  From the front porch would be the sound of the wind chimes that were barely moving.

The peace and tranquility impressed me with the orderliness of the living room in its own afternoon twilight.  Everything neat and simple.  Everything dusted by my little sisters or my mother.  When my sisters were babies I had helped my mother with the dusting.  I had a feeling of transcendence and peace of mind.  This was my pristine world, so different, I thought in contrast to Jimmy’s world.

Although there was an air of excitement in Jimmy’s home with his young, energetic mother I always felt a sense of uncleanness and lack of order and peace.  There was never the clean, pristine smell of my family home.  Often the living room was in need of picking up with loose articles here and there.  Both of Jimmy’s parents smoked cigarettes which contributed to the general feeling of dirtiness.  Often Jimmy’s mother would be sitting on the couch, laundry to fold at her side, with a cigarette in her hand, smoke going up to the ceiling.  The ceiling was stained yellow and brown from the cigarette smoke.

Continued on:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/09/25/mcarthur-street-episode-four/

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The Spider Lady: Final Episode

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The Spider Lady
by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez
From The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

     A few months went by and I didn’t hear anything concerning the spider lady.  A little after five in the afternoon one day I got a call at a doctor’s office.  I had never been there before.  I was impressed when I read on the sign that was next to the door of the office that it was a woman doctor who was a naturopathic doctor.

     A very pretty, young, brunette woman who was close to my own age at the reception desk smiled.  She seemed especially friendly and cheerful.  She said she would go get the person who called for the taxi.  She returned and smiling she said, “She’ll be just a minute.”  There were women and children in the waiting room.  Then I saw her in the semi-darkness of the room approaching me.  It was the spider lady.  She was wearing a long, dark print dress.

     I went to open the back door of the taxi for her and she said she wanted to sit in the front so I opened the front passenger door for her.  As we were riding along I thought how strange that we were riding in a car together with daylight all around on a warm, sunny afternoon with a touch of coolness in the air.  She seemed calm, patient, relaxed and humble.  She was gazing off into space.  She sat in her long, dark print dress with her arms resting on her lap.  Her wrists and hands were placed just above her knees, her palms up.  Her fingers were delicately curved as if she was posing in a peaceful, serene and beautiful position.

     Then I saw it!  On both of her wrists were plastic, stick-on bandages.  I kept looking in disbelief while she remained calm and serene.  She was gazing into the distance ahead with slightly lowered eyelids as if in a surreal state of melancholy and peacefulness.  I looked again at the bandages in exactly the places on someone’s wrists where a person would slash with a razor blade to commit suicide. 

     I looked at her face so calm, serene and transcendent.  Except for glints of light that reflected from her eyes as we drove along she seemed motionless and in a state of relaxation.  It seemed as if she had wanted me to see her bandages.  She wanted me to know. 

     When we were on her street and getting close to her house she asked me to stop a few houses away from hers.  She said she wanted to walk the rest of the way.  I offered to get out and open the door for her but she insisted on letting herself out.  She reached for the door handle.  She seemed listless as if drugged.  I patiently pointed to help her find the door handle.

     The afternoon just before sunset was in a golden glow as I watched her walking ahead of me with the skirts of her dark, elegant dress swaying while she walked past the yellow and green lawns of the neighborhood towards her own home.  She walked with sadness and serenity as if introspective.  I never heard anything of the spider lady again.

    I remembered I had told the cab drivers and dispatcher that no such spider that is completely black with a smooth, hard skin of that size exists in this area that I’ve ever heard of.  It was larger than tarantulas which I have seen in Arizona and tarantulas are furry and brown.  Was it just a spider?  Where did those webs come from on the porch that I had just walked through?  What was that smell of death?  Did she practice evil magic and lure men to their death, murdering them in the belief that she could gain power from death like a female spider that seduces males to have sex with her and then devours them?

When I read in a magazine about how a man turned in Jeffrey Dauhmer, the serial killer, to the police because of smelling an unusual smell that made him think of death and then he looked into Jeffrey Dauhmer’s bedroom to see bed sheets covered with caked, dried blood it reminded me of the smell in the spider lady’s house.

     Did I break her magic spell by writing a verse of poetry?   Did she use poetry for evil, magic purposes to cast her spells and did I defeat her unwittingly because of being a poet myself?  Was her seduction spell over me that important to her that when I used her own medium to break her spell she attempted suicide?  Or is the writing and publishing of this story the final breaking of a spell that may have gone beyond the grave?  At this point I know there are people who practice magic, both good and bad. 

