Some Place beneath the Concrete

                                    

                                                                                 

All Prepared to Cruise

                                                                                                   

     I started my day as I do most days, getting my dogs and me out for a little exercise. I’m bored with my own neighborhood, so I like taking them around town.

     This morning, we hopped in the Prius, punched in Spotify, and streamed Los Lobos newest album, Native Sons, our destination, my old neighborhood, the West Los Angeles Municipal Center, which is nothing like the name implies.

     I guess the Wolves got me to thinking. Their new studio work is a collection of songs by fellow musicians’ who inspired them early in their career, like Thee (can’t forget to two ee’s) Midniters (no “g”), Jackson Brown, Lalo Guerrero, Buffalo Springfield, Percy Mayfield, the Beach Boys, and others, a real eclectic bunch. Los Lobos wrote one new song, “Native Son,” which I’m enjoying more than all the other songs.

     Seventeen studio albums give the hometown band the right to explore whatever theme they choose in their work, so the idea of Native Sons got my attention. I think that’s why I’m back in the old neighborhood, walking up and down Santa Monica boulevard, seeing what new businesses have opened, and watching skateboarders outnumber employees and neighbors in the old civic center, much of it boarded-up and abandoned, leaves and trash blown into the corners, the enormous fountain dry for years.

                                                                                     

George Saenz (front right) with friends, probably at the Lucky-U

     I’m a native son, born and raised, and still live barely three miles away. I had no gang affiliation, so I attended parties and dances and had close friends from other westside neighborhoods, like Venice, Culver City, Santa Monica, and Palms. I didn’t have to watch my back.

     It is not only nostalgic but mysterious walking the same streets I walked when I was a kid, buying shoes with my mom at Marty’s Shoes, my first bike with my dad at Dave’s Bicycle Shop. I would hang out at the library, where many homeless people hang out today, run mail into the post office for my mom, or sometimes grab an Orange Julius at the Rexall Drugs, which is long gone.

                                                                                    

New Stucco covers Old Structures

     A complete enigma, to me, is the idea that my parents and grandparents walked these same streets, many of these 1930s structures already built, some by friends and family. Three generations of the same geographic and cultural reference points, and my kids don’t live too far, so they pass through the old neighborhood or stop by occasionally, which makes four generations, and now my adult grandchildren make it five.

     I walk past Felicia Mahood Senior Citizen Center, where a close family friend George Saenz, after he retired, volunteered his time, at first helping with the older people then, when he was slowing down, using the services himself. So they tell me, George, as a kid, was short, fast, and tough. If his shoes came off, you knew you were in trouble. Barefoot, it was the only way he could fight, but, mostly, they say, if you were with him, you were in for a good time.

     My dad and George were kids together running these streets, along with all their other friends, mostly Mexican kids, the first generation of Chicanos, the WWII generation. I try remembering some of the stories George would tell me over the years. He was a real “talker,” but nothing trivial. He always had a point to his tales.

     After I arrive home with my dogs, I know I have a Bloga post due tomorrow, and George and his wife’s Connie’s voices are in my head, as if they are standing next to me. I turn on my computer. I know I talked to them at their home 2001.  

     The thing is, I am not such a good secretary, so my files often go awry. I can’t remember if I’ve posted them before for La Bloga. Does it matter? If I did, and I can’t remember, how are La Bloga readers going to remember.

     So, here goes, two voices from the past, Americans who came from Mexican immigrant stock, and contributed to the development, not only of this town but of this country, the same way their children continue to contribute.

                                                                                   

George and Esther Cano birthday celebration

                                                         

     George, his blue eyes sparkling like a travieso, leaned back in his Lazy Boy. His wife Connie sat on the couch, opposite him. She reminded George of names and incidents he’d forgotten, or repeated words he didn't hear, the piercing caws of their tropical bird in the corner.  

     The Saenzes live in two-story home near Bundy and Nebraska Avenues in West Los Angeles, three blocks from Santa Monica. Their house rests about one block from where historians claim Francisco Sepulveda built his first adobe in the early 1800s, which later caused land disputes between the early Californio coastal families, like the Sepulvedas, Reyes and Marquez, long before the first Americans had arrived.

     I asked George, “Did your dad or mom talk about their life in Mexico?”

     “No, not much,” George said, remembering his family arrived in Sherman (West Hollywood) sometime in 1922 from Parral, Chihuahua, a year before Pancho Villa’s death in the same town.

     Sherman, a main railroad switching station when George’s family arrived, looms large in Los Angeles, California, and Mexican-American history.

     In Edwin Palmer’s History of Hollywood, Palmer explained how M.L. Wicks, Cornelius Cole and E.C. Hall, in 1887, built the original railroad line from Los Angeles into Santa Monica, "the ostrich farm railway." In those first years, Los Angeles’ residents crowded the trains and traveled to the coast to escape the heat. In the 1890s, heavy rains flooded the tracks and destroyed the system, all but stopping travel to Santa Monica’s beaches.

     In 1895, M.L. Sherman and his business partner E.P. Clark resurrected the L.A. trolley system from Los Angeles to Santa Monica. Utilizing Mexican immigrant labor, they trucked in old rails from other parts of Los Angeles, extended the line to the ocean, and, in Sherman, a crusty railroad settlement between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, they created a Mexican community, complete with homes, businesses, and a church.

     Like other western towns in the late 1800s, Sherman had its share of vice. In his book Images of America: West Hollywood, Ryan Gierach writes, “…St. Victor’s Catholic Church…was donated by Belgium businessman and neighbor Victor Ponet. Ponte thought the mostly Catholic Mexicans were in danger of backsliding for lack of a convenient church, and wanted the railway workers to be attending mass instead of drinking alcohol on Sunday mornings.”    

     After Sherman's heyday, between 1915 and 1920, many Mexicans, looking for work, headed east, toward Los Angeles, to work in factories, mills, and rock quarries. Others traveled west to work the ranches, farms, and new developments that stretched to the Pacific.

     I once asked my father if he knew what families had come from Sherman.

     He said, “Well, let’s see, “Georgie Saenz’s dad, Peaches (Rubio) Herrera’s, Mike Sapien’s, Rocky Escamilla’s dad too, and Nino Villa’s and the Escobars, all their families came to Sawtelle from Sherman. The Villas, Escamillas and Sapiens might have been the first.”

     I asked George, “Where did your father live when moved to West L.A.?”

                                                                                

Connie Saenz, from Oaxaca to L.A.'s Westside

     When he hesitated, Connie answered, laughing, "To La Gara.” It was the poorest part of town. “Or for George it was to Pontius Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard," referring to George's birthplace in 1925, his parents’ home.

      In Mexico, Parral de Chihuahua, George’s dad’s birthplace, earned its recognition as the headquarters and home to Mexican revolutionary general and mythic hero Pancho Villa during his campaign against Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. Parral became immortalized as the site of Villa's assassination in 1923.

     George said, "My dad was Mexican Army captain. Everybody called him El Capitan. He told me he chased Pancho Villa all over Chihuahua's deserts." Ironically, unlike El Capitan Saenz, most Mexicans who migrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s claimed allegiance to Villa and his northern campaign.

     El Capitan Saenz didn't deny his military role as a federal officer since everybody in Sawtelle knew him by his military title.

     Today Parral rests at the base of a mountain, an abandoned American factory lighted brilliantly at night, rises over the once prosperous city known for mining. Each January, Parral begins preparations to celebrate Pancho Villa’s life. In June thousands of people descend on Parral, especially bikers from the U.S and Europe who come to pay their respects to Villa, the quintessential rebel.

     From what I was told during a recent visit, it's two weeks of music, dance, art, lectures, alcohol and madness, and, the party mostly unknown but to those who have been making the pilgrimage for years.

     George could not remember much regarding his mother Adela's life in Mexico, other than she was born in Cajorca, Sonora, where he thinks she married El Capitan. "I just remember my mom was sixteen years old when she told her dad, 'Me voy a casar con el Capitan Saenz.' Her dad said, 'Con el Capitan Saenz? Si apenas lo concoces.' She told her dad, 'Ni el a mi.'"

     After moving to Sawtelle, El Capitan Saenz, his two brothers, Jorge and Pepe, and their friend Pascual Escobar, found work building cesspools and sewer lines, as George said, "In Beverly Hills and all over."

