The Boat Ride

                                                                               

Santa Monica Pier by Danny Alonzo S.M. artist

by Daniel Cano

     Everyone on L.A.’s Westside called him Serrucho (Buzzsaw) because he could cut someone down to size in a minute with either fists or wit, though he much preferred brains over brawn, "A lover not a fighter," he'd say, his eye always on the lookout for another drink. 

     He was the town coyote, a real trickster, who wasn’t much on working. It wasn’t that he was lazy, exactly. A skilled plasterer, he recognized, right off, a pecking order on each job site, the best jobs, carpentry, electrical, and plumbing, reserved for connected "gabachos," he'd say, while Mexicans, blacks, and Okies were relegated to cement work, the dirtiest, toughest, and, sometimes, most dangerous, especially up on scaffolds, two and three stories high.  

     Unless he really needed the money, or a drink, which was always, he rejected the system, even if his friends and relatives told him, “That’s the way it is, Serruch. At least we’re in a union.” His wife learned this early and, smartly, decided to take off to another part of the city with the kids.

     Growing up during the Depression, a few miles from the Pacific, in a small neighborhood off Santa Monica boulevard, he’d given fitting nicknames to most of his friends, like the muscular but short (only five-foot-three) Robert Salazar, whom he dubbed, “Dynamite,” or super skinny Rudy Flores he called “Skull Head.” One day, I took my dad, then a senior, to a Norm’s restaurant on Pico Boulevard, near Westwood, a half-mile east of neighborhood where he was raised.

     Rudy was sitting having breakfast with his wife. My father called to him, a couple of times, “Hey, Skull Head.” It was clear Rudy was ignoring him. Finally, my dad raised his voice. Rudy turned, probably to avoid the eyes of everyone in the restaurant. The two old friends exchanged greetings. When I asked my dad how Mr. Flores got stuck with the moniker like Skull Head, he said Serrucho named him, to which I replied, “but why?” My father shot me a queer look, raised one eyebrow, and answered, with no further explanation, “Well, just look at him.”

    One story about Serrucho that the people in town never seemed to forget happened way back in the “fifties” on the Santa Monica Pier. Serrucho had run into his brother-in-law, Joe Reyna who was decked out in his Sunday best, a baby blue guayabera, matching slacks, silk socks, and patent leather loafers, a Panama hat, a bit flamboyant for most people, but Joe liked to think he was "styling".

     “Looking good, brother-in-law,” Serrucho greeted him as he approached.

     Joe had seen a lot of action in the Pacific. After his last serious wound, they patched him up, and assigned him to drive the captain’s jeep, where he said he first learned about “class,” a word he loved to toss around.  

     Once home, he married, started a gardening business, and had a bunch of kids. He was an excellent self-promoter, and he began picking up some big-name clients, including celebrities living in Brentwood and Beverly Hills. They all called him by his first name, Joe, which did wonders for his self-esteem, like they were really friends. He observed them, watching how they acted, talked, and dressed, "pure class," he'd tell his friends. Needless to say, he was ignorant of "new money" tackiness, and took his modeling of them to a different level, a style Serrucho called, “Panamanian Harlem.”

     If Joe’s Sunday attire did nothing else, it got folk’s attention, strangers thinking he had a much higher station in life than he really did, a mistake of which he took advantage, promoting himself as a Mexican lawyer, a persona that helped him secure the finest rooms at the mid-level motels in Ensenada during the fiesta days there, where all the staff addressed him as, “Licenciado,” waiting on him, and Corina, his wife, Serrucho’s sister, hand and foot, sometimes, embarrassing her.

     “Hey, Serrucho. What’re you doing out here,” Joe answered, nonplussed.

     It was a tossup whether anyone wanted to see Serrucho or not. Just his presence raised a number of variables, most tipping the scales of contentment more to the negative than the positive side.

     Serrucho tucked his white t-shirt into his baggy work pants, ran his fingers through his long, stringy hair, and answered, “Enjoying the day. Whew wee, that’s a long line, and hot like it is out here.”

     Joe had been standing in line with his five boys waiting to board the popular Pier Cruise. It was a crowd favorite in those days, even better than the Merry-Go-Round. Small canopy covered boats would take passengers out past the breakwater, around the sailboats moored off the pier, about a hall-mile out, riding the swells to the open sea, infinity, in a kid’s mind, then turning, and making its way back to the pier.

     Joe wasn’t sure how surprised or excited to act in his brother-in-law’s presence, for who knew what ideas were ruminating in that brain. Joe said, clearly frustrated, “Yeah, just waiting, about a half-hour now.”

     Serrucho wiped his brow and said, using both his macro and micro skills of analysis, “You might be waiting an hour more, brother-in-law, and no shade.” He said it as if he’d made a brilliant observation. He looked up and down the line, then he asked Joe he if he got him and the boys to the front of the line would Joe throw a couple of bucks his way.

     Joe considered the offer, wondering how much more it might cost him than just the money. He knew all about Serrucho’s shenanigans, sometimes embarrassing to everybody but Serrucho, but he'd been known to pull off marvels that people talked about for years, not unlike Joe Pesci, in My Cousin Vinny. It was getting hotter and the people in line appeared as if their feet were set in concrete. Joe was desperate, and Serrucho knew it. What did Joe have to lose, except his dignity and self-respect. Joe agreed.

     Serrucho disappeared. The boys were getting restless. Like any good parent, to keep them from misbehaving, Joe started making the boys promises he knew he couldn’t keep, and while he did, he lost track of time. The line didn’t appear any shorter. That was when he felt a tap on his shoulder, and he saw Serrucho, accompanied by Captain Sam, manager of the Pier Cruise. Serrucho said, rushing his words, “No digas nada ni hablas ingles,” before introducing the two men. Joe nodded and smiled as he made the captain’s acquaintance.

     Captain Sam, with a wide smile, greeted Joe, taking his hand and shaking vigorously, after which he reached for Bobby, the youngest boy, grasped his hand, and in a gruff voice, announced, “Coming through, coming through.”

     Just like that, Captain Sam led Joe and his small band of troopers to the front of the line. Since he had no singles, Joe slipped Serrucho a five-dollar bill, and a few minutes later, Joe and the boys were boarding the boat, to their delight, and to the dismay and confusion of everybody else in line.

     It was a relief as they took their seats, bathed in shade from the canopy, and a cool breeze coming off the water, the boat’s motor purring and spitting up water, swells from passing boats slapping up again the pier's pilings. Along with ten strangers, they shoved off, rocking over the larger swells as they moved away from the pier and headed out, beyond the breakwater, where rolling mounds lifted and dropped the little vessel, exciting everyone aboard.

     Captain Sam hadn’t even taken Joe’s tickets, told him to keep them for another time, just kept saying, “The Honor is mine, sir, the honor is mine.”

     Joe had no idea how Serrucho pulled it off, but it was definitely worth a fin. He sat back and looked out at the clear blue skies above the Pacific Ocean, Topanga and Malibu off in the distance.

     A few weeks later, Serrucho stopped by to gab with Joe, who was sitting out back at a picnic table under a large umbrella, having just finished watering his potted plants, his yard a lush garden, an enormous avocado tree overhead, and beneath, in the shade, palms, azaleas, camelias, ligustrum, and ferns, all orphan plants he’d pilfered from jobs he’d done for clients.

     The two men talked a while, when Joe remembered the pier, and he asked Serrucho how he did it, had gotten them onto the boat ride ahead of everybody else? Serrucho laughed, like it was nothing. “Oh that, well I’ll tell you brother-in-law, it's kind of a secret, you know.”

     It was Bert Samaniego who finally said he got it out of Serrucho. In the Vet's Bar, on Sawtelle boulevard, just down the street from the Old Soldiers Home, he said Serrucho confessed, as if admitting a grand secret, how he first found out that Captain Sam was manager of the boat ride. Serrucho approached the good captain and told him, real serious like, that he had an important dignitary in line visiting from Mexico. Serrucho had promoted Joe from a gardener to an admiral in the Mexican navy, who was visiting Los Angeles and had to get back to Vera Cruz before his destroyer was set to sail off to Argentina. Serrucho said Captain Sam didn’t even question him. He just looked over at Joe and the boys, and he took Serrucho’s word for it. “Man, but did I take a chance,” he told Bert.

     “Serruch, why is that?”

     Serrucho chuckled, as he said, “I didn’t even know if the Mexicans had a destroyer, or a Navy, man.”

Daniel Cano's award-winning historical novel, "Death and the American Dream," depicting the last days of Ricardo Flores Magon in Los Angeles, and life in early Santa Monica barrio. Available on Amazon or the publisher Bilingual Books.