Continued from:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/07/24/the-spider-lady-episode-three/

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the spider lady: episode three

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The Spider Lady
Excerpt

Continued from: https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2016/05/12/the-spider-lady-episode-two/

     I didn’t receive this taxi call again.  One night when after I got off work and got home about three in the morning I sat down in my canvas, director’s chair and started sipping on a beer.  I did this when I came home from work just to unwind and think about all the things that happened that day.  I often called taxi driving condensed cream of life.  One night of it was that intense.

     As I thought about all the amazing things I had experienced that day on the job I thought of “the spider lady” as I had come to think of her.  A poem came into my mind.  A very short poem but I felt compelled to write it down.  Perhaps I was on my second beer but my mind in the subdued lighting of my apartment where I was contemplating seemed to be in the darkness of the universe and I wrote down the poem:

                                 She turns herself into a spider

                              And spins a web

I don’t know why I felt compelled to write it in my notebook or why so few words seemed so important to write down.  I sat and my thoughts wandered to other things.

     One night at the end of the taxi swing shift some of the taxi drivers were congregated in the dispatch office to pay their lease money to the company after the bar rush was over.  A young woman cab driver who was known to be a lesbian said something because the conversation had come around to talking about the spider lady.  Other drivers had done deliveries to her, also.  The young woman cab driver’s friend, Janice, was there.  Janice was a friend of hers from college.  They had been on the women’s volleyball team together.  The taxi dispatcher on duty was a lady named Norma, a petite blonde woman who worked the graveyard shift.  She was one of the most skillful and crooked of dispatchers.  The young lesbian woman started talking about the spider lady.

     She said that the woman was a poetess and she was well off because of the sales of her poetry.  She said that her poetry was really weird and that it sold well in the San Francisco area.  She said that she knew about this because some of her friends knew about the woman and her poetry and recognized her name.

     They asked me why I called her the spider lady and I told them the story.  They loved the story and when some of the men cab drivers coming off of their shift walked into the office they told them that I had a great story about the woman that I called the spider lady so I repeated the entire story.  The men cab drivers who had many cab driver stories of their own were impressed.

Continued on:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/08/31/the-spider-lady-final-episode/

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The Switchblade

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From Catholic School Stories
The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

      In the sixth grade at St. John’s School there was a new boy we had never seen before.  His name was Chango which in Spanish, I was told, means monkey.  He had brown skin, very short, nappy hair and big ears that stuck out noticeably on the sides of his long face.  I could see how he got the nickname.  I never knew what his real name was.  Even the teachers called him Chango.  It seemed to be his preferred name.

     The boys and girls told me that he had been in public school but he kept getting into trouble so his parents sent him to the Catholic school.  They told me that he had flunked a grade so he had been put back one class.  He indeed was taller than the rest of us.

He liked to talk and smiled a lot, I noticed, when I was introduced to him.  In the schoolyard he liked to talk to us boys in his class.  He liked to tell stories and found a receptive audience.  It wasn’t long before he started talking about how he was always shoplifting.  He mentioned stealing pencils, erasers and crayons from a drug store that was across the street from the school.  He kept bragging more and more about all the things he would steal.  It wasn’t long before some of the other boys started to brag about stealing things like pencils from the drug store.  “How many pencils?” Chango interrogated.  The bragging about shoplifting seemed to be increasing.

     At this time some boys I knew in my neighborhood and I were really into comic book heroes.  We talked about being like them and trying to fight crime.  I was disturbed about Chango’s bad influence on the boys at school.  On a Saturday I went into the store with my two friends and asked to speak to the manager of the store.  The man in his short sleeve, white shirt and black tie came and listened to me.  I told him about Chango.  He asked me to describe him.  After I described him the manager said he would be looking out for him.  He thanked me.  My friends and I left the store.  That was about it.  It wasn’t exactly like being a super hero but it was a start.  My friends seemed to be impressed that I wasn’t all talk. 