     Nobody had indoor plumbing. Most people used outhouses. George said, "When one cesspool filled up, my dad and uncles covered it, moved a few feet over and dug another one."

     George remembered, as a child, watching his dad work. "They would dig four to six-foot holes-- pick and shovel, pick and shovel. They tied a pail to a rope and hung it over a ciguena, kind of like a wood wench. When the hole got deeper, they could only bring up one pail of dirt at a time. Once they dug the hole, one man would fill the pail with bricks, and using the ciguena, lower the bricks to the men in the hole. They would cover the dirt walls with cement and brick." 

     George remembered his father coming home exhausted after a day's work.

     As underground plumbing and drains crossed the westside, fewer cesspools were needed, and men lost their jobs. El Capitan took to gardening, a booming business for Westside Mexicans and Japanese.

     Pascual Escobar switched to the drainage business, built one of the most successful companies in operation, which his sons still own today. Pascual's brother Juan Escobar entered the restaurant business, opening his first Casa Escobar's on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles and a second on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. In the 1960s, the Escobar family opened a third restaurant in the Marina del Rey, and--still going strong--a new Escobar's in Malibu.

                                                                                   

Will the Wolf Survive?

      Like other early Sawtelle families, George Saenz said his family moved around, always looking for cheaper rent and a bigger house. He recalled living in a house on Texas Avenue, just north of the high school. "That's when I met your dad," he said, before either had started school.

     “What do you remember about your childhood years?” I asked.

     George recalled mostly the good times growing up in Sawtelle, like playing at the Soldier's Home, especially in the Gulley and the swamps. He said, as if talking to himself, "Sometimes we'd go down and put pennies on the railroad tracks."

     He paused for a long time, so I asked the obvious, "Why?"

     "No…just to see them get smashed," he joked. "Oh, I had a treacherous life."

     Then he said, while rocking in his chair, "There used to be a street car that went from Santa Monica to Wilshire. We called it the Dinky."

     The Dinky, was a short-line, and took passenger from the Soldier's Home along San Vicente Boulevard to the beach. “We’d walk down to the Canyon and run around in the creek, catch fish, play around, and then go to the beach for a swim.”

     He remembered when his family moved to Cotner Avenue, near Santa Monica Boulevard. He said, “Where most of the guys from W.L.A. lived. You know, we just used to hang out, but we'd always end up at ’the Rag.’”

     "The Rag?" I asked.

     "You know, La Gara. We'd pick up the guys there. Sometimes we followed the train tracks, just walking, all the way to the beach."

     La Gara they considered the roughest neighborhood in Sawtelle, in those days maybe across the entire Westside.

     "Was this during the summer when there was no school?" I asked.

     He said his friends had a reputation for ditching school, and even the teachers knew. The truant officers knew them all by name.

     "What would you do," I asked, "when you weren't in school?"

     "Oh, boy. We'd go to Sonia Haney's Ice Rink in Westwood…I think it was in Westwood, and watch the people skate. Yeah, and just north of Wilshire, there was the swimming hole. We'd go dive in and swim around, lay out in the sun. After we'd go to the grocery store, in the back where they'd throw out old fruit and stuff, and we'd eat."

     Connie interrupted him, "What was the name of that teacher…you remember?"

     "What teacher?"

     "The one who knew where you guys hung out and was always driving around looking for you."

     "Oh, Mrs. Keller. Yeah, she was my teacher. She'd always come driving up. One time we were walking up Wilshire. She asked us, real nice, if we wanted a ride. We were tired of walking so we all jumped in her car."

     He chuckled, "Sometimes she would drive all over looking for us. Then she'd give us a ride home. But the next day at school, oh boy, the principal, Ms. Sterry, would call us to her office."

     "What happened?" I asked.

     "She'd make us stay after school for detention. They always got us for ditching school. Sometimes she'd hit us on our hands with a ruler," he laughed.

     "Was detention a good punishment?" I asked.

     "No, because all of us were in there together, all the guys."

     School just didn't seem important to George and his friends. He couldn't remember anything going on in school that made him want to be there, other than seeing the girls and joking around with his friends. What he didn’t say but what many of his friends told me is that when they weren’t in school, or ditching, they’d be working, either with the fathers, caddying at the local golf course, or collecting coat hangers to return to the cleaners for the refunds.

