The boy had to get up before sunup to make sure his mom had enough firewood for the wood burning stove that she used to cook for her family. The boy’s mom would get up at quarter to four in the morning to see her husband and her children’s father off to work. The boy’s father worked at the Simons Brickyard, which was a stone throw away, about two hundred yards north of their front door. In those hot 1940s summer days the brickyard workers would start working at four in the morning in order to get off before the sweating heat hit. The boy’s mother would start getting breakfast ready for the boy’s siblings, four girls, one sister was older then the boy, soon after her husband was out the door. The boy would have his breakfast with his father when he was done delivering breakfast’s to other workers.
The boy would go out into the warm summer dawn and gathered firewood for the stove as his mom was making tortillas for breakfast. When his mom head was turned away from the tortilla basket he would steal a hot tortilla, put some hot chili salsa on it and run like hell, laughing as he did, his mom, laughing too would try to grab his ear to give it a twist, sometimes she missed, other times she didn’t, when she didn’t she would give his ear a good twist as both would laughed. While the boy would be eating his tortilla he would go about giving the family animals, rabbits, chickens, a goat, and a hog their morning feed. He would then water his father’s vegetable garden.
By six o’clock the boy’s mother would have his father’s breakfast ready, including some for the boy, sometime it was eggs in hot salsa, other times eggs and chorizo, but always with bean and always in tacos. About quarter after six the boy would walked out with a lunch pile and a big jar of coffee, he would go around the side of the wooded shack that was their home, he would then take his wagon that he had made out of a wooded box out of a small garage that he had constructed for it on the side of the house. He would put the breakfast and coffee in the wagon and head out to other workers homes to pick up breakfasts that he would deliver to the hard working men for their 7:00 o’clock breakfast break. In every home he would stop to pick up a breakfast he would find a woman hunched over with her rolling pin making tortillas as she listened to Maria Ellen Salinas play Mexican music on her radio show. The ladies would all give the boy a hot tortilla to eat on his way to the next pick up.
After delivering all the breakfasts and having breakfast with his father the boy would returned home to chop some firewood, enough for a couple of days. Done with the wood chopping the boy would go and join other boys at the rackas (racks) to turn the bricks to dry. While turning the bricks he would go through a daily ritual, one that he was not happy to partake in, but thought that in order to keep the other boys off him he had to do so, so on a daily bases he had a fist fight with a boy who was his next door neighbor, most of the time the boy would kicked the neighbor’s boy’s ass. Of all the boys in Simons of his same age, twelve-thirteen years old, he was the only one without an older or younger brother, so all the boys would picked on him figuring he didn’t have a back-up, but he soon earned their respect by beating the neighbor’s boy more times than not. Turning bricks, delivering breakfasts and shining shoes at Nacho’s Pool Hall on the weekends gave him enough money to go the Royale Theater in East Los Angeles to watch his beloved western movies. So yes, the boy would fight on in order to earn money to go watch his favorite cowboy heroes.
Done turning bricks by noon, and after having lunch the boys; if they didn’t have a baseball game going on with their Vail Elementary School team would head out to the swimming hole, “the main ditch” as it was called. The boy and his friends would ride their bikes to the main ditch which was by the railroad tracks, about a hundred yard east off Sycamore Street and Bluff Road in South Montebello. In the days of passenger trains the boys would be on the lookout for approaching trains as most were skinny dipping. As the trains were approaching most of the boys would jump in the water, lest the passengers would see their brown butts, but not all would jumped in the water, there was always one or two that would turn their butts to the passengers and moon them.
Getting back home in time for dinner and the late animal feed was a must for the boy. After feeding the animals and having dinner the boy spent the rest of the daylight hours picking on his younger sisters, pulling their hair and ears, he didn’t pick on his older sister, because she did some picking back.
At dusk the boy would head to the fire-pit, which was about one hundred yards west of his house, with his boxing gloves hoping to get one of the boys to box with him in the dirt floor ring they had constructed next to the fire-pit. Sometimes there were takers, other times not, it seemed like none of the boys loved boxing the way the boy did. The first boy to arrive at the fire-pit would get the fire started. As soon as the sun was over the horizon the boys would start arriving, as they did they would set out to gather firewood. Sometimes firewood was hard to come by. Because all the houses used wood burning stoves; wood was like gold in the brickyard. When there was no wood to be had the boys would go into the rakas and dump the bricks off the paletas (pallets), using paletas for firewood was not taken kindly by the local chota (cop) who would chase the boys when he caught them burning paletas, when they couldn’t burn paletas they would burn somebody’s white picket fence. There was always something new happening at the fire-pit, a boy burning his new shoe, looking for ways to get back at the chota, stealing somebody’s rooster to roast over the fire, throwing 22 caliber bullets into the fire as the boys circle the fire-pit, the boys would try to dodge the flying shells. Sometimes one of the boys would get hit by a flying shell.
The boy would go back home about ten o’clock to find his parents and siblings sitting outside by the apricot tree as it was too hot in those 1940s summer nights to get any sleep inside their wooded shack. After sitting and talking for a bit the boy would go into the hot house to try and get some sleep in the bedroom he shared with his four sisters, which sometimes it was hard to do because his older sister would lay in the dark chewing and popping her gum, in order to get some sleep the boy would get under the blankets and cover his head with the pillow. The boy would go to sleep and tomorrow would be another 1940s summer day in the Simons Brickyard for the boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment