It was sometime in 2001, when I went to interview my uncle Narciso “Mike” Escarcega, whose voice captured a generation of voices, Chicanos of the WWII, the children of immigrants.
Mike was on a mission, sitting in his living room, peering through the screen door waiting for the clock to strike 3:00 P.M., so he could hobble out to his camper truck and move it back to the parking spot in front of his house. Factories and car repair shops crowded the once vacant stretch of land across the street from his house, butting up to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, so now he fights the employees for parking on street cleaning day, when the city hands out tickets.
At 84, Mike’s knees were weak, arthritis, from years of gardening in Westwood and Beverly Hills. Even into his 60s, he was still riding motorcycles across the Mojave Desert, or hunting ducks at the Salton Sea, and fishing in the high Sierras.
"Bastards try to take all the parking," he said, and laughed. "But I'll get 'em."
He had light skin, hair white, his eyes greenish blue, and no hint of an accent when he spoke English, so it’s jolting when he switched to Spanish, mostly to curse an idiotic past event. Like many men of the WWII generation, he possessed a strong sense of "self," and could become easily annoyed with people who lacked common sense.
He refused to wear a hearing aid, so he spoke haltingly, pausing, thinking, and sometimes answering in half-phrases. My uncle was not one to mince words. When a thought crossed his mind, it immediately came out of his mouth.
"Yeah, my mom came from New Mexico," he said, pronouncing it Metzico. "My family was from Chihuahua. Recently, I heard someone from our family in Chihuahua was living here, in Culver City. He was working as a butcher. I told my nephew Johnny Sanchez I'd like to meet him, but Johnny told me the guy already moved back to Chihuahua. But, ah, well, I don't know much about it."
Mike's mother Josefina Rios Escarcega and his father were the first in the family to arrive in the U.S., in the early 1900s. Josefina's two sisters, Santos, my grandmother, and Saturnina, my aunt, followed.
All three families eventually settled on L.A.'s Westside, or what Mike called—Sawtelle, near the Old Soldier’s Home, the Veterans Administration, today.
He said, "I was born near Gallup, New Metzico. My brother Peanuts [Rufino Escarcega] knew all about it. I think the place was called Howard or Hobart, something like that…in 1920. Before he passed away, Peanuts traveled all over, going back to New Metzico, to the town to learn how my dad was killed. Peanuts brought me back my birth certificate. They found the town, a mining town where my dad died. I asked Peanuts why he wanted to go back there? He said, ‘I wanted to know how he died.' I think he said it was by one of those little trains in the mines, or something like that, and after my dad died there was just us kids Peanuts, Roy, me, Vera, Elia, and my mom. Vera was the oldest.”
I interrupted, “So, your mom came to L.A. by herself, with all those kids, after your dad died?”
"Yeah. It must 'a been hard for my mom, traveling with all of us kids. We came from New Metzico following some people to San Bernardino where we picked tomatoes, walnuts and all that. I remember being little, riding with a guy in one of those old-time wagons, sitting in the back, him driving the horses. I remember that. He would go pick up the watermelons and walnuts in the field.”
“Do you remember where you were living at the time?”
"Yeah, my mother moved to Fontana, a little village. It was a community of Chicanos, like a little track of homes, you know, a house…just one room, a hallway and a kitchen," he laughed. "Yeah, we came first. Then your grandmother, Santos, came. My mom sent for her.”
“I didn’t realize,” I said. “I mean, I know your mom came first, but I didn’t know why my grandmother had come. Do you remember when you first arrived in Los Angeles?”
"My mom worked at Olvera Street, maybe 1925. I remember playing around all the trains. She worked there selling food. She went there because she knew some people from New Metzico there. We used to go to the Rose Parade in Pasadena when we were young. The people from New Metzico lived there, in Pasadena, near Colorado Avenue, and we would go visit them.”
“I never knew you lived in downtown Los Angeles.”
"Oh, yeah. We lived in L.A. in Olvera Street then moved to a building up there on Bunker Hill. I used to go upstairs and look down over everything. Next thing I knew, umm, my mom asked us, 'You guys like it here?' And well, we all said…NO!!!!'Okay,' she said, 'then let's go.'”
“And you came west?”
"Yeah, we ended up in a house right near the school on Sawtelle Avenue, in a white house. Oh, hell, I don't think it's there anymore.”
“What kind of work did your mom do?”
"She got a restaurant. She was the owner, over there in Sherman, you know, what’s West Hollywood today. She'd take the bus every day from West L.A. Then the next thing I knew she had a restaurant right here in Sawtelle, where the veterans were, by the Veterans Bar, a couple of blocks down the street from the Soldiers’ Home, just off Santa Monica Boulevard. I think the building is still there. Sometimes I would drive by there just to look at it.”
“It’s gone,” I said. “My dad took me by there, right on the corner of Mississippi and Sawtelle. It’s an office building now. It’s right across from the UCLA Thrift store.”
“Oh, anyway, it was right there where Sammy Goldfish lived,” Mike laughed at the memory.
“You knew a kid name Sammy Goldfish?”
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| Others from West L.A., first-generation Chicanos |
"No, we just called him Sammy Goldfish. Yeah, he used to live in the hotel with his mother. It's still there [on Sawtelle Boulevard]. Your uncle, Nick, gave him the name; you know, making fun of him because every day his mom used to make him bring in the goldfish. They were Jewish. She’d yell, like they were still New York, you know. 'Bring in the goldfish, Sammy!'”
He laughed, “Oh, Christ, I can still hear her, 'bring in the goldfish, Sammy.' Every day she would put the goldfish outside, and Sammy would have to bring it in every night. Nick and the rest of us used to laugh like hell when she said it, 'Bring in the goldfish, Sammy.'”
“Did you work in your mom’s restaurant?”
"No, I didn't work in my mom's restaurant. We were too young. Me and Peanuts didn't do nothing…." He laughed, hard. "Vera was the oldest. She worked there, but not Elia. She was too little, but your dad's half-sisters Grace and Jenny worked there. But I don't know, Raymond, you dad, said my mom sold the restaurant to your grandmother, Santos. I don't know. I'm not so sure. I don't think she did. She had the one in Sherman and another up on…oh, let's see. Oh, yeah, on San Vicente, up there by the Western Front., by the Veterans Administration.”
“My dad told me my grandfather suggested Josefina and Santos should re-name the restaurant to La Manana because when it came time to pay for the food, everybody would say, “Manana.”