    He said, “What a weird life, huh? We just played…football in the streets and traveled all over town.”

     "When you did go to school, what kind of student were you?" I asked.

     Connie answered, "George was a lousy one. I'll tell you right now."

     George just laughed. Then he said, "Yeah, I was a lousy one."

     "Were you in the Opportunity Class?" I asked, remembering my dad’s name for the special class.

     He had to stop and think for a moment. "You mean Los Dumb-Dumbs?"

    "No," Connie said. "He was in the class for smart asses."

    "No. I was in the regular classes. But I would sit in my classroom and look out the window. The teacher would have the los dumb-dumbs on the grounds marching around every day," George laughed.

     "What makes you think you were such a bad student?"

     He said, "Well, let me see. Oh, I remember when I got burned in an accident. They put me in the hospital for a while and then I came back, and um, all the classes were sort of full. So, ah…."

     "That was at Emerson Junior High, wasn't it?" Connie interjected, as if to make sure I understood George was older at the time.

     "Yeah," George said. "So, I went over to the metal shop and I ah…asked him [the teacher] if I could get into metal shop, you know. I needed a class. And he said…."

George imitated the teacher's mournful tone, "'You know what? I work for the Board of Education. I only get so much money, and I don't have long to retire, so, well…I don't think I want you in my class.'"

     Connie laughed, "Well, he was very nice about it."

     "Yeah, he already knew me. I guess he had an encounter with me before."

     "A hellion," Connie said. "He used to grab the girls and kiss them…even walking in the hallway."

     "For some reason, don't ask me why," George said, proudly, "in junior high they were going to make me a knight. That was something special, like an honor." But one day, George remembered, he was walking down the hall and saw a girl he liked. He walked up to her, spun her around, and as he described it, "I gave her a big smooch--just as so-and-so [a teacher] was coming around the corner and gol' darn it…he told me, 'I seen that and you're not supposed to be doing that in school' and this-n-that. 'And I thought you were going to be a knight.'"

     George laughed, "That cancelled that. And being a knight was a pretty good deal," he said, as if to show even when given a golden opportunity, he would figure out some way to sabotage it.

    "Jeez, everybody lived there," George said, talking again about the old neighborhood, notorious in later years for gangs, drugs, and shootings, but Cotner, the "Rag" didn't last. The construction of the 405 freeway destroyed the neighborhood in the 1960s, many of its residence fleeing to other westside towns.

     But before that, in his youth, George remembered the Star Boarding House, a hotel filled with bachelors who worked as gardeners. There was a building he only recalled as the Big House, where the workers went to eat home-cooked meals and buy lunches for work. Every evening men would be walking along the streets, visiting the stores, talking and resting after a hard day's work.

     "Who did you used to hang out with?" I asked.

     "Let's see," he said. "Who did I hang out with? There was your dad, Ray. There was Dario Sanchez, Peanuts (Rufino Escarcega), and George Takahashi. I knew George Takahashi since day one."

     Connie said, "He was the one you took the picture with, the one you took to Tijuana, ha?" Connie giggled.

     George laughed, "Yeah, that was Tak's first trip to Tijuana. I told him we were just going for a short ride, and we ended up in TJ."

     "Were you guys in the military?" I asked.

     "Yea…No!  We weren't in the service yet. That was before the service."

     "How old were you?"

     "Oh sheez, we must've been about fourteen, thirteen."

     "How did you get to Tijuana, the bus?"

     "No, my dad's car," he said, laughing, as if I'd missed the obvious.

     "You drove? At thirteen!" I asked.

     "Yeah," he said.

     "Very daring," Connie said.

     "Everybody drove, and if I didn't drive, Dario Sanchez drove or Peanuts drove. There was always somebody… Man was Tak surprised when he woke up on the other side of the border."

     In 1938, before the freeways, the trip to Tijuana must have been a grueling eight to ten-hour drive, along the early coast highway through the narrow coastal towns.

     George never did confess what they did in Tijuana. And I chose not to ask, but as sure as I write this, all of their spirits still wander those streets, some place benath the concrete.