     It wasn’t long after that Chango started something new.  He was sitting on top of one of the little bicycle racks we had in the schoolyard.  It was under a shady tree next to a wall of the convent.  The boys in my class were gathered in front of him, some to the left and some to the right.  I walked up to see what was going on.  I walked to see up the center of the boys who were on each side with Chango straight ahead of me on his seat.  Chango was telling the boys stories when he pulled out a switchblade.  He held it up and pressed the button.  The double edged blade shot out from the side and locked into place with a click.  This was no ordinary switchblade.  I could tell that the blade was long enough for this knife to be considered an illegal, deadly weapon.  Chango wielded the knife and passed it over to his other hand.  He was brandishing the knife while telling his stories of how tough it is in public school.  I watched for awhile and walked away.

     The next day was the same in the schoolyard.  Chango was on his seat on the bicycle rack with his audience of boys from my class.  He was brandishing the switchblade knife.  He was telling his public school stories.  He was getting a feeling of power from his display.  Once again I walked away.      I had held switchblade knives in my hands myself.  Some Mexican boys who were neighbors had brought them into my back yard.  They told me that these knives were legal because their blades were less than three inches.   People bought these knives in Mexico and brought them over the border in Nogales.

     There are two kinds of switchblade knives.  One kind has a blade that shoots straight out from the handle when the button is pressed.  The other swivels out at lightning speed from the side when the button is pressed.  There is a spring inside that makes the blades shoot out so fast.  With both kinds of knives there is a familiar clicking sound when the blade locks into place.  Even with a blade that is over three inches if it is only sharp on one side it is not illegal, I was told.  It is the knives that are razor sharp on both sides that are considered to be dangerous, concealed weapons.  I had held all of these kinds of knives in my hands and pressed the buttons.  I knew the feeling of the lightning fast response and the clicking of the blades into place. 

     Chango’s was the first switchblade I had seen that was illegal.  I made up my mind that I would not allow this in my school.      The next day when the other boys were in the schoolyard I walked into the principal’s office.  I had never been in the principal’s office before.  I walked in out of the hot, Tucson sun.  There was a middle aged woman with a round face behind a desk who asked if she could help me.  I said that I wanted to talk to the principal.  Before she could ask me what it was concerning the principal looked out from her office door and told the lady to send me in.  I noticed that the front office where the lady was and the office where the principal sat at her desk were very tiny and there were piles of papers and folders everywhere. The principal, Sister Ynez, in her white habit asked me what it was about.

     I started telling her about Chango.  I told her about how he bragged about shoplifting and had gotten the other boys to start bragging about it, too.  She listened intently, looking thoughtful with her little, gold, wire rimmed glasses.  I told her that he was bringing a switchblade knife to school and showing it to the other boys.  She asked where he kept the switchblade knife.  I said, “In his pocket”.  The principal thanked me for coming in and telling her.  I walked out of the cluttered little offices into the bright sunlight of the schoolyard.  I could tell that the lady in the front office had been listening as she made busy with her paperwork.  

     It was the middle of the morning in class at St. John’s school.  All the students were looking down at their desks working on their assignment.  The principal appeared at the open, front door in her white habit.  At her side was a tall, athletic looking, young man who was dressed in a dark suit with a tie.  I knew what was coming.  The principal commanded, “We want to see Chango!”  Everyone was silent.  I sat up straight in my desk.  All the students were looking down at their desks.  Even the teacher, a pretty, young lay woman with brown hair, looked down and then she looked up from her desk just a little bit.       I looked at Chango.  I was sitting in the same row, a few desks behind him.  He had been looking straight down at his desk.  With his head still down he looked around to his right.  Then he looked around to his left.  I could see his eyes moving this way and that.  He lifted himself slowly from his desk as if he had a heavy weight on his soul and mind.  When he came to be standing he looked around himself and at the students in the class.  His mouth was pursed.  All the while his head was bowed.  He sluggishly started walking forward.  He turned from the aisle.  He walked to the right, past the teacher’s desk, toward the principal and the young man in the suit who were waiting for him at the door.  The three of them turned from the door and walked away with Chango in the center.

     I looked at the boys and girls in my class.  They had been looking down at their desks the entire time.  They continued to look down as if afraid to even look to the side.  I went back to doing my school work.  We never saw Chango again. 

One of the three Roberts in my class started bringing a switchblade knife to school.  It had a blade that was less than three inches so it was legal.  He sat in Chango’s place on the bike rack brandishing the knife and talking like the way Chango had.  I watched him and walked away.  He did this about three times and then stopped.  He was one of the Roberts whose family owned a ranch in Tucson.  Everything returned to normal at school.  Chango had been in with gangs.  I probably saved his life.